Ted Postol: The US anti-missile system would not intercept a single Russian nuclear warhead
Ukraine’s attacks on radars that are part of Russia’s nuclear early warning system put us on the brink of disaster. The problem is that unlike the Americans, Moscow does not have a capable space-based warning system. The Poseidon underwater robot with the largest nuclear warhead ever built was apparently approved by Vladimir Putin because he thinks he’s dealing with fools. It is also likely that the Russians have in place an automated nuclear launch retaliation system. This is what leading American nuclear weapons expert Theodore Postol tells the Standard.
On 22 May of this year, Ukrainian long-range drones struck two Russian strategic radars near the city of Armavir, in Russia’s Krasnodar region. A few days later, on 26 May, another strategic radar was attacked near the city of Orsk in the Orenburg region, well over a thousand kilometres from Ukraine.
According to experts, these radars cannot be used to monitor Ukrainian military activities, but rather are part of Russia’s strategic nuclear early warning system, designed to alert Russian leaders to incoming ballistic missile attacks on Russian territory.
Although Russian spokesmen have said very little about the strikes, Western observers became increasingly alarmed as experts explained how a catastrophic nuclear accident could potentially result from this sort of attack on an early warning system.
Among the most prominent of these experts was Theodore Postol, Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology and National Security Policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Professor Postol has long been widely recognised as one of the US’s top experts in nuclear weapons technology and missile defence. As scientific advisor to the Chief of Naval Operations at the Pentagon, he had complete access to US nuclear war planning and was given broad responsibilities in such areas as understanding Soviet missile defences, US strategic anti-submarine warfare activities, and tactical and strategic nuclear weapons use. He also advised on such issues as Ronald Reagan’s ‚Star Wars‘ missile defence proposals.
Since leaving the Pentagon and returning to academia, he has published widely and often critically on these and other related issues, such as the disastrous effects of nuclear weapons and the critical need for both of the nuclear superpowers to have stable and reliable early warning systems against nuclear attack. Almost immediately after the strikes on Russia’s early warning radars in late May, Professor Postol began to issue public statements – including the publication of this article in early June – warning that these particular attacks represent a potentially catastrophic situation, not only for Russia or Ukraine but for Western countries as well.
What can you tell us about these attacks on Russia’s nuclear early warning radars?
Two radar sites were attacked, one at Armavir, and the second at Orsk a few days later. There’s not much evidence to suggest that the Orsk site was seriously damaged, contrary to some reports. The Armavir site, on the other hand, has two radars and both of them were damaged. If you look at the photos, you can see significant damage to the actual buildings that house the radar antennas. Each of those radars looks towards the south. One of them has a radar fan (the area covered by radar) that looks out over Spain on its western edge, and extends to the Indian Ocean on its eastern edge. The second one has a radar fan that extends over the whole Indian Ocean – with its western edge looking roughly south, and its eastern edge looking over parts of Russia. [See illustration below.]
Both of those radars were seriously damaged – significant concrete walls broken out, holes in the structures, things like that. Now, the radar antennas themselves do not appear to be directly damaged, but what is important to understand is that inside each building there’s a tremendous amount of equipment behind those antennas – waveguides and so on – to feed radio signals and radio energy onto the faces of the radars. And given the strength of the explosions that caused such severe damage to the concrete and steel outer structure, you can be sure that the blast waves from those explosions were reflected into the structure where all of this critical equipment is.
It’s hard to know the extent of it, but there had to be a lot of interior damage. It’s clear that the Russians would have placed a very high priority on fixing this, but they may not have the waveguide resources, for example, to replace them at this point. They may have to remanufacture them. It’s hard to know what replacement components they have for these radars. So I have no idea if they’re operating.
Why is this situation potentially so dangerous?
The Russians don’t have a properly capable space-based early warning satellite system like the United States has, which would allow them to detect missiles being launched from anywhere on the globe. What they have instead is a land-based radar system, located at ten sites.
The danger is that the loss of these two radars at Armavir could lead to a situation where Russian political leadership in Moscow, if they believed a possible nuclear attack from the south was underway, would have almost no time to assess the situation.
