WASHINGTON: The United States is to accelerate its development of new cruise and ballistic missile systems following its withdrawal from a nuclear treaty with Russia Friday, the Pentagon said.
"Now that we have withdrawn, the Department of Defense will fully pursue the development of these ground-launched conventional missiles as a prudent response to Russia's actions," chief Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said after the U.S. confirmed its exit from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty.
US is no longer prohibited from having ground-launched intermediate-range missiles after pulling out of an arms control treaty with Russia on Friday, but funds to test and develop the missiles may soon run out, officials say.
The US military is set to test a new non-nuclear mobile-launched cruise missile developed specifically to challenge Russia in Europe, according to a senior US defense official.
Washington said last year it would withdraw from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), accusing Russia of failing to comply with it. Moscow denies it has violated the treaty and says the Trump administration is pulling out because it wants to pursue a new arms race.
Within the next few weeks, the United States is expected to test a ground-launched cruise missile, and in November, the Pentagon will aim to test an intermediate-range ballistic missile. Both would be tests of conventional weapons - and not nuclear.
"Russia is solely responsible for the treaty's demise," Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement Friday announcing the withdrawal.
"Russia failed to return to full and verified compliance through the destruction of its noncompliant missile system."
Meanwhile, analysts fear the US test of the non-nuclear cruise missile will mark the start of a new arms race with Moscow.
The test is expected to take place in the next few weeks and will essentially be the Trump administration's answer to Russia's years-long non-compliance with the INF treaty, the senior US defense official said.
U.S. officials told Reuters this week that once existing funding runs out, future research and testing would be at risk because of resistance from the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives.
Unlike in the Senate, which is led by President Donald Trump’s Republicans, the House declined to fund the administration’s request of about $96 million for the development of the missiles in its version of a fiscal-year 2020 budget and defense policy bill.
“If you cut this, you’re hampering the Department of Defense’s ability to respond to the Russian treaty violation,” said a senior U.S. defense official, describing the Pentagon’s message to Congress.
“It’s not going to bring the treaty back, it’s going to help Russia.”
The 1987 pact banned ground-launched nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 310 to 3,400 miles (500-5,500 km).
Washington and Moscow blame each other for the breakdown of the treaty, the latest in a growing list of East-West tensions. The United States says it needs to develop its own intermediate-range missiles to deter Russia, even if it does not field them in Europe.
The Pentagon also sees a benefit in developing the new weapons as a counter to China, which boasts an increasingly sophisticated land-based missile force.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres told reporters Thursday that the treaty's expiry means "the world will lose an invaluable brake on nuclear war. This will likely heighten, not reduce, the threat posed by ballistic missiles."
He urged the US and Russia to "urgently seek agreement on a new common path for international arms control."
PLAYING INTO PUTIN’S HANDS
The top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, Representative Adam Smith, has opposed the U.S. pullout from the treaty.
“Withdrawing from the treaty would allow Putin to deflect responsibility and blame the U.S. for both the treaty’s collapse and any ensuing arms race,” Smith wrote in an op-ed earlier this year also penned by the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
They added: “The Trump administration has played right into (Russian President) Vladimir Putin’s hands.”
The Pentagon hopes the funding will be restored when the House and Senate confer to resolve discrepancies in the legislation. A Senate Armed Services Committee spokeswoman said those discussions were expected to take place in coming weeks.
U.S. officials have been warning for years that the United States was being put at a disadvantage by China’s development of increasingly sophisticated land-based missile forces, which the Pentagon could not match due to the U.S. treaty with Russia.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper said last month that leaving the INF treaty would free the U.S. military “to deal with not just Russia, but China.”
“China has a very, very capable and robust INF Treaty-range missile inventory, if you will. So you can see, it frees us up to do other things,” he said.
While no decisions have been made, the United States could theoretically put easier-to-hide, road-mobile conventional missiles in places like Guam.
Officials said it was not clear how China would handle the United States leaving the INF and potentially deploying ground-launched intermediate-range missiles closer to its borders.
