Strategic Nuclear Force Signalling During the Russia-Ukraine Crisis: A Preliminary Analysis

The manoeuvring Theory and Methodology 5 of military forces to reinforce a diplomatic or other political position in the international arena has its pedigree in the gunboat diplomacy of the 19th and 20th Centuries, and then in the nuclear crises and other military operations of the Cold War: There is a substantial body of work that sup- ports this argument.6 Signalling activities are a language wi. [...] So was the North Korean test designed to serve purely North Korean purposes? Or did it also serve the purposes of the Putin regime? The disruptive and possibly destabilizing effects of the test are clear in the context of the ongoing Kazakh and Ukraine crises. [...] The presence of the A-50U suggested the need to maintain aerial surveillance of the exercise and to record NATO attempts to observe or interfere with the exercise.92 The third involved two TU-95MS BEAR H and two TU-143 BEAR F aircraft. [...] In this case, the U-2S proceeded from Palmdale or Edwards AFB to the White Sands Missile Range where it proceeded to fly several “infinity loops” with the crossover point right over the 1945 Trinity Site.96 The possibility the aircraft was involved in testing sensor systems exists, but the timing and the fact that the aircraft was squawking on ATC suggests there were multiple purposes to this flig. [...] The GROM (“Thunder”) series of exercises are the annual coordinat- ed manipulations of the Russian strategic nuclear forces and generally end in the live launching of one system from each leg of the triad, albeit without the detonation of the nuclear package.