They have a radar in Moscow that can see arriving warheads, but they would only begin to see the warheads above the horizon at very short times before impacts. The extreme time-pressure they would be under, if they were confronted with a decision of whether or not to launch Russian strategic nuclear forces in response to a nuclear attack on Moscow, could significantly increase the possibilities of a catastrophic nuclear accident.
So it would be better for everyone if Russia had a space-based warning system, instead of the land-based one they have now?
Yes, a space-based system would be much better. And the reason is this. Imagine you had three satellites, roughly equally spaced, in orbits that are geosynchronous, so that they’re at fixed positions over the earth. These three satellites would have overlapping views of the entire Earth. They could see the South Atlantic, the North Atlantic, Australia, the Pacific, everywhere – because they’re looking down, and they essentially intercept the whole surface of the Earth. There’s a small region in the North and South Poles where they wouldn’t get coverage, but if you put some satellites in eccentric orbits, you could cover those as well.
Now, the US has such a satellite system that looks down at the Earth, but Russia doesn’t. So for example, if we were Russia and had that system, and there was a launch from a US Trident submarine in the Atlantic or Indian Ocean, aimed at Moscow, we would see it the moment it broke water. And so we would know immediately that something bad was happening, instead of having to wait crucial minutes before the missile was detected by a land-based radar.
Just as important, if it were a real, timed attack by the US aimed at ‚winning‘ a nuclear war, it would be accompanied by massive attacks on Russian strategic nuclear forces. So we would also be able to see, probably slightly delayed in time, massive launches of US Trident missiles – from the North Atlantic, and from the Gulf of Alaska in the Pacific, let’s say – going after Russian ICBM fields, mobile missiles, command posts, and so forth.
So our global, space-based early warning system would immediately tell us whether we were looking at a single launch or a massive evolving attack. The earth-based radar system can’t possibly do that, because it takes time for these different forces to break the radar screens and be detected, because of the spherical surface of the Earth. So the space-based early warning system provides a kind of immediate global awareness of what’s going on.
So then why doesn’t Russia have this kind of space-based system?
For reasons that I still do not fully understand, but I know it’s true – we know it’s true because we have lots of ways of monitoring what they’re doing – the Russians have not been able to build a system similar to what the United States has. They do have something but it’s a very limited system that requires nine satellites in order to have 24-hour coverage of just one small area on the Earth, the northern ICBM fields of the United States. These satellites achieve this coverage by being in very eccentric orbits, inclined maybe 60 degrees relative to the earth’s axis of rotation. At one end of the orbit they’re down to maybe 400 kilometres altitude, at the other end of the orbit they’re up to 40,000 kilometres altitude. So you can think of this orbit as whipping around the Earth. And each of those nine satellites is in place for two and a half hours, where it views the ICBM fields using so-called ‚Earth limb‘ viewing, from a slanting angle, trying to see the launch of ICBMs against the black background of space.
You mean it’s looking at those ICBM fields from the side, instead of straight down?
Right. So this is a very clever scheme, but it basically indicates that they have not developed the technology to look straight down at the Earth. I met the people involved and they’re very capable – that’s not the problem. These are extraordinarily capable scientists and engineers. The problem is that the technology they have does not allow them to look straight down at the Earth – because when you look straight down, there’s a tremendous amount of sunlight being reflected off the earth and cloud tops. And you have to be able to subtract that background, and see a very small signal from an ICBM against that background. You need a lot of electronics. You need extraordinarily stable infrared sensors. Because if the sensor is not stable, the differences in the signal from one look to the next will not allow you to subtract the last background, because you’re getting artificial signals from the non-stability of the sensor.
And so my guess – and it’s a guess – is they have not been able to master the extraordinary space-qualified sensors and electronic systems needed to be able to do this subtraction. So they went instead to this very clever Earth limb viewing system, in order to see at least the American ICBM fields, but that’s only a tiny part of the globe. And so now they need nine satellites, because they have these eccentric orbits in order to do this. But in fact only four of those satellites are currently operational, so they don’t have 24-hour coverage.