“Who knows which way China might go? But they are going to have to react some way... whether it’s hardening, moving things around, changing your (concept of operations),” a second U.S. official said.
Any deployment of such weaponry would be years away, senior Trump administration officials say.
“We are just at the stage of looking at how we might further the development of conventional options,” one administration official said.
Trump has said he would like to see a “next-generation” arms control deal with Russia and China to cover all types of nuclear weapons, something Beijing has so far rejected.
'Dramatic' implications
"Russia failed to return to full and verified compliance through the destruction of its noncompliant missile system."
Meanwhile, analysts fear the US test of the non-nuclear cruise missile will mark the start of a new arms race with Moscow.
The test is expected to take place in the next few weeks and will essentially be the Trump administration's answer to Russia's years-long non-compliance with the INF treaty, the senior US defense official said.
U.S. officials told Reuters this week that once existing funding runs out, future research and testing would be at risk because of resistance from the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives.
Unlike in the Senate, which is led by President Donald Trump’s Republicans, the House declined to fund the administration’s request of about $96 million for the development of the missiles in its version of a fiscal-year 2020 budget and defense policy bill.
“If you cut this, you’re hampering the Department of Defense’s ability to respond to the Russian treaty violation,” said a senior U.S. defense official, describing the Pentagon’s message to Congress.
“It’s not going to bring the treaty back, it’s going to help Russia.”
The 1987 pact banned ground-launched nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 310 to 3,400 miles (500-5,500 km).
Washington and Moscow blame each other for the breakdown of the treaty, the latest in a growing list of East-West tensions. The United States says it needs to develop its own intermediate-range missiles to deter Russia, even if it does not field them in Europe.
The Pentagon also sees a benefit in developing the new weapons as a counter to China, which boasts an increasingly sophisticated land-based missile force.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres told reporters Thursday that the treaty's expiry means "the world will lose an invaluable brake on nuclear war. This will likely heighten, not reduce, the threat posed by ballistic missiles."
He urged the US and Russia to "urgently seek agreement on a new common path for international arms control."
PLAYING INTO PUTIN’S HANDS
The top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, Representative Adam Smith, has opposed the U.S. pullout from the treaty.
“Withdrawing from the treaty would allow Putin to deflect responsibility and blame the U.S. for both the treaty’s collapse and any ensuing arms race,” Smith wrote in an op-ed earlier this year also penned by the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
They added: “The Trump administration has played right into (Russian President) Vladimir Putin’s hands.”
The Pentagon hopes the funding will be restored when the House and Senate confer to resolve discrepancies in the legislation. A Senate Armed Services Committee spokeswoman said those discussions were expected to take place in coming weeks.
U.S. officials have been warning for years that the United States was being put at a disadvantage by China’s development of increasingly sophisticated land-based missile forces, which the Pentagon could not match due to the U.S. treaty with Russia.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper said last month that leaving the INF treaty would free the U.S. military “to deal with not just Russia, but China.”
“China has a very, very capable and robust INF Treaty-range missile inventory, if you will. So you can see, it frees us up to do other things,” he said.
While no decisions have been made, the United States could theoretically put easier-to-hide, road-mobile conventional missiles in places like Guam.
Officials said it was not clear how China would handle the United States leaving the INF and potentially deploying ground-launched intermediate-range missiles closer to its borders.
“Who knows which way China might go? But they are going to have to react some way... whether it’s hardening, moving things around, changing your (concept of operations),” a second U.S. official said.
Any deployment of such weaponry would be years away, senior Trump administration officials say.
“We are just at the stage of looking at how we might further the development of conventional options,” one administration official said.
Trump has said he would like to see a “next-generation” arms control deal with Russia and China to cover all types of nuclear weapons, something Beijing has so far rejected.
'Dramatic' implications
The implications of the INF's demise "are dramatic," said Jon Wolfsthal, director of the Nuclear Crisis Group and a former nuclear expert for the National Security Council under the Obama administration.
