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The development, proliferation, and integration of technologies are changing the landscape of the missile engineering industry and the national missile capabilities on a global scale. This change necessitates a transformation in the set of key factors that were previously in the focus of missile nonproliferation programs and the corresponding measures and methods of arms control and exports control.

The issues of missile proliferation and control over it have been widely researched by Russian experts. A substantial body of research on the systemwide issues of missile technology proliferation in the context of proliferation of nuclear weapons and the development of new technologies for nonnuclear high-precision weapons has been carried out over the past two decades at the Center for International Security, Institute of the World Economy and International Relations, Russian Academy of Sciences (IMEMO RAS), under the leadership of A. Arbatov and V. Dvorkin (Yadernoe oruzhie…, 2006; Yadernoe rasprostranenie…, 2009; Yadernaya perezagruzka…, 2011; Kontrol’ nad vooruzheniyami v novykh..., 2020).

The general issues of missile proliferation and the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) were analyzed by V. Mizin (2009), V. Novikov (2012), and V. Veselov (2012). The missile proliferation trends in Asia—a region of great concern from this perspective—were studied by P. Litavrin (1998), V. Sazhin (2011), and S. Oznobishchev and P. Topychkanov (2012). The legal aspects of missile proliferation were discussed by Yu. Gusynina (1999).

The issue of missile proliferation also presents research interest for well-known Western think tanks. In particular, the European Leadership Network published reports by K. Kubiak (2019) on the need to move missile weapons up the hierarchy of priorities for the international political agenda and by F. Hoffman (2021) on the trends in cruise missile proliferation. The proliferation of hypersonic weapons was studied by the RAND in a large-scale research, which has become a kind of desktop reference guide for specialists in this field (Speier, Nacouzi, Lee, and Moore, 2017). In addition, several reports on the issue of hypersonic weapons were published by UN agencies (UNODA, 2019; UNIDIR, 2019). A team of authors from the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) scrutinized the issues around the arms race on the Korean Peninsula with a focus on missile technology (IISS, 2021).

In addition to the growing availability of the fruits of technological progress, the main reason for the ongoing missile proliferation, the rapid development of national missile programs, and frenzied foreign purchases of missile weapons by former Third World countries lies in the struggle for regional leadership against the backdrop of a sharply increased security deficit. This motive has always been there, but it was aggravated after a series of external interventions by major world powers during the end phase of the Cold War, when the unstable world order failed to transform into in a new, clearly defined one. Nevertheless, fears about the development of intermediate and intercontinental range missiles, which threaten the leading powers (the United States, Russia, and European states), have every reason to exist. However, this is not the main risk because the missile potential is being developed primarily against regional competitors for the entire extent of their territory.

Finally, a fundamentally new factor is the aggravation of the issue of destabilizing strike missile weapons beyond the scope of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). One reason for this is the substantial progress in technologies of long-range precision weapons, and the other one is the growing fragility of critical infrastructures, which have already experience strategic effects from targeted nonnuclear impacts. On the scale of regional confrontations, these effects can be considered as significant deterrent damage, which changes the very role of nonnuclear missile systems—from now on, they are able to act not only as battlefield assets but also as a means of deterrence, while maintaining a relatively low use threshold (compared to WMD).

The accumulated changes require solutions in the field of arms control. The prospects for upgrading entire classes of missile weapons and associated types of military equipment (platforms, control and targeting systems) show that this task will not lose relevance in the coming decades, especially against the backdrop of the landslide degradation of the international legal security system, which formed upon the results of and immediately after the end of the “previous” Cold War.

MAIN ISSUES OF MISSILE PROLIFERATION IN THE PRESENT PERIOD

The typical concern about missile proliferation as of the end of the 1980s looked rather narrow. It focused, for the most part, on operational and tactical ballistic missiles. The focus was mainly on the Soviet-made R-17 (Scud-B) liquid-propellant missiles, which were relatively easy to upgrade, primarily in terms of range (which also provided promising groundwork for the development of medium-range missiles). For a long time, the development of this class of missile weapons had been a cornerstone for the authentic schools of missile engineering in Iraq (under Saddam Hussein) and North Korea, as well as, partly, in Iran and Pakistan.

