This is coolbert:
Conclusion!
Rant yet further and final.
Draw your saber partner!
For clarification sake those intermediate-range ballistic [IRBM] missiles as were part and parcel of the controversy as existing originally almost forty years ago and essential to an understanding of the INF treaty [Intermediate-range nuclear forces]. Details of the missile as most germane to current events also described.
From Forty years ago:
1. SS-20 “Saber” (RSD-10).
"The SS-20 Saber was a Soviet intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) that entered service in 1976. Its wide-scale deployment was a key driver behind NATO’s 1979 decision to station U.S. Pershing II IRBMs in Europe. The Soviet Union retired the SS-20 from service following the ratification of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 1987."
2. Pershing II.
3. BGM-109G GLCM.
SS-20 [NATO code name Saber] five-hundred missiles deployed by Soviet ground forces [developed and fielded totally in secret] with a range at least twice of the American counter-part IRBM. Each SS-20 carrying three thermonuclear warheads of 250 kilotons each.
American Pershing II and GLCM [ground-launched cruise missile] missiles range and numbers both only about half that of a Soviet SS-20. Each American Pershing or GLCM equipped with a single atomic warhead the explosive force of which considerably less significant than those devices as mounted on a SS-20.
And as it is now:
4. 9M729 - SSC-8. Ground-launched. Russian.
"Russia has deployed a cruise missile in violation of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, complicating Trump's approach to Russia. ... the Russians now have two battalions of the prohibited cruise missile .. Each missile battalion is believed to have four mobile launchers and a larger supply of missiles."
The SSC-8 is a ground-launched cruise missile. A naval version of this cruise missile exists and apparently is in the inventory of the Russian navy and has been for some time.
The naval version as ship-mounted not covered by the INF Treaty. SS-8 a threat that now cannot be ignored.
SSC-8 apparently also developed, tested and now fielded totally in SECRET! As it was with the SS-20 so it is now with the SSC-8?
coolbert.