STRATDELA #28

Strategic offensive weapons

B-2A heavy bomber still getting upgrades, although will probably not mate with the future LRSO cruise missile. However they can sink ships with bombs now.

B-52H (non-nuclear, reportedly) flew over Finland to Romania and than carried out some Middle Eastern operations. BTW returning nuclear mission to some of the de-nuclearized bombers looks cheap and easy. Also, no surprises here, Russian MFA long argued that it is the case.

Yars road-mobile ICBMs rolled here and there, nothing special.

Russian and Chinese heavy bombers (Tu-95MS and H-6K) paid a visit to NORAD, it remains unclear who was more impressed with what.

#Hyperhype

LRHW Dark Eagle participated in joint force exercise - with electronic launches, obviously. US Army seem rather confident in its future deployment, however the results of the latest test launch in July remain unclear. Some details about Resolute Hunter exercise available here.

Australians really want to get some HACM hypersonic missiles for their F/A-18s, which makes sense, but might be complicated. I’ve been following SCIFiRE for a while, so no surprises here.

BTW that HALO thing is not really hypersonic, as it turns out.

Chinese YJ-21 sea-based hypersonic missile also shown:

Post-INF

Japanese military officials visited JBLM and took some photos with Typhon. I am pretty confident that we will see both this system as well as Dark Eagle are some variants of those in JSDF service.

Russian officials suggest that the possible response measure to the US INF-range weapons deployments will include nuclear-tipped weapons. Not that anyone had doubts…

Putin also said a few more words, with the main message that Moratorium probably still stands, but the weapons development might speed up.

Missile defense

Missile Defeat still on the table, with a major space flavour.

Military space

Russia’s intent to design the ability to put a nuclear weapon in space mentioned again here. Note the words used - hardly about something imminent.

In the meantime, US space weapons are always very responsible, in case anyone had any doubts. Although space fires are needed for space superiority…Really.

Also, ARMY SPACE INTERDICTION FIRES.

More New Space contracts with military-ish flavour: Firefly seems to be in love with L3Harris.

Arms control, diplomacy and signalling

China stopped any arms control-ish and risk reduction-ish and non-pro-ish talks with the Americans over Taiwan arms deliveries.

Final P5/N5 meeting under Russian chairmanship took place in Geneva on July 23rd. There was an NPT RevCon PrepCom, ICYMI, but there is plenty of coverage in other places. Might write something later though.

Third stage of the Russian NSNW exercise involved Central military district and MiG-31BM interceptors with what looked like mockups of nuclear-tipped air-to-air missiles. Traditional Iskanders and 12 Main Directorate convoys also shown.

Further reading (and watching)

• Latest STRATDELA Special about future B-21 home

• My thoughts on the latest post-INF developments

• More thoughts on possible areas of strategic cooperation between Russia and China.

• Overview of DPRK nuclear weapons

• Fresh ideas in the “if it floats - it fights” genre.

• Remarks by Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy Dr. Vipin Narang

• IISS thoughts about INF-range weapons coming back to Europe

• Updates on US nuclear warhead stockpile

• Video of the IST webinar about nuclear crisis communications

• Analysis on US ICBM lobbying dynamics

• Funny story about UK submarine producers and subcontractors

• Cool details about hohlraum and LLNL

• Very detailed speech by NNSA Administrator Jill Hruby

• Good interview with Tariq Rauf

• Long piece about issues with the US nuclear arsenal modernization

Music

BODY COUNT kicks ass, as always:

End Notes

That’s it for now.

Stay tuned for more good stuff!