Defense Focus: Wonder weapons -- Part 2

WASHINGTON, Sept. 26 (UPI) -- Why is Russia investing heavily in new thermobaric bombs and more formidable conventional submarines when it already has a formidable nuclear arsenal in nuclear-powered munitions and subs? There appears to be only one realistic answer: Russia is preparing to fight conventional wars as well as deterring nuclear ones.

In other words, Russia's new fuel bombs and possible diesel-electric/hydrogen cell submarines will give it far more capabilities to fight conventional wars.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has worked hard and with great success to revive Russia's arms exports. Sales have boomed to major nations such as China, India, Iran, Syria, Indonesia and Venezuela. Putin is also targeting the nations of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations -- which include Indonesia and Vietnam, a traditional Russian ally, for such sales. And Russian officials are hopeful of their prospects in the United Arab Emirates as well.

However, the development of the thermobaric, or fuel bombs, which the Kremlin has energetically publicized, and possible work on dual diesel-electric and hydrogen cell powered conventional submarines, which the Russian navy has denied, but which has been reported in the Russian media this month, do not fit into this category. They both are weapons systems that would enormously boost Russia's conventional military capabilities to fight non-nuclear wars.

Clearly, in the disturbed 21st century world, conventional wars are far from inconceivable for a major world power. The United States fought a full-scale conventional war in 2003 to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, and it has been fighting a Sunni Muslim insurgency in Iraq ever since. The United States and its NATO allies also continue to face a serious and escalating Sunni Muslim insurgency generated by the Taliban movement in Afghanistan.

Nor are the two formidable new non-nuclear military technologies that Russia appears to be developing unprecedented: The United States was the nation that first developed the formidable thermobaric bomb -- the most devastating non-nuclear munition yet created, and comparable in its effects to a small atomic bomb -- 40 years ago and used them in Vietnam. If Russia is indeed developing new dual drive conventional submarine propulsion systems as reported by the Moscow newspaper Kommersant on Sept. 12, it is copying, adapting and, no doubt, improving, upon new submarine technology that Sweden and Germany have both pioneered over the past two years.

The point about developing improved nuclear strategic weapons and delivery systems is that they are doomsday weapons. Although it is feasible that future limited nuclear wars could indeed be fought, the primary purpose of nuclear weapon systems is as "doomsday" or deterrent weapons that apply late U.S. strategist Herman Kahn's concept of mutually assured destruction to preserve the national security of nations.

This kind of grim balance held between the United States and the Soviet Union through the Cold War, and now it holds between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan -- traditional antagonists that between them contain one-fifth of the population of the human race.

However, to use the terminology of the great Israeli military historian Martin Van Creveld, non-nuclear weapons systems such as thermobaric, or fuel bombs, are far more "flexible" than nuclear weapons of comparable or greater power.

They combine the devastating power of atomic bombs -- that guerrilla forces or non-nuclear states such as Iraq or Iran could not hope to match -- with the freedom to use them in conventional conflicts such as Vietnam, Iraq or Chechnya. They therefore serve notice that major nuclear powers like Russia will not regard themselves as stymied if they face either future rebellions comparable to the kind of conflict they fought in Chechnya, or if, like the United States in Iraq, Russia's leaders feel the need in the future to wage major conventional campaigns as well.

If Russia is indeed developing new, more formidable diesel subs, that move may have different implications. It could signify a further willingness to boost conventional naval capabilities against the United States -- or even a desire in the future to sell the technology profitably to China, which has invested heavily in diesel submarine technology.

In both cases, the actual technology involved in the new conventional weapons is incremental rather than dramatic, relying as it does on improvements in previous existing systems. That is likely to make both weapons all the more reliable, formidable and cost effective.

But the strategic implications of both developments could be far more dramatic -- and troubling. They may indicate that Russia's current leaders are willing to contemplate future conventional conflicts of a far greater variety, intensity and even scale than was the case through all of the Cold War.