Medvedev has announced to deploy Iskander (Искандер-М) short-range missiles in Kaliningrad. The purpose of these missiles is to target the BMD interceptors to be stationed in Poland based on a Polish-US agreement signed back in August (which has not yet been ratified, however). Die 9M72-Missile (NATO-Designation SS-26 Stone) is a powerful, solid fuel propelled short-range surface-to-surface missile, land-mobile with MAZ-543 trucks (with 2 Iskander missiles deployed on a truck) and can be fired quite fast (less than 8 minutes after warning). The missile’s range is about 400 km with a payload of 800 kg. The missile can carry conventional warheads, cluster bombs splinter munition and allows for precision-strike operations (target deviation at no more than 10 m). The mssile is difficult to track with radar systems because it does have a very low flight curve with the apogee at about 50 km. The speed of the missile is about 2.6 km/s. Russia does export Iskander missiles as Iskander-E with a lower range and some other limited capabilities.
Just an initial guess: What – in military terms – would be the added value of SS-26 deployment against BMD bases? In case of a nuclear exchange, there would be a number of already deployed systems that would do the same job without relocation and would probably do it better given the small payload of Iskander. Hence, it seems that the forward deployment of ths weapon system primarily serves a political purpose. What is your opinion on this?
The political impact of Russia’s announcement on the Czech and Polish parliaments’s ratfication process on these countries’ bilateral agreements with the US will me modest at most, more likely though even detrimental.
If the Medvedev announcement was meant as a warning to president-elect Obama not to going ahead with the BMD deployment unless risk the Russian missile’s relocation this calculation might well be false. It only makes it harder for Obama to backtrack on BMD because he’d be accused in the US as giving in to Russian pressure. All the more so, as Obama has been criticized more than once during his presidential campaign as being inexprienced in foreign affairs.
So what do the Russians intend: My guess is that the relocation of the Iskander-M is just a first step in undermining the INF treaty of 1987. The range of the Iskander-M can be extended well over the threshhold of 500 km set in the INF treaty. As the Russians want to do away with INF anyway, this is a first step into this direction.