EVOLUTION OF THE STRATEGIC ROCKET FORCES OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION IN THE POST-COLD WAR ERA
EVOLUTION OF THE STRATEGIC ROCKET FORCES OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION IN THE POST-COLD WAR ERA

Author(s): Mario MARINOV
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, Politics, Military policy, Politics of History/Memory
Published by: Carol I National Defence University Publishing House
Keywords: Russia; RVSN; nuclear deterrence; intercontinental missiles.
Summary/Abstract: Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Russian Federation has placed great effort and resources in maintaining the quantitative and qualitative characteristics of its strategic nuclear forces. The land-based component in particular, the RVSN, encompasses the larger part of Russia’s strategic nuclear arsenal and as such warrants examination and assessment against the backdrop of dynamic and adversarial relations in the international system of security relations, particularly between the major nuclear powers. The following paper will examine the transformative processes within Russia’s Strategic Rocket Forces over the past three decades, with the principal objective to deconstruct the main policy directions, vectors of technical development and present state and structure of formations. Principal political decisions in the examined time-frame are tied with set goals encompassing Russian modernisation efforts of the land-based strategic nuclear arm, with the historical processes in turn tied to an evaluation of present-day capabilities in both technical terms and observations on the organisational structure of the RVSN as the main strategic nuclear deterrent within Russia’s broader nuclear capabilities.

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