How U.S. Helped Russia Improve Deadly Missiles

In 1995, McDonnell Douglas, now Boeing, successfully lobbied the U.S. Navy to buy a Russian weapon, the Zvezda Ma-31 "Krypton" missile. McDonnell Douglas intended to modify the small, 1,500-pound Krypton missile to act as a supersonic target for U.S. Navy Aegis warships. Ironically, the Russian Krypton was intended to simulate the real threat to U.S. warships, a much larger Russian weapon called the "Sunburn."

The Krypton is also designed to attack Navy warships using sophisticated electronics to home in on Aegis radars. Yet the Krypton missiles supplied to the American Navy contained none of the weapon's critical radar seeking electronic systems. According to one Russian defense source, the Krypton supplied to the U.S. Navy is a little more than a "hollow target shell."

In 1995, the U.S. Navy also determined that the Russian Krypton missiles did not include the all-important radar "seeker" and guidance electronics from the weapon version. "Removal of the seeker will preclude use of the MA-31 for testing the effectiveness of soft-kill EW [electronic warfare] systems and decoys," states a 1995 Navy report.

In addition, the U.S. Navy also quickly found that the Russian Krypton missiles would not fly. According to the 1995 report, "all simulations to date have resulted in failure." In response, U.S. Navy and McDonnell Douglas engineers began a series of "P3I" or "pre-planned product improvements" to make the Russian weapon work.

In 1995, U.S. Navy and U.S. defense contractors directly assisted Russian missile engineers by testing and improving the Krypton missile. One U.S. Navy "improvement" given to the Russians increased the range of the Krypton from an ineffective "15 miles" to more than 40 miles.

According to a 1995 McDonnell Douglas review report, the "extended range option adds an auxiliary fuel tank, a reduced drag nose cone, changes the fuel to JP-10 (which has a higher specific energy content than the Russian fuel), and modifies the ramjet nozzle. The extended range modification is intended to increase range to approximately 42 nm (nautical miles) at 10m (meter) altitude."

Another crucial design improvement given to Russia involved emergency "Jettison Testing" of the weapon. According to the 1995 program review document, the Russian missile contained a fatal flaw that could destroy the firing plane and kill the pilot. In response, U.S. weapons engineers determined the exact fix required to correct the fatal flaw and turned the problem "over to the Russians for resolution."

Moreover, the troubled Krypton project has been dogged by allegations of improper financial activity. In 1999, Janes Defense reported that each MA-31 missile purchase also includes a 28 percent "fee" given directly to Russian generals. According to the Navy documentation, each Krypton costs $910,000, almost twice the price of U.S. target missiles. The 28 percent fee paid directly to the Russian generals amounts to more than a quarter million dollars charge per weapon.

Despite the public allegations of kickbacks for the Russian generals, according to the U.S. Navy, "the prime contractor with McDonnell Douglas, now a wholly owned subsidiary of The Boeing Company, does not include, and is not required to include any clauses specifically addressing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act."

"We send the money to the Russians," stated G. Hotze, the program manager for the U.S. Navy Krypton project. "What they do with it is their business."

The American engineering and financial assistance has also paid off for Moscow. Once the U.S. engineers successfully modified and tested the Krypton, Russia began an aggressive marketing effort to sell the anti-radar missile to Vietnam, India and China. The Russians, according to defense analyst Richard Fisher, have sold the improved Krypton to China.

"China recently signed a deal with Russia to co-produce the extended-range version of the Krypton," said Richard Fisher, a fellow at the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation.

"The Chinese intend to produce the KR-1 their own version of the Kh-31p improved Krypton. In addition, the recent sale of Russian Sukhoi SU-30MK supersonic strike bombers to the Chinese Air Force also includes Krypton missiles. We can expect to see the Krypton to proliferate to Iran and other hostile customers."

At the same time American engineers and Russian engineers improved the Krypton, the Clinton/Gore administration turned down a Russian offer to buy all of its SS-N-22 Sunburn supersonic cruise missiles. The SS-N-22 Sunburn is considered "the most lethal anti-ship missile in the world" and the No. 1 threat to U.S. Navy aircraft carriers. The improved Krypton was intended to simulate the SS-N-22 Sunburn.

The U.S. effort, code-named project "Ballerina," used American business contacts inside Moscow to buy Sunburn missiles directly from the Russian Navy. A 1995 status report prepared for the Navy, states that U.S. defense contractor Vector Microwave had "reached a basic agreement with the Russian manufacturer of the SS-N-22 (Arsenjev Aviation Company 'Progress') on the concept of acquiring the SS-N-22 missiles as targets."

