Washington's strategic miscalculations led to a radical change in the military balance of power. Today in Europe Russia is much stronger than NATO. From now on, Russian military dominance on the continent is an undeniable and permanent factor.

A triumph of Russian technology

On September 1, 2014, the US State Department published a report stating that Russia, for the first time since the collapse of the USSR, had achieved parity with Washington in the field of strategic nuclear weapons. Thus, Washington recognized that Moscow had regained the status that the Soviet Union achieved by the mid-70s of the twentieth century at the cost of incredible efforts and which (it seemed irretrievably) was lost by us after the collapse of the Union. As follows from the State Department report, Russia currently has 528 carriers of strategic nuclear weapons, on which 1,643 warheads are deployed, and the United States has 794 carriers and 1,652 nuclear warheads.

It turns out that Russia’s strategic nuclear forces today are even more high-tech than those of the United States, since they ensure final parity in warheads with a significantly smaller number of strategic nuclear weapons carriers. And in light of the well-known statements of representatives of the Russian leadership that by 2020, Russia’s strategic nuclear forces will be completely, one hundred percent, rearmed with new generation missiles, this gap between Moscow and Washington will only increase.

Such a breakthrough was made possible thanks to the Treaty on the Limitation of Nuclear Arms, also known as START-3, signed by Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama on April 8, 2010 in Prague (entered into force on February 5, 2011), which provides for the reduction of nuclear warheads of the parties by 2021 up to 1550 units, and carriers (intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and heavy bombers) - up to 700 units.

This was the first agreement in the strategic field, after the treacherous policies of the “perestroika” and “democrats”, in which Russia managed to achieve significant advantages for itself. In it, for the first time, the Americans pledged to reduce their strategic potential, while Russia received the opportunity to increase it. In addition, within its framework, the most important restrictions that existed in the previous START 1 and 2 treaties were removed from Russia: on the size of the deployment areas of mobile ICBMs, on the number of multi-charge ICBMs, on the possibility of creating railway ICBMs. Russia made no concessions.

Having written off Moscow as a serious geopolitical competitor and believed in the myth of its unattainable military and technological superiority, Washington has driven itself into a trap, the way out of which - at least in the short and medium term - is not even visible. And this is not just about strategic nuclear forces.

Lately there has been a lot of talk about the so-called. “sixth generation wars” and high-precision long-range weapons, which are designed to ensure victory over the enemy without coming into direct contact with his armed forces. But besides the fact that this concept itself is very dubious (neither in Iraq nor in Afghanistan the United States were able to maintain the victory achieved in this way), Russia is reaching the parity line here too. Proof of this is the new generation of long-range cruise missiles, which will soon be deployed on submarines of the Black Sea Fleet and missile ships of the Caspian Flotilla. Let me remind you that this was discussed in my previous article “Uncle Vova’s Surprises.”

In Russia today, many people find this hard to believe. Such mistrust is especially widespread in the circles of the so-called. “patriotic public” due to the fact that our public opinion is firmly and selflessly in captivity of numerous myths about the total “weakness” of Russia and the total Western “superiority”. These myths developed back in the “dashing nineties” under the influence of Yeltsin’s betrayal of our national interests and the bestial Russophobia of the then dominant liberal-democratic “masters” of Russia. It must be admitted that in those days they were quite consistent with the sad reality.

But times have changed. And this can be easily understood if you do not try to replace sober analysis with slogans and chants, and facts with fiction and fantasies.

Russian tanks in Europe

Consider, for example, the conventional weapons capabilities of Russia and the West in the European theater of operations. In this area, as is considered in a “decent patriotic society,” NATO is almost an order of magnitude superior to “weak” Russia. But the very first collision with reality does not leave such a delusion unturned.

As you know, the main striking force and the core of the combat power of the ground forces are tanks. By the time of the collapse of the USSR, our Armed Forces had about 20,000 tanks in the European theater of operations. The Americans, in turn, deployed a group of 6,000 heavy Abrams tanks on Allied territory. But despite this, the total potential of NATO in Europe was still significantly inferior to the Soviet one. And NATO strategists were forced to compensate for this imbalance with the help of tactical nuclear weapons.

Back in the first half of the 1950s, NATO conducted a study on what forces the bloc needed to reliably repel a large-scale ground offensive by the superior forces of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact countries. Then calculations showed that to solve this problem it is necessary to have at least 96 full-blooded divisions. Meanwhile, the cost of just the armament of one such division exceeded a billion US dollars (and this is not in current dollars, but in prices of that time!) Plus, approximately two to three times more funds were required to maintain such a huge group of troops and create an appropriate infrastructure. Such a burden was clearly beyond the capabilities of the Western economy.

A solution was found to deploy a group of American tactical nuclear weapons on the continent, which was soon done. By the beginning of the 1970s, the American arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons, according to experts, already numbered about 7 thousand ammunition for various purposes, and the creation of selective weapons - neutron charges (for guns of 203 mm and 155 mm caliber, as well as Lance missiles) with a power of 1 to 10 kilotons, which were considered as the main means of combating ground forces personnel, especially the crews of Soviet tanks.

Taking into account the nuclear factor, to repel “Soviet aggression” NATO needed to deploy not 96, but only 30 divisions, and they were deployed.

How are things going in this area now? Here’s how: at the beginning of 2013, the last batch of heavy Abrams was withdrawn by the Americans from European territory. In NATO countries, over the past 20 years, for every new tank entering service, 10-15 “old”, but in fact quite combat-ready, vehicles were scrapped. At the same time, Russia almost did not reduce its tanks.

As a result, today our country is the absolute leader here: in mid-2014, the Ministry of Defense had as many as 18,177 tanks on its balance sheet (T-90 - 400 units, T-72B - 7144 units, T-80 - 4744 units, T -64 - 4000 units, T-62 - 689 units and T-55 - 1200 units). Of course, only a few thousand vehicles are deployed in permanent readiness units, and most of them are located at storage bases, but the NATO members have exactly the same picture. So the decisive superiority of Russian tanks has not gone away since the times of the USSR, no matter how strange it may be for “patriotic” mourners and all-killers to hear this!

