ONE WEAPON COULD CHANGE EVERYTHING FOR UKRAINE; & ITS RUSSIAN

We all know how duplicitous Russia can be – it’s essentially its normal state of operations. Back during Trump’s first term in 2016-20, he was presented with evidence about a new Russian missile.

The significance of the new weapon was real, because it was banned under the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty which expunged a whole range of Euro-centric nuclear weapons. These included the Ground Launched Cruise Missile, the Pershing-II IRBM, the US force of F-111’s based in the UK which could deliver as many as ten SRAM’s (short range attack missiles designed to interdict Soviet armor columns, rail points, marshaling yards and so on, and each equipped with a 200kt warhead). It also deleted the old Russian SS-4, but especially the hundreds of 3-warhead MIRV 120kt SS-20 IRBM’s that covered the whole of Europe. It was a massively important and ground breaking agreement that ended the Cold War in Europe and accelerated the decline of the Soviet Union. It also banned the development of new weapons to replace any of these categories for land launch. Naval and air launched weapons were not covered, but the deployment of air launched systems to Europe was if the aircraft was capable only of theater range operations only (ie the F-111, but they were all scrapped or handed to museums).

Years later in 2017, Trump was told that Russia was developing a new cruise missile that violated the agreement. The Russians claimed the US was wrong and it only had a range of under 500km – which excluded it from the INF treaty. The Americans were not convinced, they obviously had other information. Trump ultimately withdrew from the INF treaty over it in 2019 accusing the Russians of cheating.

It turns out they were.

Ukraine has alleged the Russians have used the new missile, the 9M729 Novator between 20 and 30 times this year. Most of all they have evidence it flew in excess of 1,200km, meaning all along that American intelligence was right, the Russians were cheating. However Trump withdrawing from the INF was the wrong response. The Americans should have pressed and pressed the Russians relentlessly over the missile using the treaty to demand evidence and inspections. Instead by withdrawing he effectively sanctioned its existence with no punishment.

There remains a basic understanding not to violate the top line of the treaty provisions of the INF but it is technically dead.

The 9M729 Novator it turns out has a range of 2,500km – it is entirely ground launched at present. It’s capable of carrying a nuclear warhead or a conventional one, is exceptionally accurate and is launched from a VLS truck along the lines of the S-400. And it’s hitting Ukraine.

So why will this make the difference to Ukraine?

Trump has a bee in his bonnet about the way the Russians lied to him the first time round, and despite both Russia and the US agreeing not to breech the INF principles the Russians clearly have, and the Ukrainians are only too keen to remind the administration of it.

When you feed this into the argument of over whether or not the US should grant Ukraine the use of Tomahawk GLCM’s – which the Pentagon has already agreed to, it needs only Trump’s sign off – the Russian missile, which the deliberately designed in secret and lied about, looks like it could come home to roost in quite the most unexpected way. If only the were more Typhon system launchers to deploy them on and for Ukraine to buy through NATO. Yet if there was a will there would be a way.

The Russians are seriously alarmed about the prospect of the Tomahawk. Its range and abilities mean it’s going to be impossible to prevent Ukraine reaching anything of military, industrial or infrastructure importance with a near 100% chance of success. It’s bad enough they have the Flamingo from Russia’s perspective, but Tomahawk they truly understand. The question is will Trump, who’s distracted enough to make no decision right now, agree?

Yet the Novator goes far beyond Ukraine politically and militarily. NATO has a problem, just as it did in 1977 when Helmut Schmidt warned the NATO states that Russia had a major new class of weapons (SS-20) that NATO had no answer too in deterrent form. That speech led to the Pershing-II and GLCM deployment being installed from November 1983, firstly in the UK at the infamous Greenham Common.

We as Europe, because you can forget this version of the Americans, have the same issue again. We need a matching deterrent – yet there’s nothing even slightly like it anywhere. We are completely dependent on the UK and French SLBM forces in the nuclear role.

Even if the missile was restricted to a conventional warhead the fact is a few hundred could cause mayhem around European military infrastructure and command nodes and we’d have absolutely nothing on that scale to retaliate with, and thus deter the attack in the first place.

This has inevitably resulted in some of the American analysts saying NATO needs a so called ‘double track’ approach again. In essence talk and deploy. We talk about not deploying them while developing them and persuade the Russians to give theirs up in a verifiable way, and then we don’t deploy the new equivalent. However there’s zero trust in Russia, or towards it, to make that likely.

To summarize, if Ukraine plays its cards right and points out why the Novator is being used against it and its threat to NATO longer term, the more likely they are to get permission to have Tomahawk.

In the wider picture NATO must come up with answers to what always was an illegally developed weapon – and its European NATO that needs to take the lead. It cannot be ignored because its geopolitically destabilizing weapon and its aimed right here at us.

It is true that the UK and Germany are working on a longer range deep strike cruise missile – the so called European Long-range Strike Approach (ELSA), but it’s in the earliest possible stages right now and it was not intended to have such a long range, at just 2,000Km. Perhaps it should. Britain can make nuclear warheads if needed. It would take willpower and determination, but most of all leadership to see it through.

The Analyst

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