U.S. Treaty-Monitoring Presence at Russian Missile Plant Winding Down

WASHINGTON -- With the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty expiring in early December, U.S. inspectors are winding down their nearly 15-year presence in the remote Russian village of Votkinsk (see GSN, Nov. 11).

Roughly 630 miles northeast of Moscow, the town is home to the Votkinsk Machine Building Plant, a weapon factory where the accord allows as many as 30 U.S. personnel to ensure Russian compliance with treaty provisions on nuclear-capable missiles. Moscow uses the facility to manufacture SS-27 Topol-M and SS-26 Bulava ICBMs.

Operating 24 hours a day, the monitoring staff can observe and inspect vehicles leaving the facility by rail or road, according to the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency. The monitors also conduct twice-daily perimeter inspections to verify that missiles cannot leave the facility by any other means.

Washington and Moscow are engaged in intense negotiations to replace the treaty with a new accord that sets lower caps on deployed nuclear warheads and delivery vehicles. However, the envoys have not yet reached agreement. Despite earlier hopes to the contrary, the two nations will be unable to achieve ratification of a new treaty before the old one comes to an end (see GSN, Nov. 18).

Lacking a new agreement that allows for a continued U.S. presence at the Votkinsk facility, the monitors would be forced to move out by Dec. 5, when the 1991 treaty expires.

There is no public indication yet that a new pact would maintain a provision allowing for U.S. inspectors on the ground at Votkinsk.

With the United States not currently producing any new-design strategic missiles, there is nothing for Moscow to monitor at shuttered U.S. production lines. In that the production-monitoring verification measure is now not reciprocal, Moscow no longer finds it useful, even if Washington does, according to nuclear weapons expert Jeffrey Lewis of the New America Foundation.

Lewis has pointed to indications that Moscow wants to jettison any such missile-production monitoring in the so-called "New START" agreement.

"The Russians have been saying that for a long time," one U.S. Defense Department official told Global Security Newswire last week.

Given clear signals that a Russian change of heart was unlikely, "we had to [start packing up]," the official said. "We had to. You can't just walk away."

U.S. facilities at the Votkinsk site include a large administrative building and three residential buildings, called Lincoln, Roosevelt and Washington.

Although preparing to depart Votkinsk has been a major undertaking, responsibility for winding down operations has fallen largely to the support staff, freeing inspectors to continue their treaty-controlled mission, officials said.

"We've got monitors there right now ... and we will continue to monitor until the treaty expires on Dec. 5," the defense official said. "Nobody has suspended it. Nobody would. We've maintained that [monitoring since 1995 when] we sent our first monitors there, and they've been there continuously, 365 days a year, since that point."

This official and several others interviewed for this article spoke on condition of anonymity. They cited diplomatic and political sensitivities involved in discussing a verification regime under negotiation in the ongoing U.S.-Russian arms control talks.

Asked to describe treaty-verification activities at Votkinsk, a U.S. official would say only that "the United States has fully implemented its rights under START at Votkinsk and will continue to do so until Dec. 5."

However, the monitoring process at Votkinsk is based on clearly established rules and is fairly straightforward, other officials said.

From inside a Navy-issued trailer called a "Data Collection Center," the inspectors observe traffic exiting the production facilities through a huge portal, according to those familiar with the setup.

They use red traffic lights to control vehicles, and can exercise treaty rights to inspect cargo if a truck or railcar exceeds a specified length and is potentially capable of transporting a missile, these sources said. U.S. personnel also can record the serial numbers of START-limited missiles, aiding in any subsequent efforts to track deployed missiles under treaty provisions.

The inspections have helped Washington assess Moscow's nuclear-capable missile fleet and remain aware of new missiles under development, officials say.

Under a New START accord, Washington and Moscow each anticipate reducing deployed strategic nuclear warheads to no more than 1,675, U.S. and Russian Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev announced in July. The pact would also cut nuclear-capable delivery vehicles to a level between 500 and 1,100, the leaders said (see GSN, July 6).

