In an interesting interview to Interfax Yuri Solomonov mentioned that the state defense order for 2011-2013 calls for a significant increase of the ballistic missile production rate after the first year. The number of missiles produced in 2012-2013 is expected to be "several times higher" than in 2011, which is expected to stay at the current level. The current level is about eight missiles a year - earlier Solomonov mentioned six to ten, it stayed about eight Topol-M missiles on average in the last few years.

These numbers apparently include Bulava SLBMs that would be required to equip the new Project 955 submarines - Aleksandr Nevskiy and Vladimir Monomakh, which would probably be ready around that time. The first submarine of this class, Yuri Dolgorukiy, apparently has enough missiles produced for it already - Solomonov suggested that serial production of Bulava has been going for four years. Given that the each submarine requires 16 missiles, Votkinsk would have to produce at least 16 in 2012 and again in 2013, which is already about twice the current production rate. To this we should add seven or so ICBMs (the 2011 plan in to deploy three RS-24 and four silo-based Topol-Ms), which means that the the production rate will roughly triple.

Solomonov also mentioned that the production of silo-based Topol-Ms will be winding down in 2011 and 2012 (so, it looks like the four silo-based Topol-Ms in 2012 will be the last ones). He said that a silo-based RS-24 is possible, but only after a few year. My understanding is that there are no immediate plans to deploy RS-24 in silos.

On April 26, 2011, the K-84 Ekaterinburg submarine of the Project 667BDRM class successfully launched a R-29RM Sineva missile. The launch was performed from a submerged submarine deployed in Barents Sea. The Navy reported that all warheads reached their intended targets at the Kura test site in Kamchatka.

Previous Sineva launch took place in October 2010.

Two Swiss newspapers - Le Temps и Neue Zurcher Zeitung got hold of diplomatic cables that describe an interesting moment in the New START negotiations - November and early December 2009, a few weeks before expiration of the original START treaty. Here are the documents on the Le Temps web site - November 13, 2009, November 29, 2010, and December 2, 2009. It's an interesting reading, although it probably reveals a bit more of the negotiating record than the U.S. and Russian governments would like.

There is not much really new there - we knew that Russia tried to limit the number of launchers, while the United States wanted to keep the launchers intact. As it turned out, the original U.S. proposal was to have 1100 launchers. By November 2009, the United States was ready to go to 800, while Russia suggested 500. Apparently it took an intervention from the presidents to bring this number to 700, although there was a serious disagreement about how to account for non-nuclear warheads.

To address Russia's concerns, the United States offered, among other things, perimeter monitoring of its two warhead storage facilities - the names are blacked out, but these are likely the Strategic Weapons Facility Atlantic at Kings Bay and Strategic Weapons Facility Pacific in Bangor - the Bulletin Nuclear Notebook lists these two as the primary naval warhead storage sites. In exchange, however, the U.S. insisted on continuing access to the Votkinsk plant (it's blacked out as well, by the way), arguing that as much as Russia is concerned about the upload potential of the U.S. submarines, the United States is concerned about Russian mobile missiles. Votkinsk, however, was where Russia drew red line - for some reason this was made into a very hot political issue back in Russia.

On missile defense, the United States fought quite hard to prevent the statement on relationship between offense and defense from appearing in the text of the treaty. Russia "was adamant" that it was critical to have this in the treaty as a legally binding statements that would have to be ratified by both countries. The United States suggested that the offense defense statement could be included in a separate document, but Russia objected to that, saying that at least one sentence should be in the treaty proper. But it looks like at this stage the United States was willing to accept having the statement in the treaty preamble. At some point it looks like neither side was sure what the status of the issue is, but they knew very well that it is one of the key elements of the process. Eventually, as we know, the statement made it into the preamble, which was the right thing to do.

Overall, the cables provide a very interesting snapshot of the talks and show that both sides made their share of concessions on the road to the final treaty. I think both sides did a very good job. Well, the treaty would be much better had they agreed to release the data, but as the cables show, the U.S. at least did something - Russia wanted any data release to be explicitly approved by both sides. Let's hope this is not how it works.

The Strategic Rocket Forces will add three more RS-24 road-mobile missiles to the six missiles that have been already deployed in Teykovo. This will complete deployment of the first RS-24 regiment.

The idea of bringing all nuclear weapon states into some kind of a START-type data exchange arrangement seems to be going mainstream. Madeleine Albright and Igor Ivanov just mentioned it in their New York Times op-ed. James Acton suggested the exchange in his Low Numbers report.

It is good to see the idea that I've been advocating for some time is taking hold. Here is my March 2009 Bulletin column:

Nothing would prevent France or Britain from voluntarily assuming the same obligations that the United States and Russia have under START, in particular, its reporting and transparency requirements. They could commence by releasing data about their strategic nuclear forces in the same format that is required by START. Five states currently publish memorandums of understanding with detailed data on missiles, submarines, and strategic bombers deployed on their territory twice a year--the United States, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan (the last three send their MOUs with mostly zeros in them). There is no reason why Britain, France, China, and eventually others can't do the same, even if they are not formally parties to START.

