Russian strategic nuclear forces

Cosmos-2455 - a new generation electronic intelligence satellite

2009-11-20T17:57:00Z

On November 20, 2009 at 13:44 MSK (10:44 UTC) the Space Forces performed a successful launch of a Soyuz-U rocket from the launch pad No. 2 of the launch complex No. 16 of the Plesetsk launch site. The spacecraft delivered into orbit, designated Cosmos-2455, is a new generation electronic reconnaissance satellite of the Lotos-S type.

Cosmos-2455 received international designation 2009-063A and NORAD catalog number 36095. According to NORAD data, Cosmos-2455 was deployed in an initial orbit with inclination of 67.2 degrees, orbital period of about 96 minutes, apogee of 905 km, and perigee of 200 km (the perigee will most likely be raised to make the orbit closer to circular).

This is the first launch of a satellite of the Lotos-S type. It has been reported that these satellites, with their not yet flown counterparts known as Pion, will work as part of the Liana electronic reconnaissance system. This system is being designed to replace the Tselina electronic intelligence and US-PU/Legenda naval reconnaissance systems. Cosmos-2421, which operated from June 2006 to February 2008, apparently was the last US-PU satellite. The launch of Cosmos-2428 in June 2007 was reported to be the last launch of a Tselina-2 satellite. (At the same time, according to the Kommersant report quoted above, Ukraine will deliver to Russia four 11F644 Tselina spacecraft by January 2012, indicating that launches might continue.)

The launch was initially planned for July 28, 2009, but was cancelled because of problems with one of the satellite components. The spacecraft was returned to the manufacturer, Arsenal Machine Building Plant in St-Petersburg, which worked on the spacecraft together with the TsSKB-Progress Design Bureau in Samara.

START bridging agreement

2009-11-17T11:02:20Z

The START bridging agreement will most likely include provisional implementation of the new treaty, rather than extension of the old one.

The bridging agreement that is supposed to close the gap between START and the START follow-on treaties created a bit of confusion in the last couple of days. It started from the remarks of NCS's Michael McFaul, who stated the obvious - the new treaty will not come into force by December 5th - and assured everybody that the U.S. and Russia are working on a "bridging agreement" that would make sure that some verification measures take place while the new treaty is going through ratification. For some reason some reporters took it to mean that the negotiators will not be completed in time.

I cannot find a direct quote, but it looks like McFaul said exactly the opposite - both sides are confident that the treaty will be signed and equally confident that it will not be ratified by December 5th. (Although, strictly speaking, the official line is that the treaty will be signed "by the end of the year".)

There was some confusion on the Russian side as well - the media quoted an official from the Information and Press Department of the Foreign Ministry official as saying that Russia could work on extending START to be that bridge. That was certainly not what the party line said - we know that there are many reasons why Russia would not want to extend START.

Today, a Foreign Ministry representative clarified the official position - Russia will be ready to start provisional application of the new treaty provisions before it enters into force. As I argued a few days ago, this is probably the best option at this point.

Karelia submarine begins sea trials

2009-11-12T10:20:34Z

The K-18 Karelia submarine of the Project 667BDRM/Delta IV class began sea trials that will complete its overhaul (the submarine was moved out of a dry dock in November 2008). Karelia will most likely enter service later this year with Sineva modification of the R-29RM missile on board. It is expected that the overhaul will allow it to stay in service until 2020.

Megatons to Megawatts program still doesn't make sense

2009-11-11T23:21:00Z

It looks like we are back to the discussion of the merits of the Megatons to Megawatts program (aka HEU-LEU agreement). A quite confused article in the New York Times, which threw together START, HEU, missiles, and a lot of other things, quoted U.S. officials as saying that the United States and Russia are discussing a so-called HEU-2 deal, which would presumably extend the current down-blending effort beyond 2013, when the current program is supposed to complete down-blending the initial 500 tonnes of HEU.

I sure hope that they aren't.

From the security point of view, the deal make absolutely no sense, to put it very mildly. I wrote about it in a Bulletin column about a year ago - the program is constantly creating unnecessary additional risks by hauling about 30 tonnes of HEU annually across Russia several times in many shipments. The chart below (adapted from an IPFM report) shows the current HEU flows:

I simply don't see how it could be that shipping tens of tonnes of HEU metal, oxide or UF6 between all these places is a contribution to security of that HEU. Especially if we take into account that the program does nothing to eliminate whatever security problems may exist where the material is coming from - at warhead storage sites or at centralized fissile material storage facilities.

