Sources on Russian naval NSNW?

[GeneralVikus]

Hey everyone,

I'm researching the current nuclear balance and the best source I've found so far is the nuclear notebook, which breaks down the warhead totals by launcher type.

https://thebulletin.org/wp-content/uplo ... table1.pdf

About half of the warheads - the 935 naval warheads - are all lumped together, and this total apparently includes SAMs, torpedoes, depth charges, SSMs, and land attack missiles. Obviously this is something of a problem, as it makes a huge difference to the overall balance whether we're talking about mostly land attack missiles or mostly ASW weapons. Apparently, the total derives from the nominal capacity of the launchers; so there's no obvious reason why there shouldn't be a breakdown available: that is, the number of nuclear - capable land attack missiles should be a subset of the 935 "warhead" (read: warhead capacity) figure. Can anyone tell me where I might find such a breakdown, or any other useful information?

[SunlitZelkova]

Hey everyone,

I'm researching the current nuclear balance and the best source I've found so far is the nuclear notebook, which breaks down the warhead totals by launcher type.

https://thebulletin.org/wp-content/uplo ... table1.pdf

About half of the warheads - the 935 naval warheads - are all lumped together, and this total apparently includes SAMs, torpedoes, depth charges, SSMs, and land attack missiles. Obviously this is something of a problem, as it makes a huge difference to the overall balance whether we're talking about mostly land attack missiles or mostly ASW weapons. Apparently, the total derives from the nominal capacity of the launchers; so there's no obvious reason why there shouldn't be a breakdown available: that is, the number of nuclear - capable land attack missiles should be a subset of the 935 "warhead" (read: warhead capacity) figure. Can anyone tell me where I might find such a breakdown, or any other useful information?

I think the reason is that production of those weapons falls outside the scope of the strategic balance study, so they don’t count it.

Are you researching it for a scenario? If so, you can just find the number of whichever missiles has been produced, the number carried on each ship, and then just run with that. In all likelihood those vessels aren’t going to have a home port to return to, so it doesn’t matter how many reloads there are or not.

Naval weapons like cruise missiles, SAMs, and torpedoes don’t fall under arms control treaties though, so a single accurate number will not be available. Estimates of the production of those weapons probably exist, but the exact number will be hard to determine.

[GeneralVikus]

I'm writing a paper on the NATO - Russia nuclear balance, both strategic and nonstrategic. You are correct - nonstrategic weapons by definition are not covered by any arms control treaty so all figures are just guesses. However, the source I posted, the FAS nuclear notebook, does break down air and land based NSNW by launch platform; and their footnote says,

'The 1,912 listed make up the estimated nominal load for nuclear-capable delivery platforms.'

i.e. they're not actually estimating the number of warheads, they're estimating the capacity of the platforms and presuming that there are enough warheads to go around. There could be lots of reloads for all of these platforms for all we know, but that's outside their methodology. So my main question boils down to which versions of the Kalibr are likely nuclear capable (I presume the one with the smaller warhead might not be?) how many have been produced and expended, or what is the total launch capacity of the Russian fleet - whichever number is available. Of course, knowing the number of nuclear armed SSMs and SAMs and torpedoes might be nice too, but not nearly as important as far as the overall NATO - Russia balance is concerned.

[Nikel]

This is the estimation by another author Igor Sutyagin, that is lower, and also older, but more detailed.

https://www.europeanleadershipnetwork.o ... pdated.pdf


Found the name of the author in this paper.

https://sgp.fas.org/crs/nuke/RL32572.pdf

[GeneralVikus]

Yeah, that paper's my backup. Obviously it's not ideal to use a 10 year old source, and the author totally wasn't an American spy, either. For some reason he's not readily contactable, can't imagine why.

[Nikel]

More details on the weapons, but still not on the numbers

https://www.recna.nagasaki-u.ac.jp/recn ... sia2021_en