Russian nukes far better than US nuclear peers: Missile designer

The Russian nuclear forces are ahead of US ones by some 10 to 15 years, according to Yury Solomonov, general designer of the Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology (MITT) which designs Russian Yars, Topol and Bulava intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM).

"They will not be able to catch up quickly with the ideas that we have already implemented, although it is not difficult in the modern world to implement them and start production," media quoted Solomonov telling Argumenty Nedeli newspaper in an interview on Thursday.

"This does not mean that they will not be able to do the same. But if they start doing it now, they will be able to catch up in 10 to 15 years," he pointed out.

Solomonov noted that the US nuclear potential remained to be very powerful, but its weapons modernization system was fundamentally different from those of Russia.

For example, the US Minuteman ICBMs manufactured in the 1960s have not been replaced with new missiles but upgraded to extend their lifespan to 2030, he said.

Solomonov said that Russia, however, had produced a new generation of land- and sea-based strategic nuclear weapons with minimized costs.

In regard to the US ICBM system deployed in Alaska and Europe, Solomonov insisted that Russia should not have any fears of the missile system because, in Solomonov's words, the US missile system's  "efficiency is extremely low."

He noted, however, that the risk in the missile system was that its components that could easily be transformed into weapons for attack.