According to a signed letter of intent, the 1995 Sunburn purchase offer included 100 conventional missiles drawn directly from the Russian Navy inventory with an option to buy the entire remaining Russian inventory. Unlike the Krypton deal, the Russians offered complete Sunburn missiles to the U.S. Navy, including "active" warheads and the critical electronics such as the "radar seeker" and "radio altimeter."

The July 1995 status report written by Vector Microwave noted that the Russians had agreed to the Sunburn sale and that a "letter of 'bona fides' from the U.S. government would be necessary" in order to enter into formal negotiations. The 1995 report also warned "the Russians felt that strict confidentiality of such an acquisition program should be maintained."

In September 1995, U.S. Navy Principal Deputy Vice Admiral W.C. Bowes provided the letter of "bona fides" to Admiral Felix Gromov, Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Navy. Bowes advised the Russian Navy that America intended to purchase the Sunburn supersonic cruise missiles.

"I appreciate the opportunity to convey to you the United States Navy's interest in acquiring all variants of the SS-N-22 'Sunburn' Anti-Ship Supersonic Ship-to-ship missile for test and evaluation," wrote U.S. Admiral Bowes to Gromov in a September 1995 letter.

Amazingly, the U.S turned down the Russian Sunburn offer. Defense Department run by then Secretary William Perry. According to one Pentagon source, the administration balked at the Sunburn price of nearly "a million dollars" a missile.

Without the 1995 U.S. Navy sale, the hard-pressed Russian contractor instead cut a deal with Beijing 12 months later, agreeing to supply the inventory of Sunburn missiles to China. In 1996, China purchased the Russian Sovremenny destroyer Yekaterinburg and second warship, the Alexandr Nevskiy. Each Chinese warship is armed with eight nuclear-tipped Sunburn missiles. China took possession of the Yekaterinburg in November 1999. The Alexandr Nevskiy is under way with a joint Russian-Chinese crew and will join the Yekaterinburg in the Taiwan Straits this month . Official Navy documentation notes that the Sunburn missiles are armed with a "nuclear" warhead equal to more than 200,000 tons of TNT. The Sunburn is more than four times larger than the Krypton, weighing nearly 8,000 pounds and carries a nuclear punch 10 times as powerful as the atomic bomb used on Hiroshima. The Sunburn also flies to its target at more than 1,500 miles an hour, as fast as a rifle bullet, skimming the water at only a few feet over the surface.

In July 1999, defense analyst Richard D. Fisher wrote an evaluation of the Sunburn. Fisher reported that the Sunburn is capable of a dive speed of nearly 3000 miles an hour, helping it evade U.S. naval defenses.

"The Sunburn anti-ship missile is perhaps the most lethal anti-ship missile in the world," wrote Fisher in a review of the Chinese navy.

"The Sunburn combines a Mach 2.5 speed with a very low-level flight pattern that uses violent end maneuvers to throw off defenses. After detecting the Sunburn, the U.S. Navy Phalanx point defense system may have only 2.5 seconds to calculate a fire solution - not enough time before the devastating impact of a 750 lb. warhead." The Clinton-Gore administration could have bought the entire active inventory of deadly Sunburn missiles in 1995, ending forever a deadly threat to our allies and U.S. Navy warships. Today, the Navy is still interested in buying Sunburn missiles from Russia. In August 2000, the U.S. Navy quietly issued a defense contract proposal on its Internet site to "evaluate the feasibility of obtaining" Sunburn missiles from Russia. According to the new proposal, the Navy is now willing to pay $2 million a Sunburn, more than twice the price of the 1995 Russian offer.

The Krypton and Sunburn are part of an overall failure of the U.S.-Russia military purchase program. The intention was to simulate the threat with the real thing from Russia. Instead, the policy forced the Navy to shut down U.S. missile factories in favor of Moscow. The Navy has exhausted its supply of aging U.S.-made target missiles and the factory has closed forever. A new "all-American" target made by Orbital Sciences Corp. will not be available for at least three years.

The Clinton-Gore administration elected to rely on the good graces of Moscow to test our billion-dollar Aegis warships. U.S. defense contractor Boeing has a contract with Russia to supply up to 300 "improved" Krypton missiles over the next three years, 28 percent fee included.

The Navy has a missile gap. After a decade of effort and hundreds of millions of dollars the U.S. Navy still has no new target missiles and no old ones left. Over 10 years the threat has grown. Sunburns and improved Kryptons are deployed within striking distance of the U.S. Seventh fleet, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. Instead of turning their swords into plowshares, the Russians continue to make the best weapons in the world - with our help.