Rogozin: Russia Will Respond To Any Attack with Nuclear Weapons

December 11, 2013 • 6:50PM

Russian Vice Prime Minister Dmitri Rogozin told the State Duma, the lower house of Russia's parliament, yesterday, that Russia will use nuclear weapons if attacked, adding that this serves as a deterrent to potential aggressors and provocateurs, according to a report in Russia Today. "One can experiment as long as one wishes by deploying non-nuclear warheads on strategic missile carriers. But one should keep in mind that if there is an attack against us, we will certainly resort to using nuclear weapons in certain situations to defend our territory and state interests," Rogozin, whose portfolio is in charge of developing Russia's defense industries, said. He pointed out that this principle is enshrined in Russia’s military doctrine. Any aggressor or group of aggressors should be aware of that, he said. "We have never diminished the importance of nuclear weapons – the weapon of requital – as the great balancer of chances," he said.

Rogozin was referring to what is known as "conventional prompt global strike," (CPGS) the notion of putting conventional warheads on strategic delivery platforms, such as ICBMs, in order to have the capability of striking any target, anywhere in the world in as little as 30 minutes. Variations of this idea have been around since about 2004, when it was first promoted by then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, but never really gained any traction against the criticism that once launched, other powers would not be able to distinguished such a weapon from a nuclear-armed launch, and would therefore respond as if it were nuclear armed.

More recently, the US and Russia have both begun experimenting with hypersonic vehicles to carry conventional warheads, a fact that Rogozin, himself, acknowledged back in September. "Both we and the Americans conduct researches about hypersonic technologies, or speed that is more than six times above the speed of sound. This is not a secret, but everything else is. I can tell you that we are running neck and neck with the Americans as far as these technologies are concerned," he said in a Sept. 30 interview with Rossiya 1 TV. Rogozin said, yesterday, that Russia's Fund of Perspective Researches (FPI) will develop a military response to the American Conventional Prompt Global Strike (PGS) strategy.