The Soviets’ counter gambit

Press, 9 December 1983, Page 18

The Soviets’ counter gambit

DAVID FAIRHALL,

of the “Guardian,” on the weapons behind the walk-out from the Geneva talks

Quite apart from the by now familiar SS2O missile, the Russians have a formidable array of new nuclear hardware in development which, if they choose, could be used to ram home the military meaning of their symbolic walkout from the Geneva talks.

It ranges from a series of battlefield missiles, some of which will certainly be deployed in Eastern Europe, to a family of modern cruise missiles which, in its submarine launched form, could soon be lurking off the eastern seaboard of the United States.

The fundamental point about all these hew weapons is that their development will typically have stretched back over 10 years and must, therefore, pre-date the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s 1979 decision to deploy United States cruise and Pershing II missiles in Western Europe. Prominent among those factors will be the Russians’ desire to modernise their equipment, so as to take advantage of more reliable rocket fuels, more accurate guidance, increased battlefield mobil-

ity, and so on. But in the case of the new cruise missile family, whose submarines, ground and air launched variants closely mirror the United States cruise missile programme, there is also the characteristic Soviet determination not to be left behind by the Americans. Whatever the Soviet military does now, it can conveniently be presented to Western public opinion as a retaliation for N.A.T.O.’s supposed intransigence in refusing to cancel or delay deployment of its own weaponry — the price Britain must pay for accepting the cruise missiles at Greenham Common. This tactic was confirmed last month when the Soviet Defence Ministry announced that the imminent N.A.T.O. deployments had “compelled the Soviet Union to adopt additional measures to ensure its own security.” The measures included “preparatory work on the territory of the German Democratic Republic and Czechoslovakia for the deployment of missile complexes of operational-tactical designation.”

This cryptic announcement was taken at the time to refer to deployment of SS2I, SS23 and possibly SS22 missiles in the Warsaw Pact’s front-line countries.

In fact N.A.T.O. intelligence has already spotted the SS2I in East Germany (three or four dozen of them, according to American sources, with continuing deployment at a rate of four a month) and was watching to see whether the other two new missiles would follow; and if so, how the Russians would protect the nuclear warheads.

In any case these three weapons had long since been identified by N.A.T.O. as replacements for the obsolescent Frog, Scaleboard, and Scud battlefield missiles which regularly appear in Moscow anniversary parades. In other words we seem to be watching a process of modernisation rather than outright escalation, but one which can now be adapted to the tactics of East-West diplomacy in a number of relatively minor ways. Deployment schedules can be

brought forward, harder bargains struck with the Warsaw Pact host countries (East Germany and Czechoslovakia have officially welcomed the Russian moves, but Romania has protested), and the older missiles perhaps left in place longer than they might have been to serve as bargaining counters.

The Russian cruise missile is a different matter, because it is not a direct replacement for any existing weapon. It looks like a response, not to the actual deployment of the United States Tomahawk at Greenham Common, but to that weapon’s earlier development, first as a fascinating piece of military hardware the Pentagon could not resist buying, then as a bargaining counter for Henry Kissinger in the SALT negotiations, and finally as a handy intermediate-range weapon with which to “recouple” Western Europe to United States strategic nuclear deterrence. The new Russian SSCX cruise missile, like its American counterpart, comes in three main forms — a naval land attack version fired from a standard submarine torpedo tube, a ground launched version closely equivalent to the Greenham missiles, and an air launched stand-off missile presumably intended for the new Soviet Blackjack bomber (itself an equivalent to the USAF’s B-l). The SSCX was first definitely detected by United States intelligence in 1981 and is expected to be ready for operational deployment next year, probably aboard converted Russian Yankee class nuclear powered submarines, possibly off the Cuban coast. So much yor bargaining counters.

MOSCOW’S NEW NUCLEAR HARDWARE Weapon Type Range (km) Warhead New missile SS-21 tactical ballistic 120 nuclear or conventional replacing Frog tactical ballistic 70 200 kt nuclear New missile SS-22 tactical ballistic 900 500 kt nuclear replacing Scaleboard tactical ballistic 500-900 200 kt nuclear New missile SS-23 tactical ballistic 500 nuclear or conventional replacing Scud tactical ballistic 300 kt range nuclear New missile SS-20 intermediate range ballistic 5000 3X 150 kt nuclear replacing SS-4/5 ballistic 2000-4000 1 mt nuclear missile 4 cruise 1 1500 200 kt nuclear