BMD Focus: Bulava breakthrough -- Part 2

WASHINGTON, July 13 (UPI) -- The successful test of Russia's formidable new submarine-launched Bulava intercontinental ballistic missile on June 28 has many lessons for Western policymakers and analysts.

The Bulava flew straight and true on June 28 in a test launch from a submerged ballistic missile submarine in the White Sea to hit its designated target area thousands of miles to the east at Kura on the Kamchatka Peninsula on Russia's Pacific Rim coast.

Russian President Vladimir Putin publicly applauded the successful test, coming as it did after three successive test failures on Sept. 7, Oct. 25 and Dec. 24 last year.

The first lesson to be drawn from the Bulava's checkered, but once again on-target development program, is that there is a lot more to developing a new ballistic version or even a significantly upgraded version of an old one than most people think.

The Russian strategic missile development program is being lavishly funded once again thanks to the huge influx of energy dollars from Russia's oil and gas exports. And Russia has had more experience and a larger number of successful intercontinental ballistic missile tests than any other nation in the world. But the Bulava's problems have so far remained intractable.

The second lesson is that the Bulava's poor record last year contrasted with the exceptional reliability of most of Russia's land-based ICBMs and satellite-carrying booster rockets such as the Topol-M, the RS-20 -- also known as the SS-18 -- and the Soyuz. This may suggest that the problem is not in the basic missile design, but in the marine engineering involved in the manufacturing its launch tube.

Or it may be that the changes that have been made to the basic Topol-M design to adapt it for launch from a submarine have created some unanticipated technical problems. The Bulava was designed at the Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology.

It should also be noted that for all their otherwise impressive record of success, Russian missile designers have repeatedly encountered problems with the challenge of designing a new generation of submarine-launched ICBMs from scratch. The "Bark" design that preceded the Bulava was scrapped and the design was taken to adapt the Topol-M or maritime use instead.

Third, Russia's June 28 success repeats a lesson that the thousands of scientists, engineers and technicians developing the U.S. ballistic missile defense program know very well. Repeated failure is probable for any eventually successful ballistic missile development or defense program. A lot of things will go wrong before enough is learned to make sure that things will go reliably right. It is often self-defeating and short-sighted to admit defeat and throw in the towel too soon.

Fourth, as Russia's prominent and outspoken independent military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer has pointed out, one successful test does not make a successful program. The Bulava still has a long way to go before it has been operationally tested a sufficient number of times for it to be produced in significant numbers and deployed on the new Borey 955 class nuclear strike submarines that have been designed to carry it. The first of the class, the Yury Dolgoruky, is designed to carry 12 Bulavas with 12 multiple independently targeted re-entry vehicles, or MIRV-ed, warheads each. The remaining 11 Boreys will carry as many as 16 Bulavas each.

However, fifth, given the Russian military-industrial complex's long and excellent quality-control track record in making highly reliable long-range ballistic missiles over the past half a century, it appears unrealistic to bet against the Bulava program's long-term success and the missile's eventual deployment.

Even more than the development and the deployment of the road- and rail-mobile Topol-Ms that are now the backbone of the Russian strategic nuclear arsenal, or the new RS-24 ICBM that is now being developed and tested, the brighter prospects for the Bulava serve notice that Russia will remain a superpower in the most fundamental way for decades at least to come. Only the United States can match or exceed the destructive power of the Russian strategic nuclear arsenal. China is still many years, and probably decades, away from fielding anything comparable.

The final and most fundamental factor of the successful Bulava test, therefore, is that Russian power, and the awesome Russian strategic nuclear deterrent, is going to be around for a long time to come. As they wrestle with other threats and challenges around the world, U.S. policymakers should never forget that.