Okay, the corrosive reader will say. But some of these tanks must be kept on Far East, because China has its own 8,000 armored vehicles. In addition, NATO, as before, can compensate for this imbalance with tactical nuclear weapons. It’s even more reliable and cheaper...

And here another surprise awaits us.

In the field of tactical nuclear weapons, the superiority of modern Russia over NATO is completely crushing!

Washington's fatal miscalculation

And the Americans know this very well. It’s just that they previously believed that Russia would never rise again, that the possibility great war in Europe has been reduced to zero and Russian tactical nuclear weapons, together with Russian tanks, will themselves crumble over time from old age and uselessness. And now... Now we woke up, but it’s too late - the train has left!

Here it must be said that these nuclear weapons can be called “tactical” very conditionally. Sometimes it significantly exceeds the power of warheads installed on strategic ICBMs. Let me point out, as an example, that the safe firing range of Russian torpedoes is 65-76K in nuclear option is eleven and a half kilometers, otherwise you can get hit by the blast wave of your own torpedo. And this despite the fact that the range of these torpedoes does not exceed 50 km. And, for example, the tactical air bombs of the USA (B-61, 170 Kt.) and Russia (up to 350 Kt.) significantly exceed in their power the warheads of the strategic American ICBM Minuteman-2 (170 Kt.) and the Poseidon SLBM (40 Kt. ). Here it would be useful to remember that only two 15 kt atomic bombs (tactical, according to the current classification), dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, three weeks later brought Japan out of the war...

So, NATO countries today have only 260 tactical nuclear weapons in the European theater of operations. The United States has 200 aerial bombs with a total yield of 18 megatons. They are located at six air bases in Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Turkey. France has another 60 atomic bombs. All! And Russia today, according to the most conservative estimates, has, no more, no less, five thousand units of tactical nuclear weapons of various classes - from warheads for Iskander to torpedo, aviation and artillery nuclear warheads! True, the United States has another 300 B-61 tactical air bombs on its own territory, but with such an imbalance, this, you understand, does not change matters. But the United States is unable to change this imbalance: everything else “legacy of the Cold War” - tactical nuclear shells, ground-based missiles, and nuclear warheads of Tomahawk sea-based cruise missiles - they destroyed.

In order to understand how it happened that Russia, which “lost” the Cold War, is today an order of magnitude superior to NATO in this most important area, we should turn to the history of the issue.

It is believed that by early 1991 the USSR had approximately 20-22,000 tactical nuclear weapons. These are nuclear charges of aerial bombs, warheads of tactical missiles “Luna”, “Tochka”, “Oka”, nuclear warheads of anti-submarine and anti-ship weapons of the fleet, special warheads of air defense and missile defense missiles, nuclear mines and nuclear shells of ground forces artillery.

This impressive arsenal was the result of forty years of intense arms race. Started, by the way, not by the “totalitarian” USSR, but by the quite democratic and liberal USA, which already in the early 1950s began developing and testing various types TNW. The first example of a warhead of this class was a projectile for a 280-mm cannon with a power of 15 Kt, tested in May 1953. As nuclear warheads were miniaturized, shells for self-propelled howitzers of 203 mm and 155 mm caliber were subsequently adopted, which had a yield of 1 to 10 Kt and until recently were in the arsenal of American troops in Europe.

Subsequently, tactical missiles with nuclear warheads entered service: “Redstone” (range 370 kilometers), “Corporal” (125 kilometers), “Sergeant” (140 kilometers), “Lance” (130 kilometers) and a number of others. In the mid-1960s, the development of the Pershing-1 operational-tactical missile (740 kilometers) was completed.

In turn, the Soviet military-political leadership decided that the saturation of American troops in Europe with tactical nuclear weapons would create a fundamentally new balance of power on the continent. Decisive measures were taken to create and deploy numerous types of Soviet tactical nuclear weapons. Already in the early 1960s, the troops began to receive tactical missiles T-5, T-7, and Luna. Later, the non-strategic nuclear arsenal included medium-range missiles RSD-10, R-12, R-14, medium-range bombers Tu-22, Tu-16, operational-tactical missiles OTR-22, OTR-23, tactical missiles R-17 , “Tochka”, nuclear artillery of 152 mm, 203 mm and 240 mm caliber, tactical aircraft Su-17, Su-24, MiG-21, MiG-23, sea-based assets.

By the way, the Soviet leadership repeatedly proposed that Western leaders begin negotiations on the reduction of tactical nuclear weapons. But NATO for a long time stubbornly rejected all Soviet proposals on this topic. The situation changed radically only when the Union reeled under the blows of Gorbachev’s “perestroika”. Then Washington decided that it was necessary to take advantage of the moment to weaken and disarm its main geopolitical enemy as much as possible.

In September 1991, US President George W. Bush put forward an initiative to reduce and even eliminate certain types of tactical nuclear weapons. Gorbachev, in turn, also announced plans for a radical reduction of similar weapons in the USSR. Subsequently, these plans were developed in the statement of Russian President Boris Yeltsin “On Russia’s policy in the field of arms limitation and reduction” dated January 29, 1992. It stated that Russia would cease production of nuclear artillery shells and ground-launched missile warheads, and all stocks of such warheads would be destroyed. Russia will remove all tactical nuclear weapons from surface ships and multipurpose submarines and eliminate one third. Half of the warheads for anti-aircraft missiles and aircraft ammunition will also be eliminated.

After these reductions, Russia and the United States should have had 2,500-3,000 tactical nuclear warheads left in their tactical nuclear weapons arsenals.

But it turned out differently. The illusion of world hegemony has played a cruel joke on Washington.

“Democratic” Russia - after the terrible pogrom that their liberal agents staged here - was written off by American strategists. At the same time, after their high-precision weapons successfully completed some combat missions previously planned for tactical nuclear weapons during the Gulf War, Washington relied on a technological breakthrough. But this led to the fact that “smart” weapons became more and more expensive, less and less of them were produced, and ultimately NATO’s “high-precision ammunition” turned out to be completely insufficient for conducting large-scale combat operations with an enemy at least approximately equal to the West in terms of to its technological level.