Why are only four out of nine satellites in operation? What’s the problem there?
I don’t know, but my guess is the satellites are enormously expensive and there’s been a decision made, probably at the highest levels of the Russian government, that they should concentrate on developing the technology for looking straight down and spending the money on that, rather than spending the money on building satellites that anyway are going to really be inadequate. Because overwhelmingly, the big threat that the Russians are concerned about – and they should be – and I know this from multiple discussions with many very well-informed Russian military officers – the overwhelming concern are the US Trident submarines in the North Atlantic.
So even if they had all nine satellites working, it wouldn’t help with that.
Right, they can’t see the North Atlantic with that system. And the reason the North Atlantic is so important is that it’s close to Moscow. It’s easy to fly what are called depressed trajectories, trajectories that are lower and flatter, so the radars will detect things even later. And the Trident is by far the most capable strategic nuclear system we have. It’s more accurate and more capable in terms of destroying Russian land-based missile systems than, for example, the land-based Minuteman ICBMs are.
So all of this was problematic, even before Ukraine attacked these two early warning radars at Armavir. How does this attack change the picture?
So, let’s just imagine that we have a Trident submarine located 20 degrees north latitude in the Indian Ocean, which these radar fans are covering. If you look at Bombay on a map, on the west coast of India, that’s roughly at 20 degrees north latitude. And so choose a place in the Indian Ocean along that latitude and imagine there’s a launch, and the target is Moscow. Remember, these radars are not ‚over-the-horizon‘ radars like people have been constantly describing them. They have radar beams that look basically in a straight line out from the points where they’re radiating radio energy. Because of the spherical Earth surface it will take some time before a missile rises to where it gets detected.
So in our example, if the missile is launched at a given time, it will take six or seven minutes for the missile to undergo powered flight and then coast with its warheads to an altitude and range where it goes through the radar fan at Armavir and is seen. Now, the total time from launch to impact on Moscow is about 19 minutes. So if you don’t detect it for six minutes, you have maybe 13 minutes of warning.
That’s if Armavir is working.
If Armavir is working, right. Now if Armavir is not working, by the time the warheads enter the radar fan of the Moscow radar system, Russian leaders would have maybe eight or nine minutes of warning time. So the attack on Armavir would literally cut their already very limited time in which to respond to a nuclear attack.
On the other hand, if the Russians had a space-based early warning system, they would have about 19 minutes warning time before Moscow was destroyed. They would also immediately know whether or not ballistic missiles were being launched from other parts of the world in a coordinated attack.
All of these warning times are very short, but the difference between 19 minutes versus eight or nine minutes could mean the difference between Russian leaders having the time to make a reasoned assessment of the situation, versus having to rely on an automated decision that could lead to the accidental destruction of the United States and Western Europe.
Ukraine has confirmed they were behind these attacks, and a Ukrainian intelligence officer has stated that it was because the radars were monitoring Ukrainian forces in the southern part of Ukraine. Is it possible that these radars were being used for that?
No. The radar at Orsk doesn’t cover the direction of Ukraine at all, and it’s not possible for the Armavir radars to observe aircraft flying over Ukraine, or to reliably detect missiles launched from there. The altitudes are too low. The real threat to Ukrainian aircraft and missiles is from Russian airborne radar systems that are integrated with Russian ground-based missile systems.
We’re hearing different reports about whether or not the US was directly involved in these strikes. Some say this was purely a Ukrainian initiative and the Americans were surprised by it. Others say the Americans had to be involved, because Western satellite and radar equipment would have been used in guiding the drones. What do you think? And if they were involved, what would be the motivation?
Well, let me be very clear. I have no idea who was responsible. But I can speculate. First of all, I think the Ukrainian political leadership is basically desperate. I mean, these guys know that they have lost the war. They’ve lost more than half a million of their soldiers to casualties and death, and they’re losing huge numbers every day with the current Russian activities.
