ORAC
11th Dec 2009, 21:21
It Blew Up Real Good. Again. (http://streetwiseprofessor.com/?p=3030) :cool:
The other day people in Norway freaked out. Not because of the impending arrival of The One to collect his Nobel Prize for Not Being Bush. Or because Obama basically blew off his hosts. But because of a weird, spiral apparition in the dark northern skies. (Scroll down the link for some video.) Due to the proximity of the event to the Russian White Sea missile testing range, some folks suspected that it had something to do with a failed missile test.
At first the Russians grudgingly conceded that yes, the new SSBN Dmitri Donskoi had launched a missile on that day, but declined to say where, and didn’t say that anything went wrong. Later, the Russian navy admitted in a press release that it had experienced another failure of the Bulava sub-launched ballistic missile (SLBM). The first two stages worked fine (a previous launch failing at the first stage), but the third stage malfunctioned and the missile spun out of control, producing the Norwegian pyrotechnics. Depending on who’s counting and how “success” is defined, that’s either the ninth failure out of 13, or the 13th out of 13.
Speaking of ballistic, no doubt that’s what Putin, Medvedev, and the Russian military are going right now. They are nervous as cats about the declining state of Russia’s nuclear deterrent, and are exceedingly reliant on this deterrent due to the erosion of Russia’s conventional military capability. They are counting on the Bulava to help arrest that decline. Supposedly, the Bulava program has eaten up fully half of the Russian military procurement budget, and the Donskoi class SSBNs have devoured a big chunk of what’s left. The Russians have a functional liquid fueled SLBM, the Sineva (the Bulava being solid fueled), but the Sineva is almost two feet longer than the Bulava, and would not fit the missile tubes on the Donskois. It would cost billions, and a lot of time, to rejigger the Donskois to carry the Sinevas.
In other words, they are so screwed. They have missiles that work that won’t fit the subs, and the missiles that fit the subs don’t work. More than half the procurement budget down the tubes as a result.
This latest failure came after the sacking of the head of the Bulava program and a shift of the manufacture of the missile to a different factory in the aftermath of the last failure, purportedly the result of quality control issues the old facility.
It will be interesting to see how this affects the negotiations over a new START treaty. The old one expired, and despite repeated assurances by both sides that a new treaty would be in place by the time of that expiration, that hasn’t happened. With the prospect of a revitalized sub-launched deterrent fading into the distant horizon, Russia has an incentive to bargain harder to reduce US launch vehicles and get more flexibility for its land based systems.
The other day people in Norway freaked out. Not because of the impending arrival of The One to collect his Nobel Prize for Not Being Bush. Or because Obama basically blew off his hosts. But because of a weird, spiral apparition in the dark northern skies. (Scroll down the link for some video.) Due to the proximity of the event to the Russian White Sea missile testing range, some folks suspected that it had something to do with a failed missile test.
At first the Russians grudgingly conceded that yes, the new SSBN Dmitri Donskoi had launched a missile on that day, but declined to say where, and didn’t say that anything went wrong. Later, the Russian navy admitted in a press release that it had experienced another failure of the Bulava sub-launched ballistic missile (SLBM). The first two stages worked fine (a previous launch failing at the first stage), but the third stage malfunctioned and the missile spun out of control, producing the Norwegian pyrotechnics. Depending on who’s counting and how “success” is defined, that’s either the ninth failure out of 13, or the 13th out of 13.
Speaking of ballistic, no doubt that’s what Putin, Medvedev, and the Russian military are going right now. They are nervous as cats about the declining state of Russia’s nuclear deterrent, and are exceedingly reliant on this deterrent due to the erosion of Russia’s conventional military capability. They are counting on the Bulava to help arrest that decline. Supposedly, the Bulava program has eaten up fully half of the Russian military procurement budget, and the Donskoi class SSBNs have devoured a big chunk of what’s left. The Russians have a functional liquid fueled SLBM, the Sineva (the Bulava being solid fueled), but the Sineva is almost two feet longer than the Bulava, and would not fit the missile tubes on the Donskois. It would cost billions, and a lot of time, to rejigger the Donskois to carry the Sinevas.
In other words, they are so screwed. They have missiles that work that won’t fit the subs, and the missiles that fit the subs don’t work. More than half the procurement budget down the tubes as a result.
This latest failure came after the sacking of the head of the Bulava program and a shift of the manufacture of the missile to a different factory in the aftermath of the last failure, purportedly the result of quality control issues the old facility.
It will be interesting to see how this affects the negotiations over a new START treaty. The old one expired, and despite repeated assurances by both sides that a new treaty would be in place by the time of that expiration, that hasn’t happened. With the prospect of a revitalized sub-launched deterrent fading into the distant horizon, Russia has an incentive to bargain harder to reduce US launch vehicles and get more flexibility for its land based systems.