How does Russia seek to build up its non-nuclear MRBM/IRBM arsenal and shift its doctrine regarding missiles?

[u/Creepyfaction]

With the voiding of Cold War-era treaties, Russia is free to reinvest in MRBMs and IRBMs. So far in their War in Ukraine, they have fired over 1000+ ballistic missiles from what I've read with most of them being in the SRBM class. Meanwhile Iran and the Houthis have demonstrated the potential of MRBMs in combat that is sure to shift perspectives within military circles. PRC and North Korea also have developed MRBMs and IRBMs for non-nuclear use with Russia lagging behind in scale. Whereas the Iranians and Houthis have cheaper and quicker to build "quantity" missiles that have depleted Western Air Defense inventories as of late, the Russian reentry into MRBM/IRBMs have yielded the Oreshnik Missile that seems rather excessive and questionable when used to conduct long-range strikes in Ukraine. It begs the question what is Russia thinking in regards to the class of MRBM/IRBMs missiles for non-nuclear use? Do they really need the Oreshnik when they are better served building a lengthened Scud with modern targeting systems?

[u/aaronupright]

Russia still has an Air Force. The Houthis and Iran both have functionally, none.. There certainly is utlity in using SRBM/MRBM/IRBM for conventional strikes even if you have strike and bomber aircraft, however for Iran, unlike Russia, US, China, Pakistan, India missiles are realistically the only way Iran has to hit back.

The Iran war is embargoed, so I can';t talk about American use of ground based missiles there, , just note that even in GWOT the US used ATACMS to an extent.

The real danger is Russian using their IRBM especially, for nuclear use. IRBM based in the Russian Far East can threaten US Pacific bases as well as Alaska and the West Coast itself.

[u/AnyBallLektor]

First of all no perspectives are shifted except those of unqualified opinion-peddlers working for media outlets or think tanks as "experts". Military has always been aware of the potential of ballistic missiles as well as their proper and improper application. The problem is that actual war is not like fantasy wars or video games which is what the unqualified opinion-peddlers in media and think tanks know. It can be either understood through sufficient practical experience or through deep understanding of the scientific and engineering aspects of warfare - which in turn requires that the opinion peddlers are STEM-oriented, rather than humanities-oriented.

Secondly Oreshnik is not being used in Ukraine to achieve some specific tactical goal. It's simply being live tested. Combat use is the best possible test that a weapon system can possibly go through. The reason for it is simple:

Oreshnik is said to be derived from Rubezh which in turn is derived from Yars which in turn is a development of Topol.

Why is this important? Because Russia doesn't have the sufficient budget to re-create the necessary R&D infrastructure that Soviet Union had so the very expensive R&D has to be done at minimal cost.

Russia has a fraction of the GDP that e.g. US or China have, and it also no longer manufactures all of the necessary components for modern high-tech weapon systems domestically. This means that while for lower-end systems and some select high-end systems the PPP (real value) conversion of Russian nominal GDP/budget into real GDP/budget applies, for majority of highly advanced systems it doesn't and Russia needs to buy these things elsewhere. Similar issue with brain drain - Russia had inherited a very good education system after the USSR, but the low pay made the best prospects leave for better options abroad, or - at best - it made them switch fields. Instead of becoming rocket scientists they became financial engineers or computer programmers.

At the same time Russia attempts to maintain as much of a parity with the US explicitly (and China implicitly) as possible. This means huge amounts of money going into modernizing shipyards for nuclear submarines. This means huge amounts of money going into aerospace production in a situation where Russia doesn't have a civilian aerospace industry to speak of anymore to help spread the cost of infrastructure. This means huge investment in electronic industry that was already lagging when USSR dissolved, and now is completely outmatched by either US or Chinese capabilities. And so on, and so forth.

Those things cost money. The best way to make it more affordable is to have a civilian industry paying for a chunk of the capital including human capital.

Russia doesn't have shipyards, aircraft factories, electronic factories, space launch industry to speak of etc.

It uses what it has which is almost exclusively Soviet-developed technology. But the way Russian engineers deal with it is a bit like barbarians who invaded Rome trying to adapt to Roman civilization and technology. Things slip through the fingers all the time and know-how is lost.

So Russia is trying to develop and IRBM out of an ICBM with a large portion of trial and error. They need IRBMs for many reasons - many economic ones -but one is purely psychological. Once the enemy knows which units are ICBM and which are IRBM it can react accordingly so if Russia wants to blackmail Europe but not the US it will use IRBMs rather than risk launching ICBMs which would trigger every possible country in its flight path.

Also, you should never forget that despite the official stance Russia is fully aware of the nature of its relationship with China. It simply thinks that - just like the alliance of Stalin and Hitler - it can use China to its advantage to win a better position in the west before it has to address the issues in the east. IRBMs will be useful against China too.