It’s too late to drink Borjomi when the buds have fallen off

Meanwhile, in Russia, experts quickly agreed that in the geostrategic situation that emerged after the collapse of the USSR, a massive reduction and destruction of tactical nuclear weapons is unacceptable. After all, it is tactical nuclear weapons, which have fairly high indicators according to the “effectiveness-cost” criterion, that can serve as a kind of universal equalizer of forces, depriving NATO of their military advantage. In the current conditions, Russia simply borrowed from NATO the thesis that the alliance had recently used about the need to compensate for enemy superiority in conventional weapons by deploying a tactical nuclear arsenal on the European theater of operations.

This is how the situation developed over the course of two decades. The West, having written off Russia, cut up its tanks and destroyed tactical nuclear weapons. Russia, feeling its weakness, kept both tanks and tactical nuclear warheads as “an armored train on a siding.” This is what has led to the fact that now, after Russia has overcome the inertia of collapse and has begun a systematic revival of its power, and the West, lulled by sweet dreams of the liberal “end of history,” has castrated its armed forces to the point where they are capable of leading Only colonial wars with a weak, technically backward enemy - the balance of forces in Europe radically changed in our favor.

Realizing this, the Americans realized it, but it was too late. In December 2010, Assistant Secretary of State for Verification, Compliance and Implementation Rose Gottemoeller sounded the alarm: “The Russians have more tactical nuclear systems than we do, and Congress strongly recommends addressing these issues... The next step must be a reduction in tactical nuclear weapons.” In the same year, Europeans showed even greater activity in the person of the heads of the foreign affairs departments of Poland and Sweden, who brazenly demanded from Russia the unilateral creation of two nuclear-free zones - the Kaliningrad region and the Kola Peninsula - territories of priority deployment of Russian tactical nuclear weapons, including the main basing areas of the Baltic and Northern fleets (in the case of the Northern Fleet, this is also the base area for a significant part of the Russian strategic nuclear forces).

Since then, the Americans have repeatedly offered our country a flawed way to solve the “TNW problem,” stubbornly insisting on developing an agreement “to eliminate inequality in the stockpiles of tactical nuclear weapons.” They even tried to condition the entry into force of the SALT-3 treaty on the beginning of negotiations on tactical nuclear weapons. Thus, in accordance with the amendment of Senator Sene Lemieux (amendment 4/S.AMDN.4908), the final entry into force of SALT-3 should take place only after the Russian side agrees to negotiations on the issue of the so-called “elimination of the imbalance” in the tactical nuclear weapons of Russia and the United States .

And now on February 3, 2011, Barack Obama, in a letter sent to a number of key senators, announced the “start in the near future of negotiations with Russia to eliminate the disparity between the tactical nuclear weapons of the Russian Federation and the United States and to reduce the number of tactical nuclear warheads in a verifiable manner.” But alas! In 2012, Putin returned to the Kremlin and the West’s hopes of “divorcing” Russia by persuading it to unilateral disarmament failed.

The cost of this failure became more or less clear during the Ukrainian crisis. And this price is this: the West has finally lost its former military superiority over Russia, and in the European theater of military operations it has turned out to be many times weaker than Moscow. And neither Washington, nor London, nor Berlin, nor Paris have any way to correct this disparity.

From now on, Russian military superiority in Europe is an undeniable and permanent factor. Glory to Thee, Lord!

US President Barack Obama, speaking at the 69th session of the UN General Assembly, called Russia's actions the main threat to the world, more terrible than international terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism. His attacks on the Russian Federation were frankly hysterical and inadequate. What made the president of the most powerful country in the world so worried?

One of these reasons could be the information that the new Russian sea-launched cruise missiles, the deployment of which Putin announced at a recent meeting in Novorossiysk, are “nullifying” American power and negating Washington’s military superiority in the vast geopolitical region from Warsaw to Kabul. from Rome to Baghdad.

However, first things first.

On September 10, Russian news agencies reported “urbi et orbi” that President Putin personally headed the Military-Industrial Commission, which until then was under the jurisdiction of the government, and ordered the preparation of a new version of the Russian Military Doctrine by December 2014.

He proposed discussing in detail what weapons systems need to be developed in order to successfully repel new threats. At the same time, Putin named high-precision weapons as one of the main directions for the future development of the defense industry. He emphasized that in the coming years it is necessary to ensure breakthrough development of all components of such weapons. In addition, the head of state stated that it is necessary to “create unified models of weapons and equipment, means general purpose“and especially noted that the Russian Navy needs to develop new ship designs - “universal in armament, control and communication systems.”

The head of state justified this by the fact that Russia is forced to respond to new threats to its own security. “The creation of a missile defense system is in full swing. There are no successes on the negotiation track here. Moreover, corresponding systems are being created in Europe and Alaska, that is, close to our borders,” he said. In addition, the president added, the so-called theory of a global disarming strike is being developed.

“There are other things that worry us very much,” Putin noted and cryptically hinted at some unpleasant “surprises” for “our Western partners.” “The main thing is that there are no hysterics later,” he finished caustically.

At first, few people paid due attention to these strange words about hysteria. Most of the various analysts and political scientists, noteworthy interpreters and explainers of everything in the world, perceived this Putin’s passage as a simple figure of speech, ordinary political rhetoric, designed to demonstrate to the West, led by Washington, the determination of our president in defending Russia’s national interests. And only a few experts took his words about “surprises” and “hysterics” seriously. But while these “few” were wondering what kind of surprises our Uncle Vova had prepared for their “Uncle Sam,” the situation began to clear up on its own.

On September 23, Putin arrived in Novorossiysk to hold a meeting on port development. At this meeting, Admiral Vitko reported to him on the progress of construction of the Black Sea Fleet base in Novorossiysk. In particular, the admiral said: “The submarines that will be based here have long-range cruise missiles, and the secrecy of submarines leaving their bases in Novorossiysk is an order of magnitude higher than in Sevastopol.” And when the president asked exactly what range these missiles had, the commander of the Black Sea Fleet replied: “More than one and a half thousand kilometers. The submarine pier area can accommodate eight submarines, but for now it is planned to have seven. Everything will be fully completed at the end of 2016.”

This dialogue was shown on all central television channels, and all news agencies in the country wrote about it.

“So what’s wrong with that?” the inexperienced reader will ask.

To understand the scale of this “surprise”, you first need to say a few words about those submarines that will soon be stationed in Novorossiysk naval base. According to media reports, this is a Project 636.3 submarine - a deep modernization of the so-called Varshavyanka.

