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NUCLEAR MISSILES FOR SALE BY MAIL ORDER
Western Defence. December, 2000. Toby Moore and Will Stewart
 Fancy a submarine? Six are on offer.
The sales booklet covers not only nuclear weapons but details with information on nuclear missile submarines.
There are details of spy satellites and of the technology used to send orders to nuclear submarines, plus illustrations of multiple warhead missiles being fired at a target at sea.
Wealthier buyers might prefer a submarine, of which there are half a dozen, including the missile-carrying class. Items on offer also include:
- The SS-27 intercontinental ballistic missile, which can be launched from a truck and strike within 0.9 kilometres of its target.
- The TU-95MS strategic missile aircraft, which carries a conventional bomb load of 20 tons.
- Air-launched cruise missiles like the KH-55, to be used with the TU-160 supersonic strategic bomber.
- The KH-55SM cruise missile "designed to destroy vital installations with nuclear warheads in remote areas". It can travel 3,000 kilometres, hugging the land to within a height of 40 metres above the ground.
Russia is putting its nuclear arsenal up for sale at this week's Farnborough Air Show in a move that threatens a new arms race.
It will be marketing details of its once top-secret missiles for just $330
in an illustrated A-to-Z of complex weapons systems.
The 511-page brochure, potentially more devastating than any military hardware on display at the showcase event, amounts to a mail order catalogue, the first ever published by a nuclear power.
Defence department officials in Washington, who have seen a copy, are said to be aghast at contents full of the sort of detail that spies once risked their lives to discover.
Western defence analysts fear that the work, entitled Strategic Nuclear Forces, signals a willingness by the Russian government to escalate ownership of nuclear weapons around the world. Farnborough's most important visitors are arms buyers. Western analysts also believe that the decision to reveal top-secret information is a calculated reminder of Russian power, despite a crippled economy and diminished superpower status, at a delicate stage in international relation.
One US defence official warned that the work appeared to be nothing less than a "sales brochure" and could help "rogue states" as North Korea, Iraq and Iran develop long-range nuclear missiles. The CIA has long regarded Russia as a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction.
"This is the stuff of James Bond", said Norman Polmar, a leading American arms specialist and author of definitive books on the US Navy. "This is also about Russia saying, 'We' re open for business' by effectively adding, 'Look, we can anything'".
Tomas Langan, chief executive of New Jersey-based company Tommax, which is selling the 2,500 copies made available for sale, boasted: "No other book has this kind of information. Your defence department won't have seen the stuff in here".
There I, however, one item that the Russians will be holding back.
They have withdrawn their newest warplane – the supersonic Golden Eagle – from the show, fearing M16 will steal its unique design secrets.
The state-of-the-art Sukhoi-37, with its wings swept forward, is exceptionally hard to detect by enemy radar and had been due to make its debut at Farnborough.
With a maximum speed faster than Mach 2, it can simultaneously track two dozen targets and shoot at eight at the same time. it is predicted to far outperform the US Stealth F-117 fighter.
"The Russian Defence Ministry and Federal Security Service are worried that Britain's M16 intelligence service might take advantage of the show to attempt to familiarize itself in detail with the design of an aircraft which has no counterpart anywhere in the world", revealed the Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper.
Russia is anxious to claw back a share of the global arms trade lost since the Cold War ended.
It has faced the indignity of slipping from being amongst the largest manufacturers of sophisticated weapons to having just six per cent of the current world market.
The much-resented expansion of Nato to include former Soviet bloc countries, which were once an instant market for Russian weapons, has added to its frustrations.
It is ironic that Russia should be seeking to market its weapons at a time it is also preaching non-proliferation.
Weapon details are on
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