RUSSIA: Russian president Vladimir Putin has announced the deployment of a brand-new nuclear weapon unequalled elsewhere in the world, in a speech that took many observers back to the old days of the Cold War, writes Chris Stephen in Moscow
Mr Putin gave no details of the mystery weapon, but in a speech yesterday likely to ring alarm bells among enemies and allies alike, he said the new "nuclear systems" would form the cornerstone of a tough new security policy. "They will be put into service in the next few years and, what is more, they will be developments of the kind that other nuclear powers do not and will not have," he said.
There was no clue as to who these weapons would be aimed at, nor how their introduction would affect existing treaties that limit weapons stockpiles.
"I am sure that in the near future weapons will appear," he said, "which other nuclear powers do not and will not possess." The announcement was linked to promises of a build-up of conventional armed forces to combat the war on terror.
But it has left defence experts puzzled because nuclear weapons appear to have no role in fighting terrorists. "Nukes are only useful against area targets, there's nothing tactical about a nuclear weapon," said Mr Duncan Bullivant, director of the London-based defence consultancy Henderson Risk.
"From a military point of view it's illogical to be looking to deploy new nuclear weapons when the threat comes from terrorists." There is also puzzlement about what breakthroughs are left in the field of nuclear weapons: With the coming of the H bomb, the nuclear arsenals of east and west already have the weapons to annihilate the world many times over.
Existing H bombs already have the power to wipe out whole cities, making higher-yield weapons pointless.
Another possibility is that Russia has developed a neutron-style weapon, which kills people while leaving buildings intact, but again this is not a new device, having been developed in the 1980s. A precision-weapon seems unlikely, because the whole point of a nuclear warhead is to deliver a punch beyond the means of conventional weapons.
Earlier this month, Defence Minister Mr Sergei Ivanov announced that Russia was ready to test a mobile version of its Topol-M ballistic nuclear missile.
Mobility for the launch would make such a missile harder for NATO to strike than the present arrangement of placing them in concrete silos. In practice, hidden in the great Russian landmass, they would be impossible for NATO to detect.
The Topol missiles are reported to have multiple warheads, and to be capable of manoeuvre, making them harder to destroy by America's planned anti-nuclear missile shield.
In 2000 the Bush administration annoyed Moscow by deciding to deploy this anti-missile system, despite complaints that it would change the "balance of terror" between the arsenals of the two sides.
If Russia is to deploy a more stealthy form of nuclear missile, it is likely to ring alarm bells in Washington, not just because of the system's capabilities but because Washington had assumed that it had a strategic partnership with Russia.
Moscow may now be asked to explain who these missiles can be aimed at, given that only a handful of world states have nuclear weapons.
The new weapon also puts a question mark over the web of treaties that have been agreed since the end of the Cold War and which give nuclear powers the right to inspect each other's weapons and also set limits on the numbers of weapons each side will possess.