Varshavyanka became the third generation of large diesel-battery submarines in the Soviet Navy. The first generation of these submarines - Project 641 - was called “pieces of iron”, the second - 641B - “rubber bands”, because it was the first domestic “diesel engine” with a rubberized lightweight body. In 1983, third-generation submarines, Project 877, appeared, nicknamed “Varshavyankas” because they were supposed to arm not only the Soviet Navy, but also the fleets of our allies under the Warsaw Pact. The current modernized version of this submarine is operated under the code “Project 636”.

Initially, the Varshavyanka’s ammunition did not include missile weapons at all. The development of cruise missiles adapted for launch from Varshavyanka began only in 1983, when Project 877 submarines were already part of the combat composition of the Soviet Navy, and the first demonstration of these missiles took place ten years later, in 1993. m. At first, the Turquoise cruise missile was intended for the Project 877 Varshavyanka, and later the “Caliber” cruise missile, the maximum firing range of which, according to open sources, does not exceed 300 km.

Since its creation, the Varshavyanka of Project 877 has become the world's largest and most powerful non-nuclear submarine, and subsequently the world's only non-nuclear submarine equipped with missile weapons. The missiles themselves included in its ammunition load are the first in our fleet of cruise missiles fired from torpedo tubes with a diameter of 533 mm. Previously, only ballistic missiles 81R, 83R, 84R and their modifications were used from such torpedo tubes. They have been in use as nuclear weapons since the mid-70s, and as missile-torpedoes since the mid-80s. Moreover, their flight range did not exceed 50 km.

However, there was indeed one attempt to create the Soviet Tomahawk (a long-range cruise missile for the Soviet Navy, in response to the corresponding American CBBMs). Back in the late 60s, as a result of research carried out under the code name “Echo,” it was established that it was possible to overcome the enemy’s air defense and missile defense systems with long-range subsonic cruise missiles “with their massive use,” as well as using the “counter detonation” technique. , i.e. destroying enemy air defense and missile defense systems with nuclear explosions in order to clear a corridor for other attacking missile defense systems.

The development of the torpedo-missile system was started by the Malachite Design Bureau (chief designer - L.A. Podvyaznikov) in 1975. The complex was intended to solve operational-strategic tasks in the continental theater of operations by defeating administrative-political and large military-industrial centers with pre-known coordinates. The complex ensured combat use at any time of the day and year, in any weather conditions, in mountainous and difficult terrain.

In 1976, tests of the rocket began, which later received the name 3M10 “Granat”. It was supposed to launch from a 533-mm torpedo tube, had a flight range of up to 2,000 km and was armed with a nuclear warhead with a yield of up to 200 kt. This missile was supposed to be included in the ammunition load of nuclear submarines of projects 671, 671RT, 671RTM, 667A, 670, 670M and 971.

The S-10 Granat missile system was put into service in 1985. By the end of 1988 (according to Western data), about 100 3M10 Granat missiles were deployed on submarines of the USSR Navy.

The main performance characteristics of this rocket are as follows: the length of the rocket with the launch solid propellant rocket engine is 8090 mm; wingspan - 3300 mm; rocket fuselage diameter - 510 mm; range – up to 2000 km; cruising speed: - 720 km/h; cruising ceiling - 15-200 m; launch depth - 40 m.

Unfortunately, the USSR did not have time to fully deploy the Granat. In 1989, according to Soviet-American agreements, ammunition with nuclear warheads was removed from the armament of the navies of both countries (with the exception of the strategic forces - RPK SN). Accordingly, the 3M10 missiles of the Granat complex were removed from all carriers and put into storage. But a high-explosive warhead for the Granat, which would have allowed the complex to remain in service, was not developed, because the accuracy of the missile hitting the target was insufficient to confidently defeat it.

And now the commander of the Black Sea Fleet reported to the Russian President that long-range cruise missiles - new generation missiles - are returning to the Russian fleet's ammunition inventory! At the same time, it goes without saying that they return with qualitatively new characteristics, both in the field of overcoming missile defense and accurately hitting a target.

For example, if the Granata missiles could penetrate the enemy’s missile defense system only with massive use and in the nuclear version, then the new missiles, judging by the fact that the number of their carriers expected to be deployed in the southern theater of operations is very small (7 submarines in the Black Sea and 9 MRKs in the Caspian Sea) have exceptional, “surgical” accuracy and the ability to boost the enemy’s missile defense. In addition, if the “Granat” could only hit stationary targets with pre-known coordinates, then the new generation of Russian missiles is capable of retargeting during flight and thus hitting even moving targets.

And, of course, the fact that the new missile system with CRBD becomes universal and can be installed on any carrier, both underwater and surface, radically increases the effectiveness of its combat use. (There is even an option for placement on civilian ships, in a standard cargo container, for camouflage). As for the range of the new missile, Admiral Vitko did not exactly name it. He only said that it “exceeds 1,500 km.” So, maybe two or three thousand...

If all this is really true (well, the admiral is not lying to his commander-in-chief!), and Russian gunsmiths managed to stuff a new generation cruise missile with a flight range of more than 1,500 km into the dimensions of a 533-mm torpedo tube, then this is truly a breakthrough, an outstanding achievement of the domestic defense industry! Moreover, this actually means complete collapse American military strategy and a qualitative change in the balance of power in favor of Russia. For now any warship of the Russian fleet - not only a boat, but also a surface ship - becomes carriers of strategic missile weapons. Why strategic? Yes, because equipping such miracle missiles with nuclear ammunition (the same ones that remained in the warehouses from the “Grenade”) is only a matter of time and the political will of the Kremlin!

As for surface ships, a separate explanation is needed here. If these new long-range missiles really do not exceed the dimensions of the Kalibr missile system - after all, it is the one installed on the Varshavyanka - then they, naturally, can be included in the ammunition load of any ship that is equipped with this complex. But the fact is that “Caliber”, if desired, is easy to install on ALL ships of the Russian Navy, from missile boats to cruisers! The only question is the number of missiles, which really depends on the displacement of the ship.

And then – attention! – another surprise awaits us.