It is not quite correct to say that the idea was not elaborated at the time - it was, but in 2009 the START treaty was about to expire and give way to the new treaty with a completely new set of reporting requirements. Still, for those who might be interested in seeing how this data exchange might have looked like, here is a draft START MOU for France.

Now that New START is in force it does make sense to return to this idea. One problem is that New START is much less transparent than the old one - we are yet to see any data emerging from the U.S.-Russian data exchange. It's possible, of course, that this semi-secret manner of data exchange would be more attractive to France, U.K., and especially to China. I very much doubt that - these countries are more likely to point at the new found U.S.-Russian secrecy as an excuse to keep their data secret as well and the United States and Russia are not quite in a position to lobby for more openness. On the other hand, I can see how an issue like this could be discussed at the upcoming P-5 summit. If this discussion results in some data exchange between the five, whether publicly open or not, it would be a step in the right direction.

By the way, the data exchange does not have to be a privilege of the nuclear weapon states - any country that wants to support the idea could publish its own New START MOU. The format is very well described in the treaty. Norway? New Zealand? For most countries the document will contain only zeros (some would have to report space launch facilities), but there is nothing wrong with that - Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine had been doing it for years.

I always believed that progress in U.S.-Russian relations critically depends on whether the two countries could get their bureaucracies work together. The general success of the "reset" process shows that this is indeed how things work - the most successful cooperation usually takes place in those areas where people speak common language. The problem is that the bureaucracies quickly learn each other worst habits and practices (they might occasionally exchange the best practices as well, but that requires a serious effort - the worst ones, in contrast, are adopted in no time).

This is exactly what happened with the data exchange mechanism in New START - not only the United States did not insist on keeping the transparency mechanism that existed in START, it actually decided follow Russia in not releasing any data at all. Hans Kristensen tried to get the information from the U.S. administration, but received the following response from an administration official:

All exchanges are classified and will not be subject to release. [...] There may be some information on very general numbers under the Treaty that could be made public, but that is still to be determined, and will not occur for a least six months if it occurs at all.

This is an absolutely scandalous (as in disgraceful, shameful, outrageous, shocking, infamous, ignominious, flagrant) policy and I certainly hope that the arms control community will work to make the U.S. administration to rescind it.

Strictly speaking, Russia also has no basis for keeping the data secret, but nobody expects very much from the Russian bureaucracy. The current U.S. administration, on the other hand, has positioned itself as a champion of openness and nuclear disarmament. As Hans rightly noted in his post, if the United States is serious about advancing the nuclear disarmament agenda, it has to be transparent about its arsenal.

New START data exchange is in many important ways more detailed than that of the old START - the New START exchange, for example, should include the data on the number of warheads on each deployed missile, information about missile and bomber bases, and such details as individual identifiers for each strategic launcher. The data format is described in Sections III-IX of the Part Two of the Protocol to the Treaty.

Article VII of the treaty, however, specifies that there are some restrictions on releasing this data to the public - Part 5 of Article VII says that

The Parties shall hold consultations within the framework of the Bilateral Consultative Commission on releasing to the public data and information obtained during the implementation of this Treaty. The Parties shall have the right to release to the public such data and information following agreement thereon within the framework of the Bilateral Consultative Commission.

In short, if the United States wants to release the data it received as part of the data exchange it would have to ask Russia first. We know that the answer in this case will be a firm "No" - the purpose of this clause is exactly to make sure that the United States does not do that.

The treaty, however, is very clear that each side is free to publish information about its own strategic forces - with the number of warheads and all. Here is the same Section 5 of the Article VII of the treaty:

Each Party shall have the right to release to the public data related to its respective strategic offensive arms.

There is nothing in the treaty that would prevent the United States from releasing the U.S. data exchange in full. Well, almost - the treaty specifies that some categories of data are particularly sensitive and seem to require mutual agreement (Article VII.6):

Geographic coordinates [...], unique identifiers, site diagrams of facilities provided by the Parties pursuant to this Treaty, as well as coastlines and waters diagrams [...] shall not be released to the public unless otherwise agreed [by BCC].

This is perfectly fine - there is no harm to keep this kind of information confidential. Even in the old START exchange, geographic coordinates of silos were not released.

Even though the treaty prevents the parties from releasing a detailed data exchange of their counterpart, it explicitly allows publication of aggregate data for both sides. Here is Section 7 of Article VII:

Notwithstanding paragraph 5 of this Article, the aggregate numbers of deployed ICBMs, deployed SLBMs, and deployed heavy bombers; the aggregate numbers of warheads on deployed ICBMs, deployed SLBMs, and nuclear warheads counted for deployed heavy bombers; and the aggregate numbers of deployed and nondeployed ICBM launchers, deployed and non-deployed SLBM launchers, and deployed and non-deployed heavy bombers, may be released to the public by the Parties.

