While the U.S. continues to accuse Moscow of nuclear saber rattling, the surfacing of the U.S. ballistic missile submarine USS West Virginia in the Arabian Sea last week, is making waves in Russia. Yesterday, John Helmer, the dean of Western journalists in Moscow and author of the “Dances With Bears” blog, published an English translation of an Oct. 24 article by Alexander Timokhin in Vzglyad (View), a daily said to have have good connections with the Kremlin and the Russian military; the article provides a sobering view of what some in Russia are now thinking about U.S. intentions regarding nuclear war.
“Does the United States have the ability to instantly, within a few minutes, launch a disarming and unreciprocated nuclear strike on Russia? For decades, it was assumed that no, any U.S. attack would cause an immediate similar response from the Russian armed forces,” author Alexander Timokhin writes at the outset. “But now there is reason to believe that Washington has come to a different conclusion—and brazenly demonstrates it.”
Timokhin points out, including with a map, that two Russian Strategic Missile Forces (RVSN) bases, headquartered in Orenburg and Omsk, are within about 3,000 km of the Arabian Sea. This does not mean that the West Virginia was in the Arabian Sea to target those bases but rather its appearance was a message that the U.S. now considers that it can take out Russia’s nuclear arsenal without suffering a retaliatory strike in return.
Timokhin makes a number of points about how this came to be. One is that there are far fewer nuclear weapons available today than there were during the Cold War. Secondly, the Russian Navy has far fewer submarines than during the Cold War, both fewer ballistic missile submarines and fewer nuclear attack submarines. The attack submarines are needed to keep U.S. ballistic missile submarines out of waters from where they could launch missiles from a relatively close distance, shortening warning times.
Timokhin goes into some detail as to how he believes the U.S. could launch a first strike quickly enough to disarm Russia and prevent a Russian retaliation, and that, by launching missiles on a flat trajectory rather than a ballistic trajectory. A flat trajectory reduces both range and accuracy but dramatically shortens the flight time to the target, to the point that launch orders from Moscow would not reach the Russian Strategic Missile Forces units in time before they were destroyed.
“It’s all very complicated, and the risks of loss of surprise are very high,” Timokhin concludes. “But their chances of success are not zero. With the visit of West Virginia to our ‘soft underbelly,’ the Americans clearly show how far they are willing to go if they deem it necessary. The Americans are sending an extremely clear signal—for them, nuclear war is no longer unthinkable, and not impossible.” (https://johnhelmer.online/the-us-signals-readiness-to-launch-nuclear-strike-against-russia/ ; https://vz.ru/world/2022/10/24/1183495.html )