On September 29, 2014, the world media reported on the “Caspian Summit”, which was attended by the heads of five Caspian states: Russia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan. The participants of this summit agreed on a political statement in which, for the first time, they unanimously recorded future agreements on the status of the Caspian Sea.

Vladimir Putin commented on this event as follows: “The main thing is that we agreed on a political statement, which for the first time fixed the basic principles of five-party cooperation in the Caspian Sea. The agreements reached meet the long-term interests of all parties.” He also stated that the interaction of the five Caspian states would strengthen security in the region, because the “five” agreed that the presence of “outside” armed forces in the region would be excluded.

Against this background, media reports that the Russian Caspian Flotilla will include nine small missile ships of Project 21631 Buyan-M are of particular interest. These nimble ships, equipped with water-jet engines, with a displacement of only 950 tons, if necessary, can even be based on the Volga, as they are specially designed as river-sea class vessels. But most importantly, despite their small size, they are also equipped with a Kalibr missile system with eight missiles in a vertical launcher.

Three of these ships are already in service, the rest should enter the fleet's operational composition by 2018. But if we assume that they will be armed with “conventional” missiles with a range of up to 300 km, then it is completely unclear against whom Russia is going to use these weapons in the Caspian Sea. One such missile is capable of sinking a destroyer, but none of the Caspian countries have or are expected to have ships of this class! And “conventional” missiles will be able to destroy ground targets only in the territories of Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Iran, which is completely unnecessary today...

But if we assume that the Buyany will be equipped with new long-range missiles, the same as the Novorossiysk Varshavyanka, everything will immediately fall into place. The INF Treaty, signed by Moscow and Washington back in 1987, still prohibits Russia from deploying ground-based missiles with a range of over 500 km. But this ban does not apply to sea-based missiles. This means that nine Buyans, if they are armed with a new superweapon, will be capable of destroying up to 72 targets in one salvo at a range of over 1,500 km.

Considering the size of the Caspian waters, which is now becoming a common “launching pad” for the Buyans, it is easy to understand that a huge region of Eurasia will be in their sights. And if we add to this the missiles that will be placed on the Varshavyanka in the Black Sea waters, it turns out that colossal spaces will fall under their sights. Warsaw and Rome, Baghdad and Kabul, the bases of the 6th US Mediterranean Fleet and its strike naval groups, Israel and the lion's share south coast Mediterranean Sea will find themselves in the crosshairs of new Russian missiles.

And this despite the fact that neither in the Black Sea, nor, especially in the Caspian Sea, can the United States deploy any forces to counter this new unexpected “Russian threat”! In the Black Sea, this is prevented by the Montreux Convention of 1936, and the leaders of the Caspian states have just announced that they will not tolerate any foreign military presence in the Caspian region.

You can’t say anything, Putin has prepared a good “surprise” for our “American partners”! The State Department and the Pentagon will have something to think about in their spare time.

P.S. Yes, one more thing: something elusive tells me that this surprise is not the last.

Konstantin Dushenov, Director of the Agency analytical information"Orthodox Rus'"

Washington's strategic miscalculations led to a radical change in the military balance of power. Today in Europe Russia is much stronger than NATO. From now on, Russian military dominance on the continent is an undeniable and permanent factor.

A triumph of Russian technology

On September 1, 2014, the US State Department published a report stating that Russia, for the first time since the collapse of the USSR, had achieved parity with Washington in the field of strategic nuclear weapons. Thus, Washington recognized that Moscow had regained the status that the Soviet Union achieved by the mid-70s of the twentieth century at the cost of incredible efforts and which (it seemed irretrievably) was lost by us after the collapse of the Union. As follows from the State Department report, Russia currently has 528 carriers of strategic nuclear weapons, on which 1,643 warheads are deployed, and the United States has 794 carriers and 1,652 nuclear warheads.

It turns out that Russia’s strategic nuclear forces today are even more high-tech than those of the United States, since they ensure final parity in warheads with a significantly smaller number of strategic nuclear weapons carriers. And in light of the well-known statements of representatives of the Russian leadership that by 2020, Russia’s strategic nuclear forces will be completely, one hundred percent, rearmed with new generation missiles, this gap between Moscow and Washington will only increase.

Such a breakthrough was made possible thanks to the Treaty on the Limitation of Nuclear Arms, also known as START-3, signed by Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama on April 8, 2010 in Prague (entered into force on February 5, 2011), which provides for the reduction of nuclear warheads of the parties by 2021 up to 1550 units, and carriers (intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and heavy bombers) - up to 700 units.

This was the first agreement in the strategic field, after the treacherous policies of the “perestroika” and “democrats”, in which Russia managed to achieve significant advantages for itself. In it, for the first time, the Americans pledged to REDUCE their strategic potential, while Russia received the opportunity to INCREASE it. In addition, within its framework, the most important restrictions that existed in the previous START 1 and 2 treaties were removed from Russia: on the size of the deployment areas of mobile ICBMs, on the number of multi-charge ICBMs, on the possibility of creating railway ICBMs. Russia made no concessions.

Having written off Moscow as a serious geopolitical competitor and believed in the myth of its unattainable military and technological superiority, Washington has driven itself into such a trap, the way out of which - at least in the short and medium term - is not even visible. And this is not just about strategic nuclear forces.

Lately there has been a lot of talk about the so-called. “sixth generation wars” and high-precision long-range weapons, which are designed to ensure victory over the enemy without coming into direct contact with his armed forces. But besides the fact that this concept itself is very dubious (neither in Iraq nor in Afghanistan the United States were able to maintain the victory achieved in this way), Russia is reaching the parity line here too. Proof of this is the new generation of long-range cruise missiles, which will soon be deployed on submarines of the Black Sea Fleet and missile ships of the Caspian Flotilla. Let me remind you that this was discussed in my previous article “ Uncle Vova's surprises ».

In Russia today, many people find this hard to believe. Such mistrust is especially widespread in the circles of the so-called. “patriotic public” due to the fact that our public opinion is firmly and selflessly in captivity of numerous myths about the total “weakness” of Russia and the total Western “superiority”. These myths developed back in the “dashing nineties” under the influence of Yeltsin’s betrayal of our national interests and the bestial Russophobia of the then dominant liberal-democratic “masters” of Russia. It must be admitted that in those days they were quite consistent with the sad reality.