As I wrote a year ago, the program played an important and useful role in the past. But the only danger that this program is reducing now is that of Russia's making new nuclear warheads out of that HEU. I am all for elimination of warheads and weapon-usable materials, but I would hope that we could find a way of doing so that would be less insane than shipping those materials back and forth.

I still believe that a much better way of dealing with the materials would be to keep them in secure storage for the moment - warheads in the custody of the 12th Directorate, and materials - in centralized storage, at Mayak or elsewhere. The material there is much more easier to secure and account for than that same material hauled to across the country in bulk form. At some point the material would have to be eliminated, of course, but I don't see why this cannot wait until Mayak has all the required facilities.

Luckily, the down-blending deal does not make any sense for Russia from the commercial point of view. Rosatom doesn't like it anymore (it's not getting the money directly as it used to in the early days of the program), so it has been resisting the attempts to extend the deal for some time now. I hope Rosatom will be able to fight off new attempts as well.

As for the new U.S. administration, if it believes it has some political capital to spend with Rosatom, I would certainly hope it would not waste it promoting a program that makes all of us less secure.

Post-START verification gap

2009-11-11T18:02:36Z

Expiration of the START treaty is less than four weeks away. I don't think there is any serious doubt that the new treaty will be signed by that time - although we hear occasional reports about disagreements at the talks, the politics on both sides works for the agreement. Whether it will be a meaningful treaty remains to be seen, but we'll certainly have something.

Once the START treaty expires, its verification procedures will be gone as well. Since ratification of the new agreement will take at least several months, the United States and Russia are facing a "verification gap". With U.S. politics being what it is the gap may easily last for a year or so.

U.S. administration officials have been trying to reassure the public by saying that discussions of temporary measures are underway and that Russia is cooperating. But the details are scarce and nobody seems to have a clear idea of how this "bridging mechanism" would look like.

Some have suggested that the two countries could just agree to abide by the new agreement until it is ratified (or explicitly rejected). This provisional application of the treaty is apparently allowed by the U.S. law as long as no irreversible changes are done. Anyway, I'm sure the U.S. administration could come up with something.

The situation is Russia is a bit more complicated. It appears that any verification or data exchange would require some kind of legal agreement to be in force. For example, the Law on State Secrets (well, you know, Russia does have laws) states that otherwise secret data can be declassified if this is required by Russia's international obligations (Article 13 of the Law). The law is a bit vague on the details (it's a Russian law after all), but it appears that this might take an international treaty signed by the president (Article 4.2). Or it might not - the law appears to give the president some discretion as far as declassification concerned (Article 4.2 again). Or maybe it doesn't. A lot would depend on political will and, apparently, on the willingness of the United States to compromise. In any event, information exchange is the easiest part. When it comes to inspections, it's highly likely that no U.S. inspector would be able to enter Russia until the new treaty comes into force.

So far, the most visible attempt to do something about the upcoming "verification gap" has been a bill, S.2727, introduced by Senator Lugar (via Armscontrolwonk.com) last week. The bill would help make extend the START verification procedures for six months beyond December 5th by providing legal protection to Russian inspectors as long as they carry START inspections. Senator Lugar said in his floor speech that nothing would happen if Russia does not reciprocate (the bill, however, does not say this explicitly). This part makes this whole effort a non-starter - the Russian military are counting the days until December 5th, when the U.S. inspectors will have to leave the Votkinsk plant. They also can't wait to see the end of some START reporting requirements - notifications of mobile missile deployments have emerged as a particularly sore point. Not to mention the expected deployment of RS-24 - Russia would probably not want to submit the technical data on this missile in START format, for it would show that it's essentially a Topol-M.

I guess the only realistic "bridging" solution at this point is to have an executive agreement that would allow provisional application of the new treaty procedures. The laws seem to be flexible enough to give the presidents the authority to do that, although some problems may be expected on both sides. The precedent that was established by START itself, by the way, is not particularly encouraging - there were no inspections or data exchange on provisional basis between July 1991 and December 1994, when the treaty came into force. However, the times were quite different then.

