Leaked Documents Indicate Ongoing Production Of Nuclear-Armed 3M-14S Kalibr Cruise Missiles
🇷🇺
The Ukrainian military news website Militarnyi recently disclosed unit costs for various Russian strike munitions derived from leaked Russian procurement documents. This includes documents indicating that Russia ordered 56 nuclear-armed 3M-14S sea-launched land-attack cruise missiles for delivery between 2024 and 2026. The subsonic 3M-14, better known as the Kalibr, is a submarine- and ship-launched land-attack cruise missile operated by the Russian Navy. The 3M-14 is related to the ground-launched 9M728 and 9M729 land-attack cruise missiles, which are operated by the Russian Army. The 3M-14S is the nuclear-armed version of the 3M-14 design family, which is primarily deployed in a non-nuclear version equipped with a high explosive warhead. The Russian 3M-14 family of cruise missiles is broadly analogous to the American RGM/UGM/BGM-109 Tomahawk family of subsonic land-attack cruise missiles.
While the non-nuclear 3M-14 Kalibr has seen extensive use in the hands of the Russian Black Sea Fleet over the course of the Russia-Ukraine War, this and other Russian land-attack cruise missiles are understood to have had a low penetration rate, which is to say that Ukraine’s air defences are understood to have sustained a high interception rate against Russian land-attack cruise missiles. While undesirable other than in terms of inducing the expenditure of an adversary’s finite stocks of anti-aircraft missiles, the low penetration rate of Russian land-attack cruise missiles against Ukraine calls into question the viability of the nuclear-armed sea-launched 3M-14S as well as the Kh-102 subsonic air-launched land-attack cruise missile, which is the nuclear-armed version of the better-known and more widely deployed Kh-101. It bears emphasis that the air-launched Kh-101, which is exclusively carried and launched by the Tu-95 and Tu-160 bombers of the Russian Air Force, is understood to have also had a low penetration rate over the course of the Russia-Ukraine War.
Although Russia’s so-called “strategic” nuclear weapons are primarily delivered by high-probability-of-penetration intercontinental-range ballistic missiles (ICBMs), the country continues to deploy large numbers of nuclear-armed cruise missiles of both the subsonic and supersonic varieties to attack both terrestrial and maritime targets. Without nuclear-armed cruise missiles or nuclear-armed ballistic missiles and similar, Russia will, in practice, be poorly positioned to undertake small-scale regional nuclear strikes against adversaries with advanced air defence capabilities, such as the United States and European NATO countries, without using one or more of its nuclear-armed ICBMs.
It remains to be seen whether and how Russia will upgrade the design of the 3M-14S and Kh-102, among other nuclear-armed Russian strike munitions, so as to attain a higher penetration rate. Russia may, over time, pivot away from nuclear-armed subsonic cruise missiles and place greater emphasis on high-speed strike munitions that cannot be so readily targeted by widely deployed lower-end air defence capabilities such as anti-aircraft artillery and shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles. Alternatively, Russia may develop new land-attack cruise missile designs that, among other things, have significantly reduced radar and infrared signatures. In the interim, the Russian Navy is likely to deploy the 3M-14S at sea, even though it is another fast-wasting Russian military asset with a quite poor prognosis for future effectiveness against fast-modernizing adversary militaries.