The Russians are unambiguously in a military posture aimed at destroying as much of the Ukrainian armed forces as they possibly can. So that when they bring the big hammer down – because they still have hundreds of thousands of forces that are not yet engaged – they’ll be able to take a lot of land easily and quickly and also keep their casualties low. The Ukrainian leadership, by contrast, has followed clear and unambiguous policies of sacrificing their own people recklessly, and I want to say recklessly, in order to make it look like they still have a capability to fight the Russians. So, for example, they have put all kinds of fresh forces up against the Russians in counterattacks that have failed catastrophically and resulted in the annihilation of those forces.
So first of all, the Ukrainian leadership has shown a reckless disregard for the lives of their own people. And that tells me something. And then what they have tried to do is to provoke the Russians, in the hope that the Russians will do something stupid and escalatory, which they hope in one way or another will galvanize the West and cause the West to double down in its support for Ukraine. So I have no doubt that the Ukrainians were executing an escalatory attack on the radars by attacking them. Now, did they understand the tremendous danger to the whole world that they were creating? They may have, they may not have. If you listen to Zelensky talk over the last few years, it’s like the Ukraine war is so important that the destruction of the entire world is worth it.
So if the Ukrainians decided to do this on their own, what you’re saying is that it was an escalatory move, in the hope of provoking Russia to do something big that would pull the West more directly into the war.
Yeah, that’s what I think is the most likely explanation. Now, a second possibility, which doesn’t exclude the first, is that Mr Blinken and his team knew about the attacks in advance, but they didn’t understand how dangerous this action could be. I actually doubt they have any knowledge of these early warning issues that I’ve laid out to you, because these guys have shown no real knowledge of anything. I mean, knowing about the early warning capabilities of Russia would require that they actually ask the intelligence community to tell them.
Now, I’ve been to the White House to talk to people about these things at different times in my career. Typically, none of these people think an issue like this is important enough to spend a few hours being briefed on it. It’s incredible to me that you could be in the White House and not have knowledge of this. I won’t get into those stories, but I could. Now I know that the intelligence community understands these things, but let me tell you how the briefings go on, because I know this from personal discussions I’ve had with people who have been privy to this intelligence.
If there’s an attack on a Russian radar, somebody at the upper levels of the intelligence community has to be able to say: We need to make sure they’re fully briefed on the limitations of the Russian early warning system. And then you go down deep into the bowels of the CIA and you find some poor bastard who’s been frustrated trying to warn people about the dangers, and you give this person an opportunity to make up some slides – because that person himself will never be allowed to brief at the upper level. And then another person who has no depth of understanding will show the slides – and they may or may not understand what they’re saying, or even which slides are most important. So the people at the top don’t necessarily know anything.
You would think they’d have those knowledgeable people at hand when they really need them.
They don’t.
Could these attacks on the radars have panicked Russian leaders to some extent? Do you have some sense of what the Russians are thinking right now?
Well, I think the Russians have a very sober, well-thought-out analysis of their own situation. I’ve talked to many Russian officers, and first of all, they do not think that the United States is sitting there like a dog on a leash ready to try to attack them. They look at the United States as an adversary who is tremendously capable, extraordinarily aggressive, and has leadership that is very poorly informed – which worries them, and should worry them. It worries me. But they don’t see the US as suicidal or irrational. So their approach is to do what Putin is doing. Putin is speaking for Russia, and he has taken his leadership role seriously. And he has made it clear, repeatedly, that a nuclear war between the United States and Russia would result in the destruction of all of our civilization.
Does anyone today, in the US or in Russia, believe that a nuclear war can be ‚won‘?
People talk about it, and there are a lot of people who think you can do that. Fight and win. I can tell you – I’ve been involved in looking at the war plans – that in the United States, we use our weapons in the hope that we can win a nuclear war with Russia. Now, what does that mean? Well, the definition of winning is that after the exchange of nuclear weapons, we would be left with a larger, more capable remaining nuclear force than Russia would be. That’s the definition of winning.
