Russian leaders have high hopes for new nukes this year — again

MOSCOW — The Russian ministry of defense has declared 2024 as the year when several nuclear weapons will enter the inventory of Moscow’s strategic forces, moving a number of goalposts that were meant to be reached last year.

Deputy Defense Minister Alexei Krivoruchko said on Jan. 26 that the entry into the armed forces of the Sarmat strategic missile system, Tu-160M bombers and the Borei-A nuclear submarine Knyaz Pozharsky are the main tasks for 2024. The objectives have remained the same since December 2022, when Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced atomic-weapons plans for the then-upcoming year during a speech at the Defence Ministry Board.

The development of the Sarmat missile system has been behind schedule for a long time, and only one successful flight test of the missile is recorded. This is due to the fact that the production and testing of the rocket are under the jurisdiction of Roscosmos, which suffers from low profitability, accumulated debts and increased losses.

The CEO of Roscosmos, Yuri Borisov, in a December 2023 interview with Rossiya 24 TV channel, said that the corporation had lost 180 billion rubles ($2 billion) of export revenue due to the strong impact of sanctions.

The closure of access to Western technologies and components required the search for alternatives, which led to the fact that Roscosmos enterprises incur additional costs, as due dates for equipment deliveries approach.

The desire to reduce costs led to the fact that from 2019 to 2021 Roscosmos laid off 17,000 workers, and in 2023 halved the staff of the headquarters office.

Due to lack of funds, Roscosmos seeks to find investments in cooperation with countries such as Algeria and Egypt, and in 2023 entered the borrowing market for the first time, planning to issue bonds worth 50 billion rubles.

As a result, orbital launches have decreased and stagnated at the level of 15-26 launches per year for the last eight years. Test launches of Russian land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles also decreased from 6-10 in 2013-2017 to 2-5 in 2018-2023, publicly available figures suggest.

Roscosmos subsidiaries involved in the production of Sarmat have financial and production problems. In particular, the Proton-PM plant, which produces the missile’s propulsion system, “faced limited access to Western equipment, tools, raw materials of imported origin and an increase in the interest burden on loans,” director Ivan Krasnov said in 2022.

As stated in the company’s corporate magazine, officials instead bought Russian, Belarusian or Chinese machining and foundry equipment.

In addition, several top Proton-PM managers were arrested last year on charges of embezzlement to the tune of 195 million rubles in connection with planned equipment upgrades, regional media reported.

Chemical Automatics Design Bureau (CADB), which produces the second stage of the Sarmat missile, is in a pre-bankruptcy state. The company has had a chronic shortage of working capital.

After the start of the war, money appeared, but while employees’ wages came through on time again, other CADB contractors are still having difficulty getting paid, a source at the company told Defense News on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information. Management also failed to modernize the workshops, as was promised in late 2021, the source added.

Plant managers have been selling non-core assets, like a production site and a canteen for 247.8 million rubles, according to the source.

Meanwhile, the Kazan Aviation Plant (KAP), located in Kazan, Tartastan region, is engaged in the modernization of the existing Tu-160 bombers to a Tu-160M standard, while also producing new planes. The government has previously said the company had prepared four modernized Tu-160M, one of which was transferred to the Ministry of Defense in 2022. In 2023, the Ministry of Defense continued testing it together with Tupolev Company, while the rest of the aircraft are continuing factory testing.

Tupolev is on contract to deliver 10 new bombers by 2027. The first Tu-160M, an upgraded Soviet-era plane, made its first flights in January and December 2022. The second one started factory tests only one year ago, making it unlikely that four upgraded bombers could have been delivered in 2023.

“KAP produced 1-1.5 aircraft per year, that is, it is not able to fulfill the plans of the Defense Ministry,” said Pavel Luzin, senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, a U.S.-based think tank.

The company is said to be lagging with the modernization of its production facilities, which was supposed to be completed by 2020. In addition, there is the bite of Western sanctions.

“Due to the sanctions, there is a problem of access to the latest machines and tools, high-quality composite materials, high-strength steel, electronic components and other material,” said a professor at the Moscow Aviation Institute who wished to remain anonymous. “There is a replacement in Russia and Asia, but the quality leaves much to be desired. A lot of time is spent on improvements and not everything can be found in the required quantity.”

In addition, KAP has been experiencing a shortage of workers for years. A year before the war against Ukraine, the Tatarstan region’s minister of industry and trade, Albert Karimov, said that 70% of industrial enterprises in the region needed workers, 26,000 thousand people. Among the companies experiencing the greatest shortage, Karimov named the KAP plant.

As a result of ongoing delays, the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade previously sued Tupolev for 5.8 billion rubles as a penalty under the Tu-160M contract.

According to TASS reports, Russia’s state-owned news agency, the Borei-A-class submarine Knyaz Pozharsky was to be launched in 2023, and two more submarines were to be laid down. While experts don’t consider production shortfalls as the program’s bottleneck, the delay may negatively affect the test program, since the deadline for the delivery of the Navy submarine remains December 2024.

“Plans for the laying of 11 and 12 Borei-A class submarines have not been canceled. Besides, for the Russian authorities, it is necessary to load the plant with something in the 2030s, otherwise it is not very viable in the current political economic situation,” says CEPA’s Luzin.

Maxim Starchak is a Russia correspondent for Defense News. He previously worked as an editor for the Russian Defence Ministry and as an expert for the NATO Information Office in Moscow. He has covered Russian nuclear and defense issues for the Atlantic Council, the Center for European Policy Analysis, the Royal United Services Institute and more.