A distinctive feature of this class of missiles was its low accuracy, which is why they could not be truly effective without WMD (chemical or nuclear warheads). The contradictory experience of the “war of cities” during the Iran–Iraq war of 1980–1988 showed that the conventionally armed missiles were useless against military targets due to their low accuracy. When used as a counter-value (terrorist) weapon through indiscriminate strikes on urban areas, they gave no significant military and strategic effect whereas the moral and psychological outcome in the enemy camp could even be the opposite (Bogdanov, 2020). Similar were the outcomes of the 1991 Gulf War, when Iraqi ballistic missiles achieved no significant military results, and Saudi Arabia refrained from using its Chinese-made medium-range missiles against Iraqi cities precisely because of the indiscriminate nature of the strikes (Khaled bin-Sultan and Seal, 1995, p. 350).

By that point, the issue of missile proliferation had firmly amalgamated with that of WMD nonproliferation, and this way it was reflected in the main technical parameters of systems that fell under the 1987 MTCR transfer restrictions (Ozga, 1994). Thus, the notorious 500-kg weight limit was justified by the mass–dimensional parameters of typical nuclear warheads made using the relatively low technology of potential candidate countries (Feickert, 2003, p. 1) (the high technologies at the disposal of the United States and the Soviet Union allowed a mass of 100–150 kg even for warheads of the medium yield class). However, missile technologies did not stand still, and their availability was only increasing, including for countries with no record of trying to circumvent this “double” regime of nonproliferation.

The revolution in the electronic components of onboard control systems and the emergence of new materials changed the face of rocket and missile engineering. Firstly, the changes made it possible to develop a fundamentally new class of missile weapons, i.e., conventionally armed high-precision long-range ballistic missiles. Solutions that were previously available only to the superpowers (as was the case with Pershing II missiles, which were equipped with onboard radar and digital map references) spread to the former Third World. These developments manifested themselves in a new generation of Iranian ballistic missiles with guided warheads, which demonstrated high accuracy, as evidenced by the January 2020 Ain al-Assad attacks (Savelsberg, 2020).

Secondly, precision-guided cruise missile technologies, which also were the privilege of the superpowers back in the 1980s, became available to other countries. The reasons were both the general pace of science and technology progress and targeted actions to acquire key technologies, e.g., Iran in 2001 organized a criminal supply of Soviet strategic Kh-55 cruise missiles (without nuclear warheads) from the territory of Ukraine (Einhorn and van Diepen, 2019, p. 13).

The results of proliferation of these weapons are evident in the Yemeni (Iran-backed) Houthis attacks on oil refineries and terminals in Saudi Arabia in recent years. In the past, even hitting them with conventionally armed ballistic missiles did not guarantee deterrent damage due to the high chance of missing. Cruise missiles are accurate enough to hit select buildings, and in the absence of the impact protection of buildings and buried structures, these missiles are virtually certain to succeed against explosive and fire-prone “soft targets” like oil refineries and terminals.

The above examples show the transformation of the missile development strategies of regional powers towards nonnuclear strategic deterrence. The ability to deliver relatively accurate strikes with conventionally armed ballistic and cruise missiles against selected military facilities and critical civilian infrastructure is a new reality for regional powers. Thus, missile proliferation is separating from its “shadow alter ego” (i.e., WMD) and acquiring a much broader scope.

In recent years, the topic of hypersonic missile weapons has raised widespread concern, even created a turmoil. Currently, several approaches exist to defining what hypersonic missiles are, but all these approaches are largely provisional. For the purposes of this paper, the authors propose to distinguish between three main categories: boost-glide systems (ballistic missiles with gliding winged reentry vehicles as battle payload, also called hypersonic glide vehicles), hypersonic cruise missiles with scramjet engines, and aeroballistic missiles with either maneuvering or integral warheads (capable of controlled maneuvering on the trajectory). It is worth noting separately that some authors define glide vehicles as a subspecies of the maneuverable reentry vehicles (Lysenko, 2016, p. 237). In the situation with the development of hypersonic weapons, we are witnessing the evolution of two long-known types of missile weapons: aeroballistic and ballistic missiles with maneuvering reentry vehicles and high-speed cruise missiles.