Now of course, that definition does not include the fact that the United States would no longer exist as a nation, nor would Russia. You might have some remnants of these forces still surviving and able to launch more nuclear weapons at each other, but neither country would exist. Neither would Western Europe, of course, because Western Europe is definitely high on Russia’s target list. So the world as we understand it, civilization, would definitely be gone. China would be hit, Japan, and so on. Because there are all these ancillary targets that both sides would be hitting.
So when the United States military talks about winning a nuclear war, they mean that we may be destroyed as a country, but we’ll still have some weapons left. Will there be some survivors in this scenario?
When I was in the Pentagon, I would go to these very tightly controlled briefings where they’d brief the effects of the nuclear weapons. And because I was a senior civilian, I could say what I want, they couldn’t do anything to me. And I was working for the chief. So I took the opportunity to be independent. And I remember asking, at one of these long, detailed briefings – total nonsense, incidentally, three decimal place numbers about what we would destroy, three decimal places about what the Russians would destroy – we don’t even know where the decimal place would be. It was just a ritual. And of course I was one of the people sitting in the audience who actually knew something. So at one point I couldn’t resist, I just asked a question from the audience while the briefer was up there. I said: How many people do we kill? And the guy was completely taken off guard. He says: Well, we don’t calculate that. I said: What do you mean you don’t calculate how many people we kill? We’re going to kill hundreds of millions of people! And he says: Well, sir, we don’t calculate that.
So that’s the kind of silly planning that goes on. But I wouldn’t go so far as to say the military leadership as such believes that we can fight and win a nuclear war. It depends on who you’re talking to. Because certainly, the military officers I knew – including the then-Chief of Naval Operations – absolutely understood that the United States would no longer exist. And this bothered him to no end. And the current Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Brown, seems to be very intelligent and level headed, and he knows his business. But the planning was for winning in those terms. And since that time, the United States has taken massive technical measures to improve our capability to destroy Russian strategic forces. So it’s not as if we said in 1980: We can do a tremendous amount of damage, there’s no point in trying to do more, because this is not a winnable thing. What we did instead is that we earnestly strived to improve our forces.
How do the Russians understand this situation?
The Russians are very knowledgeable and sober about these things, and they have reached their own conclusions based on their own independent assessment. I’ve heard them say this: We know that the Russian ICBMs could be essentially destroyed, to maybe a few fractions of a percent remaining, by American forces. The American forces are that capable. Now, if they’re saying that to me, you can imagine how this enters their planning, because as we discussed, they know they have very limited warning time. A very large part of their strike forces – not all, but a very large part of them – are these silo-based forces. And they understand that those forces would not exist if they let an American attack go to completion against those forces.
So you have to ask yourself: What kind of contingency plans have they made, in order to make it a viable option to launch those forces before American warheads arrive? Have they made automated plans to launch those forces? I don’t know for sure, but my guess is that there is what we call a pre-delegated authority of some kind: that under certain conditions, which I’m sure are very stringent because the Russians are not stupid – they’re not crazy, they’re not all drunk on vodka like people portray them, they’re very capable military people – under certain conditions, my guess is they have carefully and deeply thought-through contingencies in which those forces could be launched automatically.
Is there some chance that the American forces could actually destroy all of Russia’s ICBMs before they’re launched?
Well, again I want to re-emphasize: there is a logic of fighting and winning a nuclear war, which ignores the truth that it’s not possible. I want to be clear about that. But in this logic of fighting and winning a nuclear war, what you want to do is deny your adversary as much decision-making time as possible. And the reason for that, is that it takes time for your weapons to reach the areas you want to destroy. And you want to compress the time that your adversary knows they’re under attack to such a small interval of time, that they’re unable to launch their forces before your attack arrives and succeeds. So the impetus is to try to do everything you can to destroy and disrupt their warning capabilities while you’re attacking their strategic systems. So you would certainly attack their national capital, on as short a timeline as you can possibly muster. And you would blind their radars, which you could do with what are called high-altitude nuclear explosions. And you would attack critical communication nodes as quickly as you possibly can, all in the hope that you would cause enough delay in getting launch messages to vulnerable ICBMs that the ICBMs would not fly out of their silos before your weapons reached them.
