Of course, I’d prefer not to find out, but I think it’s a worthy thought exercise to consider whether, based on what we know about Russian military corruption and shoddy maintenance, these things still function.
I’ve been thinking about this question for a while.
The US seems reluctant to push Russia too hard, too fast - always tiptoeing up to Putin’s so-called “red lines” before crossing them.
One of the central dilemmas in the Ukraine war is the US’s hesitation to let Ukraine fully engage, and a lot of that comes down to one thing: Russia’s nuclear arsenal.
Just last week, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, Vyacheslav Volodin, warned Western governments that a nuclear war would ensue if they gave the green light for Ukraine to use long-range Western weapons to strike targets deep inside Russia.
Now, I’ll be the first to tell you that Putin’s red lines are largely fantasy. He’s not suicidal.
But I will admit that I worry the West has crossed so many “red lines” at this point that Putin may feel obligated to respond eventually, lest he lose what he has left of political prestige at home.
But here’s a question we haven’t really tackled yet: do Russia’s nukes even work?
I’ll tell you where I stand right up front – I think perhaps half of Russia’s nuclear arsenal could still perform its intended function of death and destruction.
And while a 50% failure rate might sound like a lot, for a nuclear arsenal the size of Russia’s, it leaves them with more than enough to give the West a bad hair day.
So, let’s try to break down where I’m getting this number from.
Russia holds the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, sitting on just under 5,600 warheads. Of those, 1,700 are supposedly ready to launch, 2,700 are in storage, and 1,200 are being phased out but could be brought back into play if needed.
This includes big city-busting bombs and about a thousand tactical nukes for battlefield use.
Here’s the thing: nuclear weapons are not "set it and forget it." They’re intricate devices with thousands of components, and the majority of those are critical to the weapon actually going boom.
If just one of those pieces malfunctions, you’ve got a dud.
Take the classic implosion design, for instance. At the heart of it is a plutonium core, and to trigger a nuclear explosion, you need to compress that core with conventional explosives so it reaches a critical mass.
If the timing of those conventional explosions is even slightly off, the whole thing flattens out like a pancake, and instead of a mushroom cloud, you’ve got nothing but a conventional fizzle.
But Russia’s military vehicle maintenance might be an indicator of nuclear weapon health.
Soon after the Ukraine War started in earnest in 2022, it became clear that Russia was suffering from some pretty shoddy vehicle maintenance.
Things as simple as rotating the tires on military vehicles in storage to prevent tire rot simply didn’t happen. So when Russia invaded, one of the many challenges they faced was riding to war in military vehicles that broke down long before they could be impactful in battle.
There are many indications that Putin was not aware, at the time, of the level of disrepair his fighting force was in. Nor was he aware that his modernization efforts were being sabotaged by the very same kleptocrats who have kept him in power.
That same corruption that helped him stay in power meant that his military wasn’t getting the upgrades or modernization that it desperately needed, or hell, even rations for soldiers that didn’t expire seven years ago.
The adverse impact of defense sector corruption on military effectiveness has been well documented.
Andrey Kozyrev, Russian foreign minister from 1990–1996, tweeted about the corruption that has hobbled the Russian military:
“The Kremlin spent the last 20 years trying to modernize its military. Much of that budget was stolen and spent on mega-yachts in Cyprus. But as a military advisor, you cannot report that to the President. So, they reported lies to him instead. Potemkin military.”
But we also must consider that Putin prioritized nuclear weapon maintenance over conventional forces, so shoddy vehicle maintenance might not be as indicative as I would have hoped.
As far as nuclear maintenance is concerned, nuclear pits—the core of these bombs—need to be replaced every 10 to 15 years, meaning Russia should have cycled through this process at least two or three times since the Soviet Union collapsed.
And it’s not just plutonium. Tritium, a key ingredient in making nukes more efficient, decays every 12.5 years, so you need to replace that too. At this point, Russia should be on its third tritium replacement cycle, at minimum.
But maintaining these weapons is expensive—tritium alone costs around $30,000 per gram, and each bomb needs several grams.
Add in the thousands of other components that require upkeep, and the costs skyrocket. Considering Russia’s other financial strains, particularly with its war in Ukraine, keeping these nukes operational may not be their top priority.
And then there’s corruption. Russia’s military has been plagued by graft for years. Soldiers siphoning off fuel or selling armor plating for scrap are well-documented issues.
If that same level of corruption is happening within their nuclear program, Russia could be in even worse shape than we think.
Even if the bombs are functional, their delivery systems (missiles, bombers, etc.) could fail.
Remember, the Pentagon has reported a 20-60% failure rate for Russian missile systems since the war in Ukraine began.
But before we get too complacent, let’s not assume all of Russia’s nuclear capabilities are crumbling.
Nuclear weapons tend to be safeguarded from the worst of military corruption because they’re seen as critical to national security.
And the Kremlin likely keeps a much closer eye on its nukes than on its tanks and trucks.
It could even be possible that Russia’s strategic nuclear forces are the one branch largely immune to corruption simply because of their importance to Russia’s sovereignty.
