The Defense Department on Sunday conducted the first flight test of a ground-launched cruise missile with a range greater than 500 km after the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force Treaty (INF) expired earlier this month.
On Aug. 18 at 2:30pm at San Nicolas Island, Calif. the Pentagon launched a Tomahawk cruise missile from its ground mobile launcher and hit a target over 500 km away. DoD underscored this was a conventionally-configured missile and not meant to be armed with a nuclear warhead.
“Data collected and lessons learned from this test will inform the Department of Defense’s development of future intermediate-range capabilities,” the Pentagon said in a statement.
The 1987 INF banned all land-based missiles that had a range of 500-5,500 km, or 310-3,400 miles, both nuclear and conventionally armed. The goal was to end the destabilizing threat of European-based nuclear missiles in the 1980s during the Cold War that gave both the Soviet Union and NATO members as few as 10 minutes from launch to target to judge and react to possible nuclear attacks.
However, the U.S. officially withdrew from the treaty on Aug. 2 after years of accusing Russia of violating the agreement.
The U.S. has long noted Russia was in material breach of the INF treaty. When the U.S. ultimately withdrew, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, “Russia is solely responsible for the treaty’s demise” after it developed, tested, and deployed “multiple battalions” of the 9M729 cruise missile (Defense Daily, Aug. 2).
The U.S. maintains Russia has been violating the treaty since 2008, when it allegedly began developing the 9M729.
Last October, President Trump announced his intention to withdraw from the treaty (Defense Daily, Oct. 22). In December, Pompeo said the U.S. would stop complying and start the withdrawal process unless Russia gave up the noncompliant weapon within 60 days (Defense Daily, Dec. 4).
Thus far, neither Russia nor the U.S. has said it will field new nuclear-armed INF-range missiles. When the U.S. finished withdrawing, the Russian government said it would not deploy land-based intermediate-range or short-range missiles in any regions where the U.S. will not deploy any.
Upon the U.S. withdrawal, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said the DoD started Treaty-compliant research and development activities in 2017 that focused on mobile, conventional, ground-launched cruise missile and ballistic missile systems. After withdrawal, he said DoD would “fully pursue” development of those conventional systems as a “prudent response to Russia’s actions and as part of the Joint Force’s broader portfolio of conventional strike options.”
Esper previously said U.S. withdrawal allows the department to develop intermediate-range missiles to compete with China, which was never bound to the treaty but has a sizeable inventory of intermediate-range missiles.
In June, Esper told reporters after the withdrawal “we would no longer have an arm tied behind out back…so we would now be able to develop missiles of that range.”
In January, Andrea Thompson, under secretary of state for arms control and international security, told reporters since the U.S. was not confident in any Russian transparency measures to prove to the U.S. the 9M729 does not violate the IMF range, the only way for Russia to remain in compliance would have been to destroy the weapon (Defense Daily, Jan. 24).
The treaty held that if a missile is not in compliance neither is its launcher. Since the 9M729 uses the Iskander launcher, Russia would also have to destroy a launcher used for a variety of weapons beyond 9M729.