So that’s the doctrine. That’s the strategy. Now, it’s totally insane, or at least incompetent. It’s incompetent because it treats nuclear weapons as if they’re conventional weapons. And it ignores the fact that these weapons would destroy your whole society, and you would be destroyed, even if you succeeded in destroying almost all of the adversary’s nuclear weapons. It ignores that fact of life.
So then how did this come to be the US strategy for fighting a nuclear war, if it ignores these facts?
Well, if I were fighting a conventional war using conventional weapons, that’s exactly the strategy I would use. I try to interrupt your communications. I try to make you think that something else is happening somewhere else, while I hit you in an area where I believe you’re weaker. This is exactly the way you fight a conventional war. And what some people have done – what a lot of people have done – is they’ve taken these sound military concepts, and they’ve transferred them to a nuclear environment where the ideas are completely ridiculous. Because the power and destructiveness of the nuclear weapons is so great, that there’s no way not to be destroyed in the process, even though you may have succeeded in destroying most of the enemy’s forces.
So this gets back to the old concept of ‚deterrence‘ – that what prevents either side from launching a first strike is the knowledge that the other side will strike back and both countries will be destroyed. But if US leaders believed they could get away with this kind of attack – that they could actually destroy all the Russian ICBMs before they’re launched – wouldn’t this make it more likely that in certain circumstances, they might be willing to try it?
Yes.
So one would have to suppose that the Russians would not only want this deterrent capability – this contingency plan to launch automatically if under attack – but they would also want the Americans to be very much aware of it, correct?
Absolutely, absolutely. Now, if you now try to put yourself in the position of Russia’s military staff, and in the position of a Russian national leader like Mr Putin, with his extremely deep thinking strategic mind, he’s looking at these Americans and he’s saying to himself: These guys are a bunch of yahoos. They don’t seem to have any idea what they’re doing. They don’t seem to understand the consequences of all these crazy decisions they’re making, which for one thing has put me in a position where I had to literally invade Ukraine, when I never wanted to do it. And now he’s looking at these people and he’s saying: What do they know? What do they understand? What do they believe? Could they be foolish enough to actually take an action of this type?
As I said, he’s always made it clear that a nuclear war would result in the destruction of civilization, everything. He then goes on to say that the Americans should have no belief at all, however, that Russia won’t respond. And he’s even gone further and said: I know we will be dead – I think he actually said ‚martyrs‘ at one point – I know we would die too, but I want the Americans to understand that there is no condition under which we would not respond, even though we know it would result in the total destruction of human civilization. Now, that’s not a statement of a madman. That’s a statement of a man who’s afraid – not afraid of us, but afraid of our ignorance. That’s the way I see Putin. He sits there saying to himself: These guys are so reckless and ignorant, who knows what they might do?
Is it possible that American military planners might think they have enough missile defence capability to intercept all of the ICBMs that Russia could launch at them?
I think that’s why Putin approved the Russians building this underwater robot drone called Poseidon, which can carry a 100 megaton nuclear warhead and travel under the ocean, like a torpedo. The largest nuclear warhead ever built. Now, why would you do that? You already have strike forces that will end the world. Well, I know why he would do that. I understand his thinking. And frankly, I think I agree with his thinking – unfortunately. What he’s saying is: I’m dealing with these knuckleheads, and I don’t know when they might actually think that these missile defences they have might be useful. And they might attack us with some bizarre misunderstanding that their missile defences would stop all our missiles. So I want to give them a weapon they can contemplate – that even the biggest knucklehead would understand that no missile defence can stop. Hence Poseidon.
And I think that it’s a very well thought out, reasoned way of demonstrating to the American political leadership that you could never escape destruction under any condition you can imagine – even if you could actually build missile defences that had capability. And of course, you haven’t. But he just wants people to know that this is a no-win prospect. Attack Russia with nuclear weapons, everyone will die. And he wants that understood – viscerally.
So then both countries have defences against missile attacks, but neither side has a defence system that’s capable of stopping all of the other side’s nuclear arsenal once it’s launched. Not to mention the Poseidon.