The key feature of hypersonic weapons is the combination of high speed (hypersonic, i.e., exceeding Mach 5 at the appropriate altitude), flying in the atmosphere over a substantial part of the trajectory, and endoatmospheric maneuvering. According to the developers and operators, these characteristics contribute to the effective thwarting of enemy missile and air defense systems as well as to increased precision. Depending on the situation, they put an emphasis on one of these advantages.

The priority type of hypersonic missile payload can be regarded as a separate issue since, theoretically, the high precision combined with high speed may help reduce the power and weight of the warhead, both nuclear and nonnuclear. However, as of today, there is very limited information in the public domain on the actual characteristics of the respective items and their test results. Their combat use is generally limited to the attacks using the Kinzhal air-launched hypersonic aeroballistic missile system on individual (presumably highly protected) targets in March 2022 on the territory of Ukraine. However, while Russia and—as far as one can judge—China are developing selected hypersonic systems with “dual” battle payload (nuclear and nonnuclear), the United States has so far been focusing on the exclusively nonnuclear nature of its hypersonic programs. Meanwhile, France, e.g., carries out hypersonic projects (based on the available information) in the interests of nuclear deterrence forces (Tertrais, 2020, p. 65). A similar situation is observed in North Korea. Other countries (India, the United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea, Australia, etc.) either avoid concentrating on this issue in principle or do not possess a nuclear status (Sayler, 2022).

A hypersonic missile system is a very costly project. The implementation of such a program requires heavy investments in the design (or acquisition and introduction) of electronics for control and guidance systems, in special materials (including ablative and heat-resistant), in a new type of fuel, in new engines, and in test facilities (wind tunnels and long testing ranges with all the necessary telemetry instruments). The effective use of high-precision long-range weapons (especially hypersonic ones) depends in large part on the infrastructure of reconnaissance, targeting, and communications.

Despite these difficulties, hypersonic weapons are turning into an increasingly visible feature of the global missile landscape, including in the proliferation context. The heated interest in this technology may revitalize and optimize the existing control mechanisms, or based on the accumulated experience, it may lead to the development of new tools, which could cover the entire category of high-precision long-range weapons.

Technological progress leads not only to an increase in the availability of missile weapons for regional players. The integration of technological solutions and the general trends in the emergence of new classes of weapons are creating a fundamentally different military-technical environment, including in matters not directly related to missile proliferation. First and foremost, this issue concerns the development of precise sensors based on the new-generation electronic components as well as high-performance computing and digital communication tools that allow integrating onboard equipment into the overall control loop of forces and assets in a theater of operations.

Thus, it is absolutely clear that combat unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), a clear component of modern high-precision weapons, are becoming a substitute for manned attack aviation and army air force, on the one hand, and for cruise missiles, on the other hand. The same applies to the “fusion class,” i.e., loitering munitions (“kamikaze drones”) and such future weapons as lethal autonomous weapons (LAWs), in which combat use decisions are made by the algorithms of self-learning onboard artificial intelligence.

In this sense, the development of unmanned (autonomous) platforms and their increasingly conspicuous proliferation, as evidenced by the experience of military operations in recent years in Yemen, Syria, Libya, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Ukraine, should be discussed in the context of missile proliferation in general. Such a discussion is becoming increasingly urgent because certain interpretations of the existing norms (e.g., the United States tends to interpret them in the context of simplifying its UAV exports) clearly contribute to the increased availability of strike weapons systems that formally fall under the MTCR (Kimball, 2020).

A noticeable trend is the intellectualization of weapons. In fact, we are witnessing a gradual merging of categories such as cruise missiles, loitering munitions, and combat UAVs. They are brought together on both sides by the increasingly advanced small-sized high-precision battlefield missiles, which have evolved from antitank missile systems (including the Israeli SPIKE or the Russian Germes), and by cruise and MLRS guided missiles equipped with detachable or cluster combat payload, which, in the limiting case, also fall into the category of hypersonic aircraft (e.g., the American project Vintage Racer). It seems that over time, due to the miniaturization and relative availability of the electronic components, a situation may develop whereby almost all types of weapons operating at ranges beyond direct visibility will possess an autonomous capability of additional reconnaissance and targeting as well as programmed maneuvering to evade intercept.