But times have changed. And this can be easily understood if you do not try to replace sober analysis with slogans and chants, and facts with fiction and fantasies.

Russian tanks in Europe

Consider, for example, the conventional weapons capabilities of Russia and the West in the European theater of operations. In this area, as is considered in a “decent patriotic society,” NATO is almost an order of magnitude superior to “weak” Russia. But the very first encounter with reality does not leave such a delusion unturned.

As you know, the main striking force and the core of the combat power of the ground forces are tanks. By the time of the collapse of the USSR, our Armed Forces had about 20,000 tanks in the European theater of operations. The Americans, in turn, deployed a group of 6,000 heavy Abrams tanks on Allied territory. But despite this, the total potential of NATO in Europe was still significantly inferior to the Soviet one. And NATO strategists were forced to compensate for this imbalance with the help of tactical nuclear weapons.

Back in the first half of the 1950s, NATO conducted a study on what forces the bloc needed to reliably repel a large-scale ground offensive by the superior forces of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact countries. Then calculations showed that to solve this problem it is necessary to have at least 96 full-blooded divisions. Meanwhile, the cost of just the armament of one such division exceeded a billion US dollars (and this is not in current dollars, but in prices of that time!) Plus, approximately two to three times more funds were required to maintain such a huge group of troops and create an appropriate infrastructure. Such a burden was clearly beyond the capabilities of the Western economy.

A solution was found to deploy a group of American tactical nuclear weapons on the continent, which was soon done. By the beginning of the 1970s, the American arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons, according to experts, already numbered about 7 thousand ammunition for various purposes, and the highest achievement in this area was considered the creation of selective weapons - neutron charges (for guns of 203 mm and 155 mm caliber, as well as Lance missiles) with a power of 1 to 10 kilotons, which were considered as the main means of combating ground forces personnel, especially the crews of Soviet tanks.

Taking into account the nuclear factor, to repel “Soviet aggression” NATO needed to deploy not 96, but only 30 divisions, and they were deployed.

How are things going in this area now? Here's how: at the beginning of 2013, the last batch of heavy Abrams was withdrawn by the Americans from Europe. In NATO countries, over the past 20 years, for every new tank entering service, 10-15 “old”, but in fact quite combat-ready, vehicles were scrapped. At the same time, Russia almost did not reduce its tanks.

As a result, today OUR COUNTRY IS THE ABSOLUTE LEADER HERE: in mid-2014, the Ministry of Defense had as many as 18,177 tanks on its balance sheet (T-90 - 400 units, T-72B - 7144 units, T-80 - 4744 units, T-64 - 4000 units, T-62 - 689 units and T-55 - 1200 units). Of course, only a few thousand vehicles are deployed in permanent readiness units, and most of them are located at storage bases, but the NATO members have exactly the same picture. So the decisive superiority of Russian tanks has not gone away since the times of the USSR, no matter how strange it may be for “patriotic” mourners and all-killers to hear this!

Okay, the corrosive reader will say. But some of these tanks must be kept in the Far East, because China has its own 8,000 armored vehicles. In addition, NATO, as before, can compensate for this imbalance with tactical nuclear weapons. It's even more reliable and cheaper...

And here another surprise awaits us.

In the field of tactical nuclear weapons, the superiority of modern Russia over NATO is completely crushing!

Washington's fatal miscalculation

And the Americans know this very well. It’s just that they previously believed that Russia would never rise again, that the possibility of a big war in Europe had been reduced to zero, and Russian tactical nuclear weapons, along with Russian tanks, would themselves crumble over time from old age and uselessness. And now... Now we woke up, but it’s too late - the train has left!

Here it must be said that these nuclear weapons can be called “tactical” very conditionally. Sometimes it significantly exceeds the power of warheads installed on strategic ICBMs. Let me point out, as an example, that the safe firing range of Russian 65-76K torpedoes in the nuclear version is eleven and a half kilometers, otherwise you can get caught in the blast wave of your own torpedo. And this despite the fact that the range of these torpedoes does not exceed 50 km. And, for example, the tactical air bombs of the USA (B-61, 170 Kt.) and Russia (up to 350 Kt.) significantly exceed in their power the warheads of the strategic American ICBM Minuteman-2 (170 Kt.) and the Poseidon SLBM (40 Kt. ). Here it would be useful to remember that only two atomic bombs with a yield of 15 kt (tactical, according to the current classification), dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, three weeks later brought Japan out of the war...

So, NATO countries today have only 260 tactical nuclear weapons in the European theater of operations. The United States has 200 aerial bombs with a total yield of 18 megatons. They are located at six air bases in Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Turkey. France has another 60 atomic bombs. All! And Russia today, according to the most conservative estimates, has, no more, no less, five thousand units of tactical nuclear weapons of various classes - from warheads for Iskander to torpedo, aviation and artillery nuclear warheads! True, the United States has another 300 B-61 tactical air bombs on its own territory, but with such an imbalance, this, you understand, does not change matters. But the United States is unable to change this imbalance: everything else “legacy of the Cold War” - tactical nuclear shells, ground-based missiles, and nuclear warheads of Tomahawk sea-based cruise missiles - they destroyed.

In order to understand how it happened that Russia, which “lost” the Cold War, is today AN ORDER OF ORDER superior to NATO in this most important area, we should turn to the history of the issue.

It is believed that by early 1991 the USSR had approximately 20-22,000 tactical nuclear weapons. These are nuclear charges of aerial bombs, warheads of tactical missiles “Luna”, “Tochka”, “Oka”, nuclear warheads of anti-submarine and anti-ship weapons of the fleet, special warheads of air defense and missile defense missiles, nuclear mines and nuclear shells of ground forces artillery.

This impressive arsenal was the result of forty years of intense arms race. Started, by the way, not by the “totalitarian” USSR, but by the quite democratic and liberal USA, which already in the early 1950s began developing and testing various types of tactical nuclear weapons. The first example of a warhead of this class was a projectile for a 280-mm cannon with a power of 15 Kt, tested in May 1953. As nuclear warheads were miniaturized, shells for self-propelled howitzers of 203 mm and 155 mm caliber were subsequently adopted, which had a yield of 1 to 10 Kt and until recently were in the arsenal of American troops in Europe.

