"Russia will soon be a one party state"

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Ellestar

Well, it's about the same missiles as missiles in the Russian space program... And AFAIK noone complains about it's efficiency. Actually, these missiles work much better than USA space shuttles Russia supplied ISS alone for several years with these missiles when USA shuttles were grounded. And we have a very big share of a commercial space launches.

Now, ICBMs are about the only thing in a Russian military that will stand up to expectations if nessesary (mostly because there was a huge overkill in the first place), but that's another story. Say, i heard that our long-range bombers will not be able to continue their flights because repair parts stockpiles will be depleted in several months and new repair parts can't be built (production lines were stopped for 10+ years and all personal who worked on them are fired a long time ago etc.)

He's probably referring to the warheads which are a far more interesting issue due to the aging properties of plutonium which are very complex and poorly understood. I'm sure if either the US or russia used a substantial fraction of their ICBM some small fraction of the launch vehicles would fail but the real mystery would be whether all or some of the warheads would fail to properly detonate rather than just behaving as 'dirty' conventional bombs. It seems clear that if a plutonium triggered warhead is just left on the shelf with no maintenance at all eventually it will fail to properly detonate. How long that takes is something of a mystery.

To be honest, I'm not even certain that the warheads on a US ICBM would detonate as intended were they ever used.