The integration of these new advanced types of weapons with old cruise and ballistic missiles made on a new technological base into unified automated command and control systems for forces and assets in a theater of operations can endow them with additional combat potential simply through the amalgamation into a single circuit of reconnaissance, target distribution, and control. This prospect creates new combat capabilities, which were previously unavailable to the typical armies of the former Third World countries, and potentially becomes a destabilizing factor in the context of regional conflicts (including due to a sharp compression of combat control cycles, i.e., the decrease in the “time to make a decision,” an important factor of escalation).

Thus, we are witnessing the classical arms race pattern, i.e., parallel investments in both the “sword” and the “shield.” Its driver is primarily the perceived threat of lagging behind potential opponents or that the latter would gain a qualitative advantage.

Such a race is already underway—first of all, a race of quality. However, under the very likely conditions of further destabilization of international security, it can quickly turn into a race of quantity (Horowitz and Schwartz, 2020).

MISSILE PROLIFERATION: ACTORS AND THEIR MOTIVES

For the purposes of this study, all missile proliferation actors can roughly be divided into three main categories.

The first one is suppliers, i.e., technologically advanced countries, most often—the great powers, which produce advanced missile weapons systems and offer them for export. This category stands at the top of the “food pyramid”—it is from here that missile technologies set out on a difficult journey to less developed countries, crossing formal and informal restriction lines on their way. When the suppliers enter the proliferation process, they are driven by a complex array of military, political, and economic motives, which further complicates the development of effective arms control regimes.

The second category is customers, i.e., the recipients of potentially dangerous missile weapons systems from the supplier countries. The customers play a dual role. On the one hand, they act as objects or, in some cases, as instruments of the foreign policy pursued by the superpowers (i.e., the suppliers), which are guided by considerations of exercising external control over regional balances of power by modulating the flow of modern weapons. On the other hand, some of the present-day customers themselves claim regional leadership, especially in the modern world, which is becoming increasingly multipolar. The customers are thus trying to obtain, at least, modern strike capabilities or, as a maximum, technologies for the development of their national defense industry (including for export purposes). Some of the customers are now in a transitional state; these are, e.g., Turkey or India, which can, theoretically, act as suppliers of certain types of missile weapons.

The third category are proliferators, i.e., countries that, for one reason or another, are excluded from the system of the quasi-legitimate distribution of missile technologies from the suppliers but consider it necessary to acquire the appropriate capabilities because of the way they perceive their military and political environment. This category includes North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, and, in a sense, India; in the past, it comprised Iraq, Egypt, Libya, and Syria. The proliferators are known for their informal cohesion and propensity to create shadow markets of “forbidden” technologies, as was the case with the large-scale transfer of North Korean missile engineering solutions to Iran and Pakistan (Kampani, 2002). The threats of counterproliferation from the supplier countries compel the proliferators to attempts at acquiring, in the interests of deterrence, advanced missile technologies and, as in the case of North Korea, nuclear weapons.

These considerations inevitably affect the pattern of relations between the suppliers and customers, following the principle of technological segregation, which builds upon considerations of bilateral relations rather than military and engineering reasons (the parameters of systems allowed for transfer under certain regimes and agreements). Thus, an environment emerges in which exceptions work as a rule, which destroys the universality of the arms control regimes.

