After months of an informal moratorium aimed at keeping nuclear tension low, in the face of several Kremlin threats since the Ukrainian War began, the United States decided to change its attitude and test four missiles at once.
The launch took place on Friday (17), according to the US Strategic Command, and involved four Trident 2 D5LEs, the modernized version of the main American naval nuclear missile. They were fired from an Ohio-class nuclear-powered submarine off the coast of California.
“Well, I think the Biden administration’s period of nuclear restraint is over,” wrote Hans Kristensen, head of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, one of the world’s leading experts on the topic, on Twitter.
The most recent test of its kind had taken place last September. On March 2, the US Air Force postponed the launch of another model, the ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) Minuteman 3, which is launched from ground silos. The claim was tension due to the war: no one wanted to send the wrong signal to Moscow.
Not that Vladimir Putin shared such a sensitivity. Five days before the attack on the neighbor, which took place on February 24, he commanded a mobilization and firing test of his main nuclear assets.
Three days into the war, Putin startled the world by declaring that his nuclear forces were on high alert. This was instrumental in reaffirming what he had said with few euphemisms since the beginning of the action: that NATO (Western military alliance) was in danger of suffering a nuclear attack if it intervened on behalf of Ukraine.
Over the course of the war, the nuclear card was pulled several times, either by Putin or by other Russian authorities. The specter of World War III, invoked to prevent Western aid to Kiev, still has an effect: despite sending in heavy weapons, NATO is still timid in delivering long-range systems.
The Russian president even announced, on Monday (20), that the new ICBM RS-28 Sarmat (Satan-2 in the West) will enter service at the end of this year. It was successfully tested, and due publicity, at the end of April.
Not that these tests took rivals entirely by surprise: they have to be reported under New Start, the last nuclear weapons control agreement still in place. After then-President Donald Trump left two other such treaties, it almost lapsed, but was extended by Joe Biden and Putin.
The USA and Russia concentrate about 90% of the more than 13 thousand nuclear warheads in the world. Of these, each country maintains up to 1,650 of the strategic type, the most potent ones to be used to change the course of conflicts, operational — that is, ready for use in silos, submarines or bombers.
Trident 2 accounts for about 70% of this US operational force. Each missile carries up to 8 independent warheads of 475 kilotons (31 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb) or up to 14 of lower power, 90 kilotons. Today, each of the 14 Ohio-class submarines carries 20 to 24 missiles, a number that drops to 16 in the British nuclear-powered Vanguard-class models, which also operate the Trident.
They can also carry Trump’s new weapons, 5-kiloton tactical warheads, theoretically limited to restricted military targets. No nuclear expert agrees, however, that the eventual use of a tactical weapon, as Putin is speculated to do in Ukraine, would end there.
All of this takes place during the week in which the TPAN (Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons) is being discussed in Vienna, an agreement already signed by 86 countries, but only ratified by 62 — Brazil has not yet done so. Predictably, the nuclear powers did not join.
