September 12, 2007
Russia doing what Russia does best
During the tensest days of the Cold War, Nikita Khrushchev famously declared that the Soviet Union was poised to “grind out missiles like sausages.”
The Soviet Union is no more, but Soviet-era thinking seems to persist in some sectors of the Russian government:
The Russian military has successfully tested what it described as the world's most powerful non-nuclear air-delivered bomb, Russia's state television reported Tuesday.
It was the latest show of Russia's military muscle amid chilly relations with the United States.
Channel One television said the new weapon, nicknamed the "dad of all bombs" is four times more powerful than the U.S. "mother of all bombs."
"The tests have shown that the new air-delivered ordnance is comparable to a nuclear weapon in its efficiency and capability," said Col.-Gen. Alexander Rukshin, a deputy chief of the Russian military's General Staff, said in televised remarks.
Like its U.S. predecessor, first tested in 2003, the Russian bomb is a "thermobaric" weapon that explodes in an intense fireball combined with a devastating blast. It explodes in a terrifying nuclear bomb-like mushroom cloud and wreaks destruction through a massive shock wave created by the air burst and high temperature.
---The Associated Press
Great---just what the world needs. Wasn’t it just a few years ago that the U.S. taxpayer was paying to dismantle old weapons systems in the Ukraine and other former Soviet territories? I, for one, rather think that the Russian government might have other priorities.
For starters, how about making Russia a livable country? The Russian populace is still losing more people to immigration and poor health conditions than it is gaining through live births. Russia may now have the world’s largest non-nuclear bomb, but it may soon lack the demographics needed to maintain its current economic growth rate. (Because of recent high oil prices, the Russian economy has been growing at a rate of about 7%.)
However, Putin, who cut his political teeth under the Soviet system, seems intent on resurrecting the bad old days:
“Last month, President Vladimir Putin said he ordered the resumption of regular patrols of strategic bombers, which were suspended after the 1991 Soviet breakup.”
It may be a “new Russia”; but it seems to be the same old Russian leadership--- for now, at least.