"Russia will continue to build and deploy intermediate range missiles that will significantly increase the risk to European allies, it will increase the risk of escalation with the United States," Wolfsthal said, "and it will increase the threat that Russia can pose in East Asia to our allies and even to Alaska, because these missiles can be deployed in the Russian far east."
Down the road, analysts say the INF Treaty's collapse leaves the world with just one agreement -- the New START Treaty -- in place to prevent the start of another Cold War-style arms race.
'More destabilizing'
The US defense official said that the US has long had evidence that Russia has developed, tested and fielded "multiple battalions" of non-INF compliant cruise and ballistic missiles. The US believes the deployments are "militarily significant" because the missiles are mobile, allowing Moscow to move them rapidly and making it difficult for the US to track them.
The Russian missiles use solid fuel, which means they can be readied in a very short time frame to fire at targets, especially in western Europe.
Alexandra Bell, senior policy director at the non-partisan Center for Arms Control & Non-Proliferation, explains that "with this type of missile there's very short warning, attacks are harder to spot by radar, so it's just more destabilizing. They made the situation in Europe more dangerous" before their elimination by the INF Treaty, she said.
The Pentagon has been working on the mobile launch system's very initial phases, which will lead to the first test in the coming weeks, the defense official said. The official emphasized there is no formal program yet to develop the missile, because the INF Treaty has been in effect.
The expected test could eventually lead to a program, the official said, but there has been difficulty in getting funding secured because of some opposition from Democrats in Congress.
The administration's budget request for fiscal year 2020, released in February, included $96 million for continued research and development on missiles with the ranges covered in the INF Treaty.
Kingston Reif, director for disarmament and threat reduction policy at the Arms Control Association, noted that in March, "the Pentagon said the plan was to test two non-INF compliant missiles later this year, after the US withdrew, the first being sometime in August."
The Pentagon also said in March that this new ground-launched missile could be ready for deployment within 18 months.
The US will likely take a current air- or sea-launched cruise missile, such as a Tomahawk, and put it on a ground-based launcher, Reif said.
"It is not a significant engineering task," said Wolfsthal. "It's well within the capability of major defense contractors and the Army to pull off."
Deployment
If the US were to proceed with developing a fully operational mobile cruise and ballistic missile system, a key unresolved question is where it would be deployed. "The hope," Wolfsthal said, is to have "a system that can be rapidly deployed in Europe or Asia."
The US has yet to formally discuss and commit to firm basing options, the senior defense official said. The concept, the official said, would be to position the missiles in militarily advantageous positions from which they could fire past Russian defenses and target the country's ports, military bases or critical infrastructure.
"Those missiles would need to be deployed in Europe to have meaningful strategic value," said Reif, referring to NATO countries. But "no alliance member has to date come forward and said it would be willing to host new US intermediate range missiles," he said.
Indeed, several NATO members, including Poland, have made clear that any deployment of the missiles in Europe would have to be approved by all NATO members.
Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has also emphasized that NATO will respond to the end of the INF Treaty as an alliance.
"What we will do will be measured, it will be coordinated as a NATO family, no bilateral arrangements, but NATO as an alliance," Stoltenberg said last month.
Reif said that any US "attempt to go around the alliance and establish a bilateral agreement with a NATO member would be a significant point of division within the alliance, one Russia would be eager to exploit."
Stoltenberg also suggested the alliance would not be amenable to US missile deployments on its border. "We will not mirror what Russia is doing, meaning that we will not deploy missiles," the NATO chief said.
When NATO defense ministers met in late June and discussed the options to ensure the alliance's security in a post-INF world, Stoltenberg said they are considering several possibilities, including additional military exercises to improve readiness, more reconnaissance abilities, air and missile defenses and conventional capabilities -- without specifying which kinds.
Moscow, meanwhile, is watching.
"Russia has said privately to me and others that if US would deploy such missiles in Europe, it would put Moscow in range ... and Moscow would have to think about pre-emption" Wolfsthal said. "That doesn't benefit European security, it only shortens the fuse to a conflict."
Source: AFP / REUTERS /CNN
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