I don’t have a clear window into the political trustworthiness of the Russian soldiers who compose the Strategic Rocket Forces – the Russian branch responsible for the land-based nuclear arsenal. But I think it’s a safe bet to say that these individuals are politically loyal.
The current commander, Colonel General Sergei Karakayev, was an active member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and was educated at Russia’s finest military academies, including Rostov Military Institute of Missile Forces.
Also, in the realm of military branch mottos, the Strategic Rocket Forces’ motto is extra dark: После нас - тишина" ("After us - silence").
So, I can’t say definitively whether Russia’s nuclear forces have been subjected to the same level of corruption as its conventional forces.
I would lean toward less corruption, but still lackluster maintenance.
Now for the strategic twist: Russia might not even care if some of its nuclear arsenal decays. Here’s why—maintenance is expensive, and the reality is that the West cannot definitively verify whether those nukes are in working order.
Russia could simply bluff, projecting that its arsenal is fully operational while quietly letting some weapons rust.
That bluff alone might be enough to keep adversaries in check.
On the flip side, if a rival like the US calls that bluff and assumes Russia’s nukes are less than 100% functional, the odds of conflict increase. It’s a delicate balancing act—too much bluffing, and your opponent might stop taking you seriously, potentially leading to war.
At the end of the day, the US seems cautious, likely for a reason.
Washington’s intelligence analysts probably know more than we do, and their reticence to push harder in Ukraine suggests they believe Russia’s nukes are still a credible threat.
Then again, they (and I) were wrong about Russia’s military capability on the eve of the war – we thought they were much stronger than they actually were.
I know it sounds like I’m flip-flopping all over the place in this piece without making a definitive argument one way or the other, but this is an area that requires far more speculation than I’m comfortable with – specifically because of the highly secretive nature of Russia’s strategic arsenal.
But if I were forced to answer, I refer back to my 50% guess from the top of the article. Half of their weapons likely don’t work for this reason:
With 1,700 warheads supposedly ready to launch and 2,700 in storage, what is the likelihood of Russia proactively and diligently replacing the conventional explosives, plutonium, and tritium every 15 years – for every, single warhead?
Plus, what about the routine maintenance required for the thousands of other components?
According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the US is projected to spend approximately $756 billion on nuclear forces between 2023 and 2032, averaging out to just over $75 billion per year, which includes costs for operation, sustainment, modernization of delivery systems, and facility upgrades.
A significant portion of this money is dedicated to the maintenance and upkeep of the US nuclear stockpile.
And that’s with a smaller nuclear arsenal than Russia’s.
With a 30%-60% failure rate in Ukraine for conventional missiles, how likely are Russia’s rocket propulsion systems maintained to a degree that would ensure delivery of the warhead? Now multiply that by all the land-based warheads.
Still, all of this is merely ‘comfort food’ because half of Russia’s nuclear arsenal is still more than enough to end the world.
I hope we never find out if Russia’s nukes work or not.
That’s it for today.
Glory to Ukraine.
Glory to the Heroes.
Слава Україні!
I've had this discussion at various times over the last year or two.
As you note it isn't just the warheads that are an issue, there's also the delivery missiles and those are not even close to reliable. We know that Russia sees significant numbers of missiles fail to launch correctly (or at all) fail to go in the right direction for long enough etc. There are so many things that have to work perfectly to get a nuke to explode more or less on target with a proper bang. The launch has to work, the missile has to go in the right direction, the various bits of the trigger have to activate at precisely the right times and the actual fission bomb material has to actually be fissionable and not swapped out for DU and sold to the Norks or Iranians. I don't know what the chances of each are but there's a long chain of things that have to go perfectly and as you note Russia has a history of corruption and shoddy maintenance so the probability that each fails is moderately high. Maybe the cummulative probability of no failures (i.e. successful boom) is 50%, maybe it is 70%, maybe it is 20%. We just don't know. More critically no one in Russia knows either.
A dud nuke launch is absolutely a disaster for Russia. If a nuke is detected as being launched and it then fails to explode properly over somewhere that is a plausible target then Russia's nuclear deterrence threat goes up in smoke because, as you point out, Russia has only one option after that and that is mass launch using the calculation that at least some of them will work. The issue here is that Russian nuke crews will know that a mass launch is happening and may decide not to obey orders because they can see how they and everyone they love gets killed by the return mass strike.
A smart Putin (and he probably is this smart) can do enough of the same calculation to figure that it is better to threaten retaliation rather than actually try and do some
I have been thinking exactly this for a while. I hope our intelligence services can detect a frantic campaign of quality checks in Russia to sort functional from non-functional nukes. I would bet good money that such a project was started at least a year ago.
Imagine the embarrassment of Putin launching a nuke that fizzles. It would require some expensive “broken arrow” cleanup by NATO, but no extensive damage.
Obviously we don’t want a nuclear exchange. I honestly doubt that Putin wants one either. It would destroy his precious Russia along with all their targets.
If all else fails, we can hope the current Russian officers in control of their nukes have the same sanity that saved the world at least twice from Soviet forces launching attacks in error.
On the other hand, there apparently is reason to believe that the Soviet era Dead Hand doomsday system is still active…
It’s all scary as hell and makes me wonder if it really is the solution to Fermi’s Paradox.