Russia’s Nukes Are Probably Secure From Rogue Actors

Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin’s abortive mutiny last weekend raised concerns that Russia’s nuclear arsenal could fall into the wrong hands. U.S. officials reportedly had their eyes on the stockpile in the weeks running up to and during the insurrection. If Russia faces another crisis of authority—or collapse—could private militaries or other rogue actors actually use warheads from the Kremlin’s atomic stockpile?

The short answer is probably not. Although details are murky, Russia’s nuclear command and control likely makes it very tough for a rogue actor to use its weapons or acquire enough nuclear material to make one. In a conflict marked by open Russian debate about preemptive nuclear use and heightened doomsday concerns, that’s good news.

The bad news is that nuclear weapons have more than one use for rogue actors looking to make a buck. Warheads and their components can be sold on the black market or used in a dirty bomb. And because mutinies create high levels of uncertainty and risk, they threaten nuclear escalation within existing command-and-control structures.

To prevent unauthorized uses or “employment,” nuclear-armed states have developed command-and-control (C2 or NC2) procedures that outline who can legally authorize a nuclear strike (employment) and who has the ability to operationalize a strike. Prigozhin’s mutiny raised concerns about two ways a rogue actor can disrupt NC2: by commanding an unauthorized use of nuclear weapons from within the system, or by gaining operational access to weapons from outside it.

The United States’ NC2 is much better known than Russia’s and offers a useful comparative model. The United States places sole legal authority with the president, with several safeguards below that authority to prevent unauthorized use. To order a nuclear strike, the president need only follow a few steps: consult what is described as a “Denny’s menu” of strike options in the nuclear football, contact the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon (or an alternate if it has been destroyed), authenticate his or her identity using codes stored on an ID-card sized “biscuit” and relay the details of the strike order.

After that, military command carries out the strike by sending a short, encrypted emergency action message to bomber and missile crews, relaying the strike plan, authentication codes, and enabling codes needed to activate missiles and warheads, or “unlock” them (these are sometimes called permissive action links, or PALs). A “two-person rule” requires cooperation between at least two military personnel throughout the chain of command to the launch sites themselves.

Criticized as risky and unjustified or undemocratic, Washington’s “sole authority” system concentrates power in the president’s hands and thereby removes it from others’, minimizing the risk of unauthorized use. As Middlebury Institute professor Jeffrey Lewis writes, it would be very hard to falsify Presidential authentication, or convince those one level down in the command chain that a lawful strike has been ordered without it. And because military command’s enabling codes are needed to actually employ nuclear weapons, local commanders or groups cannot go rogue themselves.

On the surface, the Russian Federation’s command and control resembles that of the United States: Russia’s 2020 nuclear doctrine, the “decision to use nuclear weapons is taken by the President of the Russian Federation.” Beyond this, some particulars about who and how authorization takes place is murky. Former Soviet specialist Valery Yarynich’s 2003 account, the reference source for Russian NC2, is not always totally clear. The president, defense minister, and chief of the General Staff together authorize nuclear employment, for example, if Russia is under attack. But what role each plays remains opaque, as Lewis and Bruno Tertrais note. The Russian president may need consent from the defense minister and the chief of the General Staff, or just one, to authorize a launch. (President Vladimir Putin could also presumably fire a reluctant Sergei Shoigu, his defense minister, or Valery Gerasimov, his General Staff chief, replacing them with someone more compliant on the spot.)

Each possesses a cheget, a communication terminal named after a mountain in the Caucasus. Adopted in 1985, these suitcases connect Russia’s leaders to its detection and communication networks and can be used to communicate orders for nuclear strikes. All three chegets may be needed to authorize or enable a strike by combining codes, but this, too, is unclear—as is the role of the prime minister, who does not possess a cheget but is next in the line of succession.