Subsequently, tactical missiles with nuclear warheads entered service: “Redstone” (range 370 kilometers), “Corporal” (125 kilometers), “Sergeant” (140 kilometers), “Lance” (130 kilometers) and a number of others. In the mid-1960s, the development of the Pershing-1 operational-tactical missile (740 kilometers) was completed.

In turn, the Soviet military-political leadership decided that the saturation of American troops in Europe with tactical nuclear weapons would create a fundamentally new balance of power on the continent. Decisive measures were taken to create and deploy numerous types of Soviet tactical nuclear weapons. Already in the early 1960s, the troops began to receive tactical missiles T-5, T-7, and Luna. Later, the non-strategic nuclear arsenal included medium-range missiles RSD-10, R-12, R-14, medium-range bombers Tu-22, Tu-16, operational-tactical missiles OTR-22, OTR-23, tactical missiles R-17 , “Tochka”, nuclear artillery of 152 mm, 203 mm and 240 mm caliber, tactical aircraft Su-17, Su-24, MiG-21, MiG-23, sea-based assets.

By the way, the Soviet leadership repeatedly proposed that Western leaders begin negotiations on the reduction of tactical nuclear weapons. But NATO for a long time stubbornly rejected all Soviet proposals on this topic. The situation changed radically only when the Union reeled under the blows of Gorbachev’s “perestroika”. Then Washington decided that it was necessary to take advantage of the moment to weaken and disarm its main geopolitical enemy as much as possible.

In September 1991, US President George W. Bush put forward an initiative to reduce and even eliminate certain types of tactical nuclear weapons. Gorbachev, in turn, also announced plans for a radical reduction of similar weapons in the USSR. Subsequently, these plans were developed in the statement of Russian President Boris Yeltsin “On Russia’s policy in the field of arms limitation and reduction” dated January 29, 1992. It stated that Russia would cease production of nuclear artillery shells and ground-launched missile warheads, and all stocks of such warheads would be destroyed. Russia will remove all tactical nuclear weapons from surface ships and multipurpose submarines and eliminate one third. Half of the warheads for anti-aircraft missiles and aircraft ammunition will also be eliminated.

After these reductions, Russia and the United States should have had 2,500–3,000 tactical nuclear warheads left in their tactical nuclear weapons arsenals.

But it turned out differently. The illusion of world hegemony has played a cruel joke on Washington.

American strategists wrote off “democratic” Russia after the terrible pogrom that their liberal agents staged here. At the same time, after their high-precision weapons successfully completed some combat missions previously planned for tactical nuclear weapons during the Gulf War, Washington relied on a technological breakthrough. But this led to the fact that “smart” weapons became more and more expensive, less and less of them were produced, and ultimately NATO’s “high-precision ammunition” turned out to be completely insufficient for conducting large-scale combat operations with an enemy at least approximately equal to the West in terms of to its technological level.

It’s too late to drink Borjomi when the buds have fallen off

Meanwhile, in Russia, experts quickly agreed that in the geostrategic situation that emerged after the collapse of the USSR, a massive reduction and destruction of tactical nuclear weapons is unacceptable. After all, it is tactical nuclear weapons, which have fairly high indicators according to the “effectiveness-cost” criterion, that can serve as a kind of universal equalizer of forces, depriving NATO of their military advantage. In the current conditions, Russia simply borrowed from NATO the thesis that the alliance had recently used about the need to compensate for enemy superiority in conventional weapons by deploying a tactical nuclear arsenal on the European theater of operations.

This is how the situation developed over two decades. The West, having written off Russia, cut up its tanks and destroyed tactical nuclear weapons. Russia, feeling its weakness, kept both tanks and tactical nuclear warheads as “an armored train on a siding.” This is what has led to the fact that now, after Russia has overcome the inertia of collapse and has begun the systematic revival of its power, and the West, lulled by sweet dreams of the liberal “end of history,” has castrated its armed forces to the point where they are capable of leading Only colonial wars with a weak, technically backward enemy - the balance of forces in Europe radically changed in our favor.

Realizing this, the Americans realized it, but it was too late. In December 2010, Assistant Secretary of State for Agreement Verification, Compliance and Implementation Rose Gottemoeller sounded the alarm: “ The Russians have more tactical nuclear systems than we do, and Congress strongly recommends addressing these issues... The next step should be a reduction in tactical nuclear weapons" In the same year, Europeans showed even greater activity in the person of the heads of the foreign affairs departments of Poland and Sweden, who brazenly demanded from Russia the unilateral creation of two nuclear-free zones - the Kaliningrad region and the Kola Peninsula - territories of priority deployment of Russian tactical nuclear weapons, including the main basing areas of the Baltic and Northern fleets ( in the case of the Northern Fleet, this is also the base area for a significant part of the Russian strategic nuclear forces).

Since then, the Americans have repeatedly offered our country a flawed way to solve the “TNW problem,” stubbornly insisting on developing an agreement “ to eliminate inequality in tactical nuclear weapons stockpiles" They even tried to condition the entry into force of the SALT-3 treaty on the beginning of negotiations on tactical nuclear weapons. Thus, in accordance with the amendment of Senator Sene Lemieux (amendment 4/S.AMDN.4908), the final entry into force of SALT-3 should take place only after the Russian side agrees to negotiations on the issue of the so-called “elimination of the imbalance” in the tactical nuclear weapons of Russia and the United States .

And on February 3, 2011, Barack Obama, in a letter sent to a number of key senators, announced “ the commencement of negotiations with Russia in the near future on eliminating the disparity between the tactical nuclear weapons of the Russian Federation and the United States and reducing the number of tactical nuclear warheads in a verifiable manner" But alas! In 2012, Putin returned to the Kremlin and the West’s hopes of “divorcing” Russia by persuading it to unilateral disarmament failed.

The cost of this failure became more or less clear during the Ukrainian crisis. And this price is this: the West has finally lost its former military superiority over Russia, and in the European theater of military operations it has turned out to be MANY TIMES WEAKER than Moscow. And neither Washington, nor London, nor Berlin, nor Paris have any way to correct this disparity.

From now on, Russian military superiority in Europe is an undeniable and permanent factor. Glory to Thee, Lord!