Perhaps the greatest challenge in the ongoing negotiations has been finding common ground on how to verify the new numerical limits, experts say. Moscow has resisted a number of measures that it interprets as nonreciprocal, including Washington's interest in tracking Russia's mobile ICBMs, according to reports. The United States fields no such mobile systems for possible monitoring.

Russian negotiators also have opposed renewing START provisions for exchanging missile-test data, called "telemetry," Lewis said early this month on his blog, ArmsControlWonk.com. However, it remains unclear what the U.S. negotiating position has been on this issue, he said.

Interviewed last week, Lewis rued the potential loss of these verification measures under the anticipated New START pact, saying, "I suspect we're going to lose Votkinsk, but I hope we can hang onto the telemetry."

Not everyone views Votkinsk monitoring as a valuable verification provision to be sought in a forthcoming treaty.

The basis for exchanging inspectors at U.S. and Russian weapon-production facilities essentially is that "we think you're cheating and we're here to prove it," said one retired nuclear-weapons officer. "[But] if they're going to do something they don't want us to know about, they'll go and do it someplace else."

Over the years, it has become increasingly possible to verify missile-test performance and weapon deployments via direct observation or satellite imagery, according to this defense expert and others.

Under the 1991 treaty, "we put some rather onerous requirements on the Russians because we could," said the retired officer. "If the Cold War is either over or thawing, there are certain things you would not require a counterpart to do."

Moscow actually never exercised its reciprocal right to continuously monitor a U.S. missile production facility by deploying inspectors, according to a DTRA fact sheet. In April 2001 -- a year after Thiokol Corp. stopped making Peacekeeper missiles at a plant in Promontory, Utah -- the Russian right to maintain such inspectors in the United States came to an end.

That left Votkinsk as the only operating strategic-missile production facility in either nation, and the only site to host continuous monitoring. The START accord also allows for 12 types of intrusive verification measures that include suspect-site inspections to confirm that clandestine weapons production is not occurring, according to the U.S. defense agency.

Even as hosting the only remaining monitoring mission at a production facility has evolved into an irritant for Moscow, it is unclear how useful the U.S. presence at Votkinsk has been for Washington. Intelligence officials have prized the U.S. opportunity to observe Russian manufacturing operations at Votkinsk, but how much militarily useful information has been gleaned is uncertain, some experts said.

For many of the U.S. civilian and military inspectors who served at the remote Russian location, there were apparently few surprises.

"It was very monotonous. We could have months go by without inspecting a missile," a former U.S. inspector at Votkinsk told GSN in an interview. "It all seemed like the whole process was very ridiculous, in a way."

A photograph posted on a Facebook page for the "Votkinsk Portal Monitoring Facility" shows a group of U.S. personnel wearing swimsuits and big smiles, posing on beach chairs in several inches of snow. A Defense Threat Reduction Agency building appears in the background.

"It always felt like an episode from 'M*A*S*H,'" said the former inspector, referring to the television comedy series about an Army medical unit during the Korean War. "There's people from all over the country just thrown in there to do this job. It was very surreal at times."

Military duty officers would cycle through the facility on three- or six-week rotations, this source said. Civilians typically served much longer tours -- many on DTRA contract with Raytheon Technical Services, or Hughes before that -- on duty for nine-week stretches, with three weeks of leave in between.

Under the START accord, the U.S. government could deliver food and other goods to the inspection and support teams at Votkinsk in two cargo aircraft flights a year.

The defense agency describes a typical inspection team as including a team chief and deputy, two linguists, a weapons specialist and other experts. Government and contracted support personnel include translators, technicians, cooks and medical staff, according to defense officials.

The former inspector said the U.S. team at Votkinsk used relatively little advanced technology for its monitoring operations, and the staff's computers or other electronics could likely be moved using a single cargo aircraft. Most furniture and office supplies would likely be disposed of or left behind, officials speculated.