The past, too, saw cases of “informal” technological segregation. The “birth trauma” of the MTCR is the supplies of Tomahawk cruise missiles and Trident II ballistic missiles from the United States to the United Kingdom—the transfer of missile weapons to NATO’s allies was excluded from the regime as it was deemed not associated with risks of uncontrolled proliferation (Khromov, 2000, p. 89). In 1997, the United Kingdom took the next step, this time towards the United Arab Emirates. It made a transfer of Black Shaheen cruise missiles (a modification of the Storm Shadow cruise missile) to the Emirates, causing a scandal and further changes to the procedures for determining fuel-efficient flight profiles when calculating the maximum range for the needs of the MTCR. However, this measure did not prevent further supplies to Qatar and Saudi Arabia (Stefanovich, 2019). Subsequently, similar solutions were employed by the United States for the supply of JASSM and JASSM-ER cruise missiles to Poland and Finland as well as by Germany and Sweden for the supply of Taurus KEPD 350 missiles to Spain and South Korea. At the moment, there is every reason to believe that Tomahawk missiles will also be transferred to Australia as part of a new deal to build nuclear attack submarines for it.

These developments reveal the main contradiction of missile proliferation—the leading players seek to stay on the market by putting up for sale increasingly advanced weapons, and this process gradually blurs the boundaries set by the previously adopted restrictions. The issue is far from being purely commercial in nature as the military and political importance of delivering modern weapons to friendly nations equalizes or even outweighs the considerations of maintaining a certain threshold of overseas sales, and so do the considerations of competition between the great powers for influence in the former Third World.

The current situation also affects those players that are excluded, for military and political reasons, from the transfer of advanced weapons. The best example here is Iran. At the beginning of the 1990s, this country found itself without access to any modern strike weapons (especially tactical aircraft and the corresponding precision weapons), but it eventually developed its own original, diversified, and fairly effective missile industry—primarily because Iran needed to keep its combat potential on par with the neighboring states of the region, which received high-tech weapons from the United States and Western Europe.

The relationship dynamics in the suppliers–customers–proliferators triangle is self-sustaining and provides additional incentives to all parties involved to step up the scale of proliferation, including beyond the restrictive regimes. This situation raises the question of viability and focus for the entire arms control system and calls for determining the real purpose of this system in the new conditions.

IS THERE A SOLUTION THROUGH ARMS CONTROL?

There are currently two key multilateral mechanisms directly related to the missile issue. Firstly, this is the MTCR, designed in 1987, which has now been joined by 35 states, including all technologically advanced countries except China and Israel.

Today, the MTCR itself acts primarily as a platform for a dialogue on technology, which remains one of the priority topics. Of special value are detailed lists of specific controlled technologies and products (so-called Category II), the export of which, although not prohibited in principle, should be carefully watched. Outreach activities, too, should not be underestimated, i.e., meetings between representatives of the MTCR states and those not participating in the regime but possessing a considerable missile potential. In addition to the possible (with reservations) expansion of the MTCR membership, these events help develop a single conceptual and categorical apparatus and literally discuss the issues of missile proliferation in one language. Simultaneously, the MTCR agenda includes the missile dossiers that are hot topics in the media, including Iran and North Korea (Public Statement…, 2021). Despite the great importance of technical consultations, there is no doubt that the final solution to these issues must be found and approved at other forums.

Russia’s presidency in the MTCR in 2021–2022 has not and could not have achieved any significant results for reasons related to the aggravation of international rivalry. However, it should be noted that Russia made specific proposals to revive the initiative for creating the Global Missile Nonproliferation Regime (GMNR) and the Global Control System (GCS) for the Nonproliferation of Missiles and Missile Technology (Russian Foreign Ministry, 2021). Although understandable concerns were raised about the prospects of the GCS and GMNR in the short-to-medium term, the need to establish a comprehensive mechanism was identified as a long-term priority.

The Hague Code of Conduct (HCoC) is an even softer instrument than the MTCR. Its key elements are mutual notification of ballistic missile and space rocket launches and technical consultations. One cannot say all the HCoC member states completely fulfill their voluntary obligations, but at least it provides yet another venue for a substantive and (ideally) depoliticized discussion of the issue.

To a certain extent, the common issue of the MTCR and the HCoC is the legacy of the fight against potential WMD delivery vehicles, which was laid at the foundation of these regimes. However, as was shown above, an equally urgent concern today is conventionally armed precision missiles.

