The RSM-56 Bulava, and Russia’s Strategic Deterrent

The Putin-Medevedev years have been notable for attempts to refresh Russia’s strategic nuclear arsenal. These efforts are mostly embodied by two missiles – the RSM-56 “Bulava” submarine-launched ballistic missile and the Topol-M/RS-24 – a roadgoing, truck-launched heavy ICBM in the classic Russian fashion.

The Topol-M is already in service, and is considered a very reliable and combat-worthy design. The Bulava SLBM has not been so lucky. It is still in the testing phase, and has had only one “fully successful test” out of twelve launches. The most recent failure (on Wednesday December 9th) made for some spectacular light shows over Norway, and has been highly publicized. The missile’s chief designer quit last June in shame.

Given the Bulava’s string of failed tests and the designer’s resignation, it might be tempting to pin this on R&D. However, I feel that would be a mistake, and I think that the most likely culprit for most of Bulava’s problems lies on the manufacturing end. It’s the classic problem of getting lots of high-tech, low-tolerance, and fragile parts to work well together —something that the Russians have almost never been very good at. For a further example, look at this post from Pavel Podvig comparing the Bulava with the Soviet R-39. The R-39 program burned through thirty-seven missiles before all the bugs were worked out and the design was brought into service. This track record actually makes the Bulava ‘failure’ look good. And in both cases, the design is fine. The manufacturing is not. The most important difference between the two is that the Bulava designers do not have the funding or the political pull to continue destroying $10 million missiles in fruitless troubleshooting attempts.

–Evan Johnson