This is probably what the U.S. administration official meant when he spoke about "some information on very general numbers" that the administration might decide to release at some point. I think it is absolutely clear that this decision should not be left to the bureaucratic discretion. It's not "some information" - it is a very specific set of data which should be released without much delay.

Ideally, Russia and the United States would release two sets of aggregate data and their respective full data exchange sets. Russia, of course, was expected to be secretive and to withhold as much information as it could. But the fact that the United States followed the Russian lead on that is absolutely shameful and cannot be justified. There is absolutely no way anybody could argue that the aggregate numbers are classified - they are not (they are not classified even in Russia). And I am sure a good case can be made that the full data exchange is exempt from classification as well - it is sent to Russia after all.

The bottom line is that this is the information that the U.S. administration should make public on a regular basis as soon as the data exchanges with Russia take place:

1. Aggregate numbers for the United States and Russia, as described in Article VII.7 of New START
2. The data submitted by the United States as part of the New START data exchange, as described in Part Two of the Protocol to the Treaty, with exception of geographic coordinates and other categories of data listed in Article VII.6 of the Treaty.

Transparency is probably the most valuable element of the New START treaty and by withholding the data exchange information the United States and Russia greatly undermine the agreement and certainly complicate efforts to further reduce their nuclear arsenals. Russia is probably a lost cause as far as transparency is concerned, but the U.S. administration should not be allowed to get away with ludicrous references to classified nature of data exchange and with vague promises to maybe release something at some date.

The first New START data exchange scheduled for March 22, 2011 should finally answer the question of how many warheads are deployed on the RS-24 version of the Topol-M missile. Some press reports mentioned four, but Russian press is notoriously unreliable. Commander of the Rocket Forces also said at some point that RS-24 will carry four warheads. But Russian generals are not much more reliable than the Russian press.

My analysis suggested that the number is three, but it is an estimate based on circumstantial evidence. Now we have Vladimir Popovkin also saying that "Topol-M [i.e. RS-24] can carry a maximum of three warheads" (via Russian Military Reform - a very interesting blog maintained by Dmitry Gorenburg). But then again, Russian generals are not particularly reliable. I guess we'll have to wait for the New START data.

A representative of the Strategic Rocket Forces announced today that the first regiment of RS-24 missiles, deployed in Teykovo, completed the "experimental combat service" and began regular combat duty. The regiment includes six RS-24 missiles - three were deployed in early 2010 (the formal announcement was made only in July 2010) and three - in December 2010.

RS-24 is a MIRVed version of the road-mobile Topol-M. In November 2010 the Rocket Forces announced that all new mobile missiles will carry multiple warheads. New silo-based Topol-M missiles will still be carrying a single warhead.

In his address to the Conference on Disarmament, Sergei Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister, stated again that further negotiations on nuclear disarmament should take into account a range of issues - weapons in space, strategic conventionally-armed weapons, plans to deploy "unilateral global missile defense." He also mentioned nuclear arsenals of other states as well as imbalances in conventional forces.

None of these conditions was particularly new, but the language on tactical nuclear weapons was (emphasis added):

The first step in solving this problem should be withdrawal of tactical nuclear weapons to the territory of a state that owns it and liquidation of all the infrastructure that allows deployment of these weapons abroad.

The withdrawal condition is not new, of course, but if I remember correctly, the infrastructure has never been mentioned that explicitly before. This was probably a reaction to the idea that has been suggested as one possible solution of the problem of nuclear weapons in Europe - that the United States could take them out, but preserve the option of brining them back on a short notice.

This clarification will certainly make the talks about tactical weapons a bit more difficult. However, there is a silver lining to this apparent hardening of Russia's position - if the United States and Russia will get serious about consolidating all their tactical weapons in a limited number of storage facilities on their national territories (as I think they should), then Russia's condition opens the door to a discussion of eliminating the infrastructure that would allow re-deployment of those weapons (say, in Kaliningrad, Olenegorsk,* or wherever they might be). Presumably, Russia would want to verify that the nuclear weapons infrastructure in, say, Germany or Turkey is eliminated. That is well, but it should be asked to open its own forward deployed bases for inspections as well.

(* Edited to add a second region to make it clear that this doesn't imply that Kaliningrad should be treated differently from the rest of Russia's territory.)   

On February 26, 2011, the Space Forces conducted a successful launch of a Soyuz-2.1b launcher. The launch was conducted at 06:07 MSK (03:07 UTC) from the launch pad No. 4 of the launch complex No. 43 of the Plesetsk launch site. The launcher, equipped with a Fregat boost stage, carried the first Glonass-K navigation satellite. The satellite successfully reached its nominal orbit.

The satellite received international designation 2011-009A and NORAD number 37372. The spacecraft was designated Cosmos-2471 and Glonass number 701 (it was used before by Cosmos-2404). It was deployed in the third orbital plane of the Glonass constellation.

The new generation Glonass-K satellites have extended operational lives and are designed to provide better accuracy.

[Edited on 3/1/2011 and 3/3/2011 to update the satellite designation.]