Delivery systems Strategic In 1991, the USSR possessed approximately 29,000 nuclear warheads. The
Soviet Armed Forces operated a
nuclear triad that deployed over 10,000
strategic nuclear weapons: 6,280 warheads assigned to the
Strategic Rocket Forces' 1,334
intercontinental ballistic missiles, 3,626 warheads to the
Soviet Navy's 914
submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and 974 cruise missiles and bombs to
Long Range Aviation's 106
Tu-95MS and
Tu-160 bombers. Its most modern strategic missiles were the land-based
RT-2PM Topol,
RT-23 Molodets, and
UR-100N, and submarine-based
R-29RM,
R-39, and
R-29. An estimated 3,000 nuclear weapons tipped
surface-to-air missiles, and 100 tipped the
ABM-1 and
ABM-3 anti-ballistic missile systems around the capital city
Moscow. The think tank
SIPRI considered the long-range bombers the
Tu-22M,
Tu-95K22,
Tu-22 and
Tu-16 to be assigned only "non-strategic" warheads, Russian sites ultimately produced 1,250 tons of
highly enriched uranium (uncertainty ±120 tons) from 1949 to 2010, excluding HEU produced for
naval nuclear reactors. Of this, 500 tons was
downblended by the
Megatons to Megawatts Program, and a further hundred tons were used in production research reactors, nuclear tests, and other downblending programs. Russia is now believed to possess 656 tons between HEU stockpiles and HEU inside weapons themselves. This began with the
SU-20 electromagnetic separation plant, but the Soviet project quickly followed the Manhattan Project's
gaseous diffusion scheme, constructing the
D-1 plant in
Sverdlovsk-44, eventually becoming the
Ural Electrochemical Combine. The D-1 plant could produce 0.01 million
SWU/year. The development of the
gas centrifuge and waves of modernizations brought the Ural Electrochemical Combine to 11.9 million SWU/year by 1993. Further enrichment plants were built at the Siberian Chemical Combine, the
Zelenogorsk Electrochemical Plant and the
Angarsk Electrochemical Combine., a major production site of
plutonium and
tritium for nuclear weapons during the Soviet era.
Nuclear testing The Soviet Union used three major test sites:
Semipalatinsk in
Kazakhstan,
Novaya Zemlya in the extreme north, and
Kapustin Yar. Notable tests at Semipalatinsk following RDS-1 include
RDS-4, the first Soviet
tactical nuclear weapon,
RDS-6s, the first Soviet weapon to use thermonuclear reactions in a
layer cake design, sometimes called a
boosted fission weapon, and
RDS-37, the first Soviet true two-stage
thermonuclear weapon. Novaya Zemlya was the site of further megaton-range explosions, including the
Tsar Bomba, the largest weapon ever detonated, and the
Raduga live test of an
R-13 submarine-launched ballistic missile. Kapustin Yar was used for
high-altitude nuclear tests launched by missiles, including the
1961 tests and
Project K tests. The
Soviet Army also conducted the
Totskoye nuclear exercise in
Orenburg Oblast, 1954, in which 45,000 soldiers and hundreds of
tanks,
self-propelled guns, and
armored personnel carriers were maneuvered through the blast zone of an RDS-4 nuclear bomb. After the 1963
Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, underground testing continued at Semipalatinsk and Novaya Zemlya until 1990. The Soviet Union also developed
"clean" thermonuclear weapons, including weapons with only
deuterium as thermonuclear fuel, used in a brief program of
peaceful nuclear explosions.