莫斯科——俄罗斯国防部宣布，2024年将是莫斯科战略部队拥有多种核武器的一年，这推迟了原定于去年实现的多项目标。

国防部副部长阿列克谢·克里沃鲁奇科1月26日表示，萨尔马特战略导弹系统、图-160M轰炸机和北风之神-A型核潜艇“波扎尔斯基公爵”号列装武装部队是2024年的主要任务。自2022年12月国防部长谢尔盖·绍伊古在国防部委员会发表讲话，宣布来年核武器计划以来，这些目标一直保持不变。

“萨尔马特”导弹系统的研发长期滞后，至今仅有一次成功的试飞记录。这主要是因为该导弹的生产和测试由俄罗斯航天局负责，而俄罗斯航天局盈利能力低下，债务累积，亏损不断增加。

俄罗斯航天局首席执行官尤里·鲍里索夫在 2023 年 12 月接受俄罗斯 24 电视台采访时表示，由于制裁的强烈影响，该公司损失了 1800 亿卢布（20 亿美元）的出口收入。

由于无法获得西方技术和零部件，俄罗斯不得不寻找替代方案，这导致随着设备交付期限的临近，俄罗斯航天集团旗下企业产生了额外的成本。

为了降低成本，俄罗斯航天局在 2019 年至 2021 年间裁员 17,000 人，并在 2023 年将总部办公室的员工人数减少了一半。

由于资金短缺，俄罗斯航天局寻求与阿尔及利亚和埃及等国合作进行投资，并于 2023 年首次进入借贷市场，计划发行价值 500 亿卢布的债券。

因此，轨道发射次数有所下降，并在过去八年中停滞在每年15-26次的水平。公开数据显示，俄罗斯陆基洲际弹道导弹的试射次数也从2013-2017年的6-10次下降到2018-2023年的2-5次。

参与萨尔马特导弹生产的俄罗斯航天集团子公司面临财务和生产问题。特别是负责生产导弹推进系统的质子-PM工厂，“面临着西方设备、工具和进口原材料供应受限以及贷款利息负担加重等问题”，该厂厂长伊万·克拉斯诺夫在2022年表示。

正如该公司企业杂志所报道的那样，高管们转而购买了俄罗斯、白俄罗斯或中国的机械加工和铸造设备。

此外，据地区媒体报道，去年 Proton-PM 的几位高层管理人员因涉嫌挪用与计划中的设备升级有关的 1.95 亿卢布资金而被捕。

生产萨尔马特导弹第二级的化学自动化设计局（CADB）已处于破产边缘。该公司长期面临营运资金短缺的问题。

战争爆发后，资金到位，但尽管员工工资再次按时发放，其他CADB承包商仍然面临付款困难。一位公司内部人士匿名向《防务新闻》透露了这一消息，因为他需要讨论敏感信息。该人士还补充说，管理层也未能像2021年底承诺的那样对车间进行现代化改造。

据消息人士透露，工厂管理人员一直在出售非核心资产，例如生产基地和食堂，共计 2.478 亿卢布。

与此同时，位于塔尔塔斯坦共和国喀山的喀山航空工厂（KAP）正在进行现有图-160轰炸机的现代化升级，升级至图-160M标准，同时也在生产新飞机。政府此前曾表示，该公司已完成四架现代化升级的图-160M，其中一架已于2022年交付国防部。2023年，国防部与图波列夫公司继续对该架飞机进行测试，而其余飞机则继续在工厂进行测试。

图波列夫公司已签订合同，将在2027年前交付10架新型轰炸机。首架图-160M是苏联时代飞机的升级版，分别于2022年1月和12月进行了首飞。第二架飞机仅在一年前开始进行工厂测试，因此不太可能在2023年交付四架升级版轰炸机。

“KAP每年生产1-1.5架飞机，也就是说，它无法满足国防部的计划，”总部位于美国的智库欧洲政策分析中心高级研究员帕维尔·卢津说。

据称，该公司生产设施的现代化改造进度滞后，原计划于2020年完成。此外，还面临着西方制裁的冲击。

“由于制裁，获取最新机器和工具、高质量复合材料、高强度钢、电子元件和其他材料都存在问题，”一位不愿透露姓名的莫斯科航空学院教授表示。“俄罗斯和亚洲有一些替代品，但质量远不能令人满意。我们花费大量时间进行改进，但并非所有材料都能以所需的数量获得。”

此外，KAP多年来一直面临劳动力短缺问题。在乌克兰战争爆发前一年，鞑靼斯坦共和国工业和贸易部长阿尔伯特·卡里莫夫表示，该地区70%的工业企业需要工人，即2.6万人。卡里莫夫将KAP工厂列为劳动力短缺最严重的企业之一。

由于持续的延误，俄罗斯工业和贸易部此前曾起诉图波列夫公司，要求其根据 Tu-160M 合同支付 58 亿卢布的违约金。

据俄罗斯国家通讯社塔斯社报道，北风之神-A级潜艇“波扎尔斯基大公”号原计划于2023年下水，另有两艘潜艇计划开工建造。尽管专家认为产能不足并非该项目的瓶颈，但此次延误可能会对测试计划产生负面影响，因为海军潜艇的交付期限仍为2024年12月。

“建造11艘和12艘北风之神-A级潜艇的计划并未取消。此外，对俄罗斯当局来说，在2030年代必须让该工厂有所作为，否则在目前的政治经济形势下，该工厂的运营将难以持续，”CEPA的卢津表示。

马克西姆·斯塔恰克是《防务新闻》的俄罗斯特派记者。他曾任俄罗斯国防部编辑，也曾担任北约驻莫斯科新闻办公室专家。他还曾为大西洋理事会、欧洲政策分析中心、皇家联合军种研究所等机构报道俄罗斯核问题和国防问题。