Because Russia’s NC2 likely requires at least two leaders to authorize a strike than the United States’, the President or a single rogue actor likely cannot command a Russian launch. During the 1991 coup attempt, Soviet NC2 was put to the test when the plotters were able to briefly steal Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s cheget. According to General Staff Chief Mikhail Moiseyev, both Gorbachev and the defence minister’s nuclear controls were “cut out,” leaving only his cheget. Even had a captured cheget been active, it probably could not have been used to order an unauthorized strike without the others, without cooperation from national command, and without authentication from top Soviet leaders. (Another senior Soviet official claimed a nuclear response could be launched even without Gorbachev, but was probably referring to Perimetr, a fallback system that cannot launch a first strike, or a crisis-specific pre-delegated authority in case Russia was under nuclear attack and decapitated.) And like the United States’ NC2, Russia also uses a two-person rule at its command posts. A rogue actor or group would likely need the cooperation of several members of Russia’s top leadership and large, necessary elements of the military—from command to local operations—to execute such an unauthorized launch.

What about the theft and use of weapons from nuclear sites, as some feared Wagner might be doing? Concern about such risks peaked when the Soviet Union collapsed, spurring a robust effort to secure its stockpiles. As analysts Pavel Podvig and Javier Serrat note, only parts of Russia’s nuclear arsenal are “on duty” — in its strategic land- and submarine-based delivery systems. (The size and deployment of these strategic arsenals, along with those stored for use by heavy bombers, were restricted under the monitoring regime of the nuclear arms-reduction accord New START. Russia suspended its participation in February but said it will honor the treaty’s ceilings; the U.S. State Department has meanwhile noted that Russia’s strategic arsenal is in good condition.)

The rest of Russia’s nuclear arsenal is stored in 12 national and some 35 base-level facilities under the custody of the 12th Chief Directorate of the Ministry of Defense (12 GUMO). These facilities contain about 1,000 strategic warheads and Russia’s entire non-strategic—sometimes called “tactical”—arsenal (just under 2,000 warheads). To be usable as weapons, the warheads require assembly and connection with their delivery devices, as analyst Matej Risko notes. Because of this, 12 GUMO personnel cooperation would be needed to steal a warhead intact.

Even then, the weapons would likely need PALs to arm, and may, like some U.S. warheads, self-sabotage if the correct inputs are not entered. Safety measures such as environment sensing devices and strong and weak links furthermore make warheads both vulnerable to failure and difficult to hack by all but the most operationally powerful of groups—state governments. All of this means it would be very difficult for a rogue actor to steal nuclear weapons from a storage facility and detonate them.

Rogue actors could try to sell stolen nuclear material on the black market or assemble a radiological dispersal device, otherwise known as a dirty bomb. After 9/11, the prospect of nuclear terrorism prompted significant concern about dirty bombs among policymakers and academics. These devices don’t have the destructive capabilities of nuclear weapons but may cause havoc by spreading radiation around a small blast zone. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) estimates there have been more than 4,000 incidents of nuclear material escaping regulatory control since 1993, with just over 300 of these suspected of being connected to trafficking or malicious use. Officials seized the third of several identical amounts of enriched uranium in 2015, for example, that all originated from Ozersk, a small town in the Urals where the first Soviet nuclear warhead fuel was created. As Harvard’s Matthew Bunn detailed in 2010, Russia, in particular, has been prone to internal corruption and theft.

Yet experts such as Simon Fraser University’s Robin M. Frost note that black market demand for fissile material is soft, trafficking incidents have declined, and most appear amateur. Nuclear material is difficult to handle. With many other pathways to destruction, the costs of a dirty bomb may simply outweigh its benefits. If a group were intent on creating a dirty bomb, it might target Russia’s research and civilian nuclear fleet rather than its weapons storage facilities. Spent nuclear fuel such as cesium-137 is much more radioactive than weapons-grade material. Indeed, both Russian and Ukrainian officials have accused each other of planning to use the partially shut-down Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in a radiological dispersal scenario. In recent months, the IAEA dispatched monitoring agents and then its director-general to verify the plant’s reactors and spent fuel storage.

Should we worry about rogue agents and accidents? Yes—and governments modernizing their arsenals should do more to imagine rogue strategies and plan against them. But the greatest nuclear danger in the war may still be the conventional one. Misperceiving the risks and fearing for their survival, Russia’s rulers could put their non-strategic nuclear forces on high alert, increasing the never-zero chance of inadvertent nuclear use that leads to war. They could break the nuclear taboo and authorize a limited strike in a last-ditch effort to maintain control of the war or their rule. U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has stated that the United States would respond “decisively” and with “catastrophic consequences” if Russia used nuclear weapons. Then, to crib Günther Anders, the enormity of events might quickly surpass our ability to imagine them.