“The deployment of these missiles, both American and British, is connected to two things,” veteran Russian defence and security affairs commentator Alexei Leonkov told Sputnik, commenting on the story in the UK’s The Times this week that Britain and Germany plan to develop a new conventional missile designed to target Russian tactical nuclear delivery platforms.
“The first is the global concept, the strategy under which NATO has been restructuring since 2002, which is the Conventional Prompt Strike concept, whose essence centres around the need to destroy the nuclear potentials of an adversary like Russia or China,” Leonkov explained.
The second relates to the fact that the Americans “are running late, or perhaps have lost the technologies used to create intercontinental missiles with a range beyond that of the Minuteman-3,” Leonkov believes.
“Why do the Americans want to switch up some of their missiles for European ones? I think that most likely, the missiles they have developed may not have proven entirely successful. Hence they’ve decided to attract a European consortium led by the UK,” he said.
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Leonkov can’t rule out that the new British-German missile project may be focused on the creation of a manoeuvrable hypersonic vehicle, with Britain’s BAE Systems already known to be working on a number of projects in this direction.
Conventional Prompt Strike envisions the simultaneous firing of conventional long-range missiles in a massive surprise first-strike attack to destroy as much of an enemy’s strategic arsenal as possible, decapitate its leadership, and destroy remaining fired nuclear missiles using missile defences.
The concept’s primary danger stems from the concern that it makes the prospect of a ‘limited’ nuclear war seem more palatable for planners, hence increasing the temptation to launch aggression.
Source: Sputnik