In general, both the MTCR and HCoC appear to be workable mechanisms able to contribute to the mitigation of missile threats on a global scale. Meanwhile, both regimes are voluntary in nature and rely on the common values and priorities of the participating states, which is further complicated by the far from universal nature of this participation. In the event of different priorities, the effectiveness of the corresponding instruments drops sharply. A relevant example is the US sanctions against several Russian missile-engineering companies (Chernenko and Dzhordzhevich, 2017). Nevertheless, in the missile sector as well as in arms control in general (especially in the verification of compliance with the existing agreements), much depends, as practice shows, on the parties’ intention for cooperate in good faith (Podvig, 2022). In the end, the terms and conditions signed by participating countries are only a “zero mark” as no one forbids them from taking on stricter obligations and keeping more detailed records at the national level (as we see in the nuclear nonproliferation regime).

Today, the key threat to be addressed by an effective and comprehensive system of control over missile proliferation is the further uncontrolled horizontal and vertical proliferation of escalation-dangerous weapons and military equipment. These should include all those weapons that maintain by default a high degree of combat readiness in peacetime, are capable of inflicting damage at operational and strategic depth, and can also be used for signal and reconnaissance actions, including formally during combat training activities (so-called “simulated electronic launches”) in the immediate vicinity of the contact lines of potential opponents.

On the nonproliferation track, it seems appropriate to focus today not so much on direct restrictions in the field of military-technical cooperation and export control but on identifying the basic, underlying causes and contradictions that force certain countries to participate in the arms races. Presumably, no country in the world would invest heavily in the development or acquisition of a certain type of weapons solely from the desire to possess them for the sake of the military and political status. Of course, status considerations are often reinforced by the presence of certain modern equipment in the arsenal (as is the case, e.g., with India’s nuclear missile program, where the status aspect ranks high but is not the main or even dominant one (Bogdanov and Kupriyanov, 2020)). However, the real driver is the perception of national security threats, no matter how realistic they are. Therefore, it is necessary to identify in a timely manner these perceived threats and their mutually reinforcing pairs—and look for alternative ways to deescalate expectations. The following arguments can be used in favor of the alternative ways: descriptive models of the security dilemma and promotion of threat reduction and arms control measures as an effective tool for ensuring national security.

A rather radical idea could be to avoid discussing the detailed engineering characteristics of certain types of missile weapons and their components, reducing the problem of control over missile proliferation to behavioral issues. It seems to be at least a potentially workable option to discuss the above-mentioned perceived threats and approaches to their mitigation at the conceptual level, i.e., not in terms of, e.g., ballistic missiles as such but in the context of escalation-dangerous scenarios of their combat use as well as doctrinal guidelines that are perceived as destabilizing. An example of such a discussion, albeit in a very limited format, is the dialogue on doctrines between the five nuclear-weapon states (P5) (P5 Conference…, 2021).

Another work area could be the development of restraint measures, including unilateral ones. One example of such measures is the Russian initiative for a moratorium on the deployment of intermediate and shorter-range missiles in certain regions of the world in the context of the termination of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. In addition, the parties concerned could discuss confidence-building measures regarding certain types of long-range precision weapons, which are now a major concern, including in terms of exchanging data on the existing and planned quantitative indicators and the geography of deployment of the corresponding systems (Stefanovich, 2021).

To sum it up, we should note that, in the current conditions, the measures to enhance control over missile proliferation must, in a sense, start from scratch because the existing mechanisms have either failed repeatedly or simply overlooked certain destabilizing potentials due to the sharp increase in technological progress. Such an “after-explosion landscape” paradoxically simplifies practical efforts since even a small improvement in the situation with missile proliferation can be achieved through “soft arms control,” i.e., through simple, in some cases, even unilateral restrictions. However, the importance of pursuing a dialogue about the threats is beyond doubt. The existing arms control regimes retain a certain potential as additional tools for ensuring the nonproliferation of WMD, but this potential is gradually deteriorating in the context of technological progress. In the meantime, we are compelled to conclude that the development of truly strict global missile proliferation regimes with an intrusive verification base does not benefit any of the categories of the proliferation actors and, therefore, seems unlikely.