We don't know yet what the new provisions are, but let's hope they are not a big step back from the START ones. In any event, it would be better than living with the verification gap.

Photos of Yuri Dolgorukiy

2009-11-02T07:27:00Z

Russian photographer Sergey Kuznetsov (pilot.strizhi.info) published an interesting set of photos of the Yuri Dolgorukiy submarine - some photos are taken by him, some are provided by Sevmash.

Among other things, one of the images (on the left) shows that the submarine has a set of 16 launch tubes - this is what Russia declared in a START MOU back in 2007. Russian media, however, still often report that the submarine will carry 12 missiles. (Well, technically it is possible to keep four launchers empty, but I cannot imagine why anybody would do that.)

Success eludes Bulava

2009-11-02T07:02:06Z

It is difficult to classify the outcome of the last attempt to launch the Bulava missile, but it definitely was not a success. The official version is that no actual launch was planned this time and the Dmitry Donskoy submarine, which went to sea with a missile on board on October 26th and returned to port two days later, still with the missile, was simply going through check-ups of launch-related procedures and equipment. However, this is probably not what happened.

The delay is far from the first for this test - we know with some certainty that it was originally planned for the week of October 12th. When the submarine finally went to sea, the plan was to conduct the launch on Monday, October 26th, but someone notices that President Medvedev was visiting the NPOmash design bureau that day - success of failure, nobody at MITT wanted to give a competitor an opportunity to discuss the status of the Bulava program with the president. The testing crew found a way to delay the launch until Tuesday.

A number of reports suggest that there was indeed an attempt to launch the missile on Tuesday. However, the missile did not respond to the launch command - the time the problem seemed to be with the launch control system. If this was indeed the case, one can argue that it was a failure - a missile is just a part of a larger system after all - but it wasn't a failed flight test of a missile if understood narrowly.

Today, a source in the Russian Navy reportedly said that the launch will take place on November 24th - a daring prediction given the history of delays.

It is understandable that the designers are having jitters about the upcoming launch - the missile failed in four of the last five tests. Moreover, it appears that there is no consistency in failures, so it is hard to know which system will be affected next. Sergey Ivanov, Vice Prime Minister responsible for the military industry, complained after the July 2009 failure that the large number or suppliers and subcontractors makes establishing good quality control difficult - seemingly unaware of the fact that the ability to deal with these problems is exactly what makes a large development program successful.

At this point it is hard to tell what the future holds for the Bulava program. Even if it ends the current string of failed tests, the confidence in the missile would probably never be particularly high. In the past, a system like that would be accepted for "experimental service" and its production would be limited to whatever had been produced already. This may still happen, although the program is already fairly large - at least three submarines are being built for the Bulava missile. Construction of the fourth one - Svyatitel Nikolay (St. Nicholas) - is scheduled to begin in December 2009. I wouldn't rule it out that if the Bulava program gets into a real trouble, this submarine could be cancelled. We'll find it out very soon.

Successful launch of a R-29RM missile

2009-11-01T04:01:45Z

On November 1, 2009 the K-117 Bryansk submarine of the Project 667BDRM class performed a successful launch of a R-29RM missile. The launch was conducted from a submerged submarine deployed in the Barents Sea. The Navy reported that warheads successfully reached the Kura test site in Kamchatka. According to press reports, the missiles are Sineva modification of the R-29RM missile.

The Bryansk submarine conducted a successful launch of a R-29RM missile on July 14, 2009.

Successful test of a missile defense interceptor

2009-10-29T07:32:00Z

On October 29, 2009, Russia conducted a test of the 53T6 interceptor of the A-135 Moscow missile defense system (also known as Gazelle). According to a press report, the test was fully successful, which would allow the Space Forces to "considerably" extend service life of the interceptors.

In the last several year, interceptor tests have been conducted annually to confirm their characteristics and extend service life. No test was reported in 2008. However, two tests were conducted in 2007, as part of the program of modernization of the A-135 system, which includes an upgrade of the Don-2N battle management radar.

Waiting for Bulava launch

2009-10-26T00:34:10Z

The Bulava test launch, which was expected two weeks ago, but then postponed, will most likely take place in the next few days.