Konstantin Dushenov, Director of the Analytical Information Agency "Orthodox Rus'"

About the author:Konstantin Dushenov served in the USSR Navy in 1977-87. He served in the Northern Fleet, on nuclear submarines of projects 671RTM and 667A as commander of a missile and torpedo group, a mine and torpedo warhead.

A new generation helicopter begins to enter the army aviation In the photo: multi-purpose helicopter Ka-60 “Kasatka” / Photo: Vitaly Belousov / TASS On December 10, 1998, the Kamov Design Bureau Ka-60 “Kasatka” multi-purpose helicopter made its first flight. It will begin entering the army in large quantities in 2016. This delay is due to the fact that this is a new generation car, it...

Trillions sought for lunar exploration plans

“The availability of resources in the Arctic and Antarctic is comparable to the availability of resources on the Moon.” With these words, the draft program “Deep Space Exploration” justifies plans to establish mining on the Moon in the coming decades and transfer industrial production to the satellite. Experts openly mock these plans. In the next 50 years, people...

UAC will modernize 50 MiG-31 fighters

Launch of an R-73 missile with a MiG-31BM, board No. 16 blue, from the air base in Monchegorsk, published in July 2013. This is the news today from the source. The Russian military department has signed a contract for 30 billion rubles with the United Aircraft Corporation OJSC, which provides repair and modernization of 50 MiG-31 fighter-interceptors, Interfax-AVN reports with...

Should we go to Mars?

Conversation with Vice-President of the United Rocket and Space Corporation Vitaly Lopota In the Russian scientific and technical community, there are discussions about the role and place of domestic cosmonautics, its future prospects. The general opinion: a nation cannot abandon space research and cannot help but claim a leading position in world astronautics. What did...

Russian Helicopters begins the final stage of certification tests of the Mi-38 multi-purpose helicopter

The Russian Helicopters holding company (part of the Rostec State Corporation) is starting the final stage of certification tests of the Mi-38 multi-purpose helicopter. Tests are carried out on two prototype helicopters with Russian TV7-117V engines. The fourth prototype of the Mi-38 Source: http://www.russianhelicopters.aero/ November 3, 2014 Moscow helicopter...

France and Britain announced plans to create a new fighter

Sketches of the 5th generation Future Combat Air System (FCAS) fighter were released by the French company Dassault Aviation. It is planned that the aircraft will become a joint French-British development (photo: dassault-aviation.com) Western Europe has decided not to stand aside from the development of one of the most important types of weapons of the future - the fifth generation fighter. France...

Superjet delivered to TsAGI for endurance testing

On November 6, 2014, the airframe of the Sukhoi Superjet 100 extended range aircraft was delivered to TsAGI for endurance testing. 2. The superjet, certified model RRJ-95LR-100, with serial number 95075, was delivered to Zhukovsky at the Ramenskoye airfield by AN-124 Ruslan aircraft in undocked form. 3. Before departure from Komsomolsk-on-Amur. Photo provided...

Airborne defense complex (ADC) "President-S"

The appearance of MANPADS radically changed the balance of power in the land theater of military operations. Back in the mid-sixties, attack aircraft and combat helicopters could destroy with impunity not only the rear structures of the warring units, but also boldly ruled over the battlefield. Barrel air defense artillery was still ineffective, and anti-aircraft missiles at low altitudes were simply not...

NATO expert: Russian Tu-95s “bombed” Europe

Both the unprecedented exercises, during which Russian fighters and strategic bombers appeared in the skies over the EU, and the Saturday flight of nuclear Tu-95 Bears pursue and achieve several military-political goals at once. This was stated by a British military expert who wished to remain anonymous. He also recalled that the United States strategically deployed...

How lasers are used in modern Russian aviation

The newest President-S complex allows pilots of military and civil aviation to no longer worry about the safety of their aircraft and not pay attention to the sights of missile systems aimed at them. What is his secret? Military aviation is a powerful argument in modern warfare. Helicopters and planes sweep away everything in their path due to powerful weapons, they...

The Guardian: Aviation of Russia, China and the United States began a “war in the skies”

A resurgent Russia and China's attempts to project power over an ever-increasing distance are causing a response from America, which is leading to an increase in the number of dangerous incidents in the air, the Western press writes. According to the commander of the United States Air Forces in the Pacific, the recent series of dangerous incidents in the air over Pacific Ocean with participation...

China, Russia and the US are testing the boundaries of international airspace (The Guardian, UK)

A resurgent Russia and China's attempts to project power further and further are prompting a response from the United States, leading to an increase in dangerous incidents in the air. According to the commander of the United States Air Forces in the Pacific, a recent series of dangerous incidents in the air over the Pacific Ocean involving American...

Military news: Russian “Bears” in the sky (InoSMI, Russia)

Military news that didn't make it to the front pages. Issue No. 18 (54). The American publication The Week in September devoted Special attention flights of Russian military aircraft to the borders of the USA, Canada, Japan and a number of European countries. According to the magazine’s authors, these “unambiguous provocations” by Russia, which have become more frequent in recent years, are a defining feature of the diplomacy of “Putin’s st...

Russia will gain superiority in the skies in 2016

Russia and America are long-time rivals. This rivalry extends to almost all areas: economics, politics, influence in the world. Everyone is familiar with such “indirect” military conflicts as Afghanistan and Vietnam. West and east have always been at odds. But nothing angers Americans more than Russian military equipment. This is understandable, the Russians have always been able to give their overseas calls...

Zhlobskaya Peremoga

Listening to the wet dreams of some Ukrainian comrades about Ukraine returning its status as a nuclear power, one cannot help but recall a key incident in its modern history, which directly influences current events and perfectly illustrates all the petty-bourgeois pettiness and short-sighted redneckness of “Ukrainianism.” The fact is that at the time of the collapse of the USSR there were many units in Ukraine...

Another Ukrainian MiG-29 shot down

At about 5 a.m. on August 17, 2014, over Krasnodon (Lugansk region), forces of the Lugansk People's Republic shot down a MiG-29 fighter of the Ukrainian Air Force, which was promptly recognized by the Ukrainian side. According to the Ukrainian side, the pilot of the plane ejected and was “taken to a safe place.” The downed MiG-29 fighter was an aircraft...