Right. In fact, if I had to guess what all the US missile defence systems operating in an attack environment could actually intercept – and this is a guess made from years of studying these systems, so it’s a highly educated guess – my guess is zero. Nothing. It would not intercept a single Russian warhead.
Really? Zero?
I don’t think they would intercept a single Russian warhead in real combat conditions.
But in a way, it’s almost a moot point, because even if some of them got through, that would be enough, right?
Right.
You said it’s possible that some people in the US might really think they could fight a nuclear war and win it. How about on the Russian side? Are there people in Russia who are under the same illusion, who think they can see vulnerabilities on the US side that could be exploited and would risk a nuclear war? Or are they more sober about this whole thing?
Well, I can only tell you what I know from my fairly extensive dealings with Russian military officers, and some of their political leaders. And the ones I know are all completely sober. Absolutely. And they are the ones in power now. But you certainly hear about people lobbying Putin. Maybe it’s Russian propaganda – which, of course, we know they’re more than capable of doing. But I think it’s very possible – in fact, I believe it’s certain – that there are people in Russia who think differently, just like there are in the US.
I mean, I worked with our military in the United States, I worked inside the Pentagon, and I have a lot of contacts even now. And although the military officers I dealt with were very sober, I did meet people who were not. I met people in the intelligence community who were not sober. Now, fortunately they’re lower level people, but people at the upper levels are influenced by them just as they’re influenced by other sources of information. So on the Russian side, I have very little doubt that Putin is being told by some people: Stop fooling around with the Americans, just go at them. But of course he knows better, because he knows it will result in the end of Russia. Which is his main concern.
Is it conceivable that Russia would use a nuclear weapon on the battlefield in Ukraine, as some people are speculating?
I wrote a short paper a little while back that describes an imaginary one kiloton attack with Russian tactical nuclear weapons on a concentration of Ukrainian forces attempting an offensive breakthrough. When I wrote it, it was not clear to me what was really happening in the war. I was not yet fully up to speed. I had not yet developed a very comprehensive understanding that the news in the West was completely biased. So I was worried that the Russians were losing and that in order to deal with the losing, they would use nuclear, because that’s about the only realistic scenario.
All these scenarios that they’re going to detonate something in space, that’s all nonsense. The most sensible scenario is they make a very limited nuclear attack on a concentration of offensive conventional forces, and then hope that both sides just pull up and stop.
But now that you see the actual military situation – Russia’s not losing – you don’t think that’s likely?
I’m much less worried – there’s no reason for them to do it.
So getting back to the radars at Armavir – if they’re still not operating, are we in a dangerous position now? Is there a realistic possibility of a false alarm leading to a massive Russian strike on the West?
If the Russians saw something coming from the south – at their Moscow-based radar site, so on a very short timeline – I do not believe they would be likely to massively launch their strategic forces. What they would almost certainly do is turn their system into a mode of automated launch. And the automated launch would occur as soon as a nuclear weapon detonated on Russian soil. That’s my guess – that if nuclear weapons started detonating anywhere on Russian soil, that launch would occur. And there would be automated signals going out to the submarines at sea to launch their forces. And the world would end in a matter of a few hours. But no, not on the basis of one false alarm coming from a blind spot. I don’t think so. They would have to confirm it was a massive attack. In my view, the Russians are much more cautious than we are.
What would you like to see happen that could make this whole situation less dangerous?
Well, I think it would be great if the Russians are able to start launching working satellites that look down at the Earth. They apparently have a project, which continues to be delayed. It’s for an early warning satellite that they’re going to be launching into geosynchronous orbit. What I don’t know is if that satellite will be ‚Earth limb‘ viewing, or if it will look straight down. We will know once they start launching them. If they’re Earth limb viewing, we know exactly where they’re going to launch those satellites. If they’re not Earth limb viewing, they can position them anywhere they want, and we’ll see that. And that will mean that they’re looking down. And that will be a sigh of relief for me. And if there are any people in the American establishment who know what they’re doing, they will also breathe a sigh of relief.