New Russian doctrine and preventive nuclear strikes

2009-10-14T03:29:28Z

This is what you get when you ask KGB graduates to write a military doctrine - Nikolai Patrushev, Secretary of the Security Council, in an interview in Izvestia discussed some aspects of Russia's new doctrine, which is expected to be adopted later this year.

The new document apparently will have some interesting new provisions. Here are the paragraphs from the interview that are relevant to the issue of the possibility of preventive/preemptive nuclear strike - I tried to make the translation as close to the meaning of the original* as possible:

With regard to the provisions that regulate the possibility of using nuclear weapons, this section of the military doctrine is written in the spirit of the fact that Russian Federation is a nuclear power, which is capable of using nuclear deterrence to deter potential adversaries from aggression against Russia and its allies. It is the most important priority of our country in the foreseeable future.

We also adjusted the conditions of use of nuclear weapons to counter a conventional aggression – [now they apply] not only to full-scale wars, but also to regional and even to local wars.

In addition, the doctrine provides flexibility in the possibility of use of nuclear weapons depending on the situation and the intentions of the enemy. In situations critical for national security we do not rule out a possibility of using a preemptive (preventive) [sic!] nuclear strike against the aggressor.

If we are into serious hair-splitting, Partushev did not say anything radically new - he seemed to make sure that uprezhdayushchiy udar is understood as preventive strike, but it it can be preemptive as well. Then, since nuclear weapons are to be used against an aggressor, this at least implies that there is one, i.e. that Russia is under attack already. All this may be no more than just a reiteration of the current "first-use" posture. After all, this is not the first time the Russians are using words like "preemptive".

But maybe not. The final text of the doctrine may be more careful about making the distinction, but whatever the doctrine will actually say, it is clear that the idea of using nuclear weapons as an instrument of politics is very dear to the current Russian leadership. The fact that they are talking about considering a nuclear option in local wars (would the conflict in Georgia be an example?) is also deeply unsettling.

In my view, not only this love of nuclear weapons is dangerous, it is also seriously wrong for Russia's security. I can see where this idea of reliance on nuclear weapons is coming from, but it is a delusion to think that they would be able to deal with the security problems that Russia has to deal with today.

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* Here is the Russian original:

Что касается положений о возможности применения ядерного оружия, то этот раздел Военной доктрины сформулирован в духе сохранения за Российской Федерацией статуса ядерной державы, способной осуществить ядерное сдерживание потенциальных противников от развязывания агрессии против России и ее союзников. Это является в обозримой перспективе важнейшим приоритетом нашей страны.

Также скорректированы условия использования ядерного оружия при отражении агрессии с применением обычных средств поражения не только в крупномасштабной, но и в региональной и даже в локальной войне.

Кроме того, предусматривается вариантность возможности применения ядерного оружия в зависимости от условий обстановки и намерений вероятного противника. В критических для национальной безопасности ситуациях не исключается нанесение в том числе упреждающего (превентивного) ядерного удара по агрессору.

Will Russia's numbers decline without START follow-on?

2009-10-13T03:30:29Z

With the new START treaty negotiations moving forward - the treaty will be discussed during Hillary Clinton's visit to Moscow that begins today - the opposition to the treaty is also shaping up. A couple of weeks ago the Senate Republican Policy Committee circulated a memo START Follow-on Dos & Don’ts (via The Cable), which provided a good look at the arguments that will certainly be used during the ratification process in the Senate.

Here is what the memo has to say about Russia:

The United States should not pay for what is free. Russia’s nuclear numbers will decline dramatically in the coming years with or without an arms control treaty. The United States should not make important concessions in return for something that will happen in any event.

Russia needs this agreement far more than the U.S. does. It is desperately trying to lock the U.S. into lower nuclear levels, not the other way around.

This line of thinking is hardly new - "decline" always adds some drama to the description of the reductions of the Russian arsenals and it begs for some dramatic adjective ("dramatic"?). Moreover, there is some evidence that seems to support the notion of decline - the numbers of nuclear warheads and delivery systems are indeed down substantially from what it was five or ten years ago.

However, the key point of the statement - that the numbers "will decline dramatically" with or without the treaty - is wrong. Neither it is true that Russia is desperate to have the new agreement - there are plenty of people in Russia who would be quite happy without it.

