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Rating: 
Summary: Highly detailed material
Review: This is an amazing book about the history, design, strategies and current state of the Russian nuclear forces. There was not a single detail I didn't found in this fascinating material. The chapter about the process for veryfing an incoming attack and launching a response is really good.
Rating:
Summary: Highly detailed material
Review: This is an amazing book about the history, design, strategies and current state of the Russian nuclear forces. There was not a single detail I didn't found in this fascinating material. The chapter about the process for veryfing an incoming attack and launching a response is really good.
Rating:
Summary: Very technical, but a treasure trove of accurate information
Review: This is not an easy-reading book, but if you desire to know the smaller details of the history, development, design, construction, and strategy of the Soviet and current Russian strategic forces, without conjecture and without fluff, this is your book. If you can or wish to coherently discourse on the design differences between the Soviet R-36 and R-36M2 second stage and other such details, this one's for you. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Comprehensive and Absolutely Authoritative
Review: Today, Russia's nuclear forces remain the single greatest danger to the security and survival of the United States. However, because of ten years of Russian economic difficulties, too many in Government and the Western public pay far too little attention. This book represents the best understanding of Russia's strategic forces available outside the Russian military. You can be sure that the people who really want to understand Russia's nuclear complex and their strategic rocket forces have a copy of this book. This is particularly remarkable since the contributors, all Russians, to this comprehensive overview have based their solid analysis solely on publicly available information--publicly available but dispersed over a wide variety of sources--and then used their scientific understanding to present in a thoughtful, authoritative, and most of all useful account. Open the book to almost any page and you will find useful and important information. For instance, chapter eight presents a table of Russian nuclear tests, including the test's primary goal. This is the only such compellation I have seen and far exceeds similar lists for the United States. Right away you can see that the Soviet Union used significantly fewer tests on making sure their nuclear weapons would not explode accidentally than did the United States. Does that mean their weapons represent a significantly greater risk of accidental nuclear detonation? An interesting question to ponder. The story behind the book would, perhaps, make even more thrilling reading. While based on information that the Russian government itself made public, recent years have seen an unjustified persecution of the book's authors by the Russian Federal Security Bureau, the successor to the KGB. In fact, one of the contributors is in under arrest (for other work he did) and all the unsold Russian language editions of this book have been confiscated by the Russian government. Readers in both Russia and the United States who are seriously concerned about nuclear war and peace should read this book.
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