Espionage and intelligence gathering During the
Eisenhower administration, the US believed that successful
aerial reconnaissance of the Soviet Union's nuclear facilities would be more likely than successful
human intelligence. Thus it deployed a range of aircraft on overflights, including the
Boeing RB-47 Stratojet and later the
Lockheed U-2. A U-2 was
famously shot down in 1960, causing international embarrassment to the US, after which it began transitioning to
reconnaissance satellites. Under
Project Genetrix in 1956, the US also launched
high-altitude balloons for reconnaissance, which
US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles justified saying "international law is obscure on the question of who owns the
upper air". The US also attempted a range of methods for a
nuclear detonation detection system, including
Project Grab Bag's air sampling balloons, and
Project Mogul's infrasound monitoring balloons. On 8 August 1974, the
Central Intelligence Agency's
Project Azorian obtained Soviet nuclear weapons in the form of
nuclear torpedoes, from the sunken wreck of the
Soviet submarine K-129 (1960). However, the raising ship
Glomar Explorer lost the submarine's section containing the
R-13 ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads, and codebooks and decoding machines. In the late Cold War, the US developed a
decapitation strike plan codenamed Canopy Wing, which would infiltrate and interfere with Soviet
nuclear command and control in the event of conflict, including potentially supplying false commands to Soviet pilots via
computer-generated voices.
Foreign stationing nuclear cruise missile, one of the Soviet nuclear weapons deployed to Cuba during the 1962
Cuban Missile Crisis.The Soviet Union practiced nuclear stationing during the Cold War, primarily with
Warsaw Pact countries. It stationed nuclear weapons in
East Germany,
Czechoslovakia,
Hungary,
Poland, and
Mongolia, as well as briefly in
Cuba during the 1962
Cuban Missile Crisis.
Cuba Under
Operation Anadyr during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviet Union brough an estimated 100 nuclear warheads to Cuba. Of these, 80 were assigned to
FKR-1 cruise missiles, 12 to
9K52 Luna-M rocket, and 6 to 8 to
R-12 Dvina missiles, although 42 Dvina missiles had been imported.
Ilyushin Il-28 medium bombers had also been imported in crates, but were not unpacked, with 6 gravity bombs available to them.
Suspected stationing in Bulgaria Approximately in 1985, the Soviet Union transferred a number of
SS-23 intermediate-range missiles to Warsaw Pact allies East Germany, Czechoslovakia and
Bulgaria. This was discovered in 1990, when a report from
The Military Balance revealed the undisclosed transfers. Although this wasn't in violation of any treaty, it was implied by the
INF Treaty that they would be destroyed. According to a
Pentagon official, during negotiations, the Soviet Union denied transferring any intermediate-range missiles to Bulgaria. Following the discovery, the 1990 annual U.S. "Report on Soviet Noncompliance with Arms Control Agreements" described the non-disclosure as "negotiating fraud" but it wasn't deemed an outright violation of the treaty. The missiles were equipped with conventional war-heads, but equipping them with nuclear warheads wouldn't have been difficult. The missiles were destroyed in 2002 as a consecuence of Bulgaria's bid to enter
NATO. This in conjunction with claims of USSR-Bulgarian nuclear weapon storage facilities, and alleged nuclear weapon release training from the Soviet Union to
Bulgarian Air Force personnel have fueled the suspicion that
Bulgaria could have been in possession of nuclear weapons at some point.
Other In 1963, in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the
Socialist Republic of Romania made a secret declaration to the United States that it did not host Soviet nuclear weapons, and that it would wish to remain neutral rather than uphold its Warsaw Pact obligations in the event of a superpower conflict. Some historical evidence indicates during the 1973
Yom Kippur War, the Soviet Union deployed nuclear weapons to
Egypt, including possibly providing two warheads to Soviet
Scud missile brigades, as well as the typical nuclear weapons stored on ships and submarines of the
5th Operational Squadron based in
Syria.
Crises Cuban Missile Crisis Sino-Soviet border conflict Post-dissolution Following the December 1991
dissolution of the Soviet Union, the hundreds of tactical warheads stationed in each of the fourteen other former
Soviet republics were withdrawn to Russia by May 1992. The over two thousand strategic warheads, stationed between
Belarus,
Ukraine, and
Kazakhstan, were withdrawn to Russia by November 1996, under the
Lisbon Protocol and
Budapest Memorandum. == Chemical weapons ==