While Russia continues to support diplomacy with the US on tying to
resolve the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty dispute, they will not be letting the United States directly inspect any Russian nuclear missiles, saying such a step wouldn’t be justifiable.
Russian Deputy FM Sergey Ryabkov says such inspections would be
“extremely intrusive,” and that the US had previously refused Russian
requests to inspect US submarines in relation to a different arms
treaty.
The dispute is on the Russian 9m729 missiles, and their maximum range.
The INF bans all nuclear missiles with ranges from 500 km to 5,500 km.
Russia has only tested the missile to 400 km, and it is intended to
replace an older design that also had a 400 km range.
The US, however, believes the missile has a much longer range, and is
basing that on its similarity to a submarine-based missile with a longer
range. Russia, however, has never tested that, meaning the US claim of a
violation is based on a purely theoretical best-case scenario for the
missile doing what Russia says it wasn’t intended to even attempt.
I doubt it’s the missiles that Washington is worried about but the launchers. If just like the VLS at the European ABM sites such as Deveselu, the launchers are capable of firing other missiles, thent if/when a war kicks off the launchers can be quickly and easily reloaded with longer range cruise missiles developed for ship/sub/air launch. Washington can’t complain about that because they already have that possibility.
It was Washington which was dead set against extending treaty limitations to ship and air missiles. The generals at the time were livid with Gorbachev for having gone along with it anyway.
At the time, the United States had a lead but I strongly suspect the Russians have overtaken the United States with cruise missiles such as the Kalibr. The Russians have invested heavily in missile technology while the US has gone with stealth which may be useful when fighting lower tier militaries but might be of limited use against peers or near peers.
The new missile is larger and carries more fuel because it is a lot faster than the old one.
What? Those kind Americans always allow full examination of all their “defense” equipment.