Yes, the numbers do suggest that Russia is moving toward a force of about 400 launchers and 1500-1700 nuclear warheads in the next 10-15 years. These numbers, however, assumed that Russia will be under some pressure to keep the numbers around the level of 1500 warheads. There are many reasons why I think it was a reasonable assumption - mostly it is the inertia of long-term plans made in the late 1990s and a general political commitment to nuclear disarmament that exists in Russia at least on the rhetorical level. Certainly, the plans made in the 1990s had to accept the economic realities of the time, but even in the fatter years after 2000 the plans didn't change very much - there has always been a general understanding that it is natural for the number of nuclear warheads to go down, not up.

Should the START process fail, this understanding will certainly take a hit, changing the landscape of Russia's strategic modernization. Of course, we are not talking about going back to the Cold War levels, but the "dramatic decline" would probably stop at the number that is not much lower than about 2500 operationally deployed warheads that Russia has today.

Land-based missiles

One obvious way to keep the number of warheads up is to deploy multiple warheads on single-warhead missiles. As we know, Russia has been preparing to do just that - the RS-24 missile is a MIRVed version of Topol-M that would carry "no fewer than four" warheads. This, however, has already been taken into account in my projections, so it won't change the numbers very much. Even if Russia would retrofit all its 65 currently deployed single-warhead Topol-M missiles with MIRVs, it will increase the overall number of warheads by about 150 - not very much to reverse the "dramatic decline".

However, MIRVing of Topol-M is not the only option out there. With no pressure to reduce its forces, Russia could consider keeping its UR-100NUTTH/SS-19 missiles. The currently deployed missiles of this type are about 30 years old - and are being removed from service (even thought their service life was extended to 33 years recently). But Russia is believed to have about 30 dry UR-100NUTTH missiles, which it could deploy. In fact, everything seems to be ready for that - in November 2008 President Medvedev stopped liquidation of a missile division in Kozelsk, which is where these missiles could be based. Since each is carrying six warheads, this would add another 180 nuclear weapons to the Russian arsenal.

Furthermore, the industry would not mind resuming production of missiles of the UR-100NUTTH/SS-19 class. NPOmash, the design bureau that produced the missile in the 1970s, does not hide it that it would like to be back in business with a new MIRVed missile of the SS-19 class (it would have to be a new missile, for some components of UR-100NUTTH, namely the guidance, were produced in Ukraine). One can imagine that in a situation with no particular constrains on strategic forces, NPOmash might eventually get that contract.

The silos in Kozelsk are not the only ones that would be available for deployment of new MIRVed missiles - Russia has been keeping some of its SS-18 silos intact - there are 24 empty silos in Uzhur and 21 - in Dombarovsky. It is hard to tell what are the plans regarding these silos, but they certainly would give Russia an option to add some ICBMs to its force - a silo is one of the most expensive part of a missile system.

Overall, if the current plan (which includes MIRVing of some Topol-Ms) has the Russian ICBM force with about 500 warheads in 2015-2025, this could be relatively easily boosted to about 800 and, with some effort, quite a bit higher.

Strategic submarines

The strategic fleet modernization program is currently getting the biggest share of Russia's military spending. And while the attention is mostly on the problems of the Bulava missile test program, the Russian Navy has a few other things to show for all this money - four out of six submarines of the Project 667BRDM/Delta IV class have completed overhaul already and the two remaining ones are expected to return to the active force in 2009 and in 2010-2011. These submarines will carry R-29RM Sineva missiles - it is an old design, but the missiles are newly manufactured.

These submarines and missiles could probably stay in service for quite some time - I would guess that the 2015-2020 time horizon is not out of question. Their predecessors, Project 667BDR/Delta III submarines, built about 30 years ago, are still very much alive.

If Russia is constrained by an arms control treaty, one could assume that when the new Project 955 subs with Bulava missiles will start entering service they will be replacing old Project 667BDRM submarines. In this the scenario, which I used in my projections, the number of SLBM warheads would go up a bit - to about 740 from the current 670.

But without constraints of an arms control treaty, the Navy would probably try to keep the recently refurbished Project 667BDRM/Delta IV in force for as long as they can. For example, instead of keeping a total of eight submarines in service, retiring one Project 667BDRM submarine every time a new Project 955 sub enters service, the Navy could keep ten, adding 32 launchers and 128 warheads to the SLBM force. Admittedly, this is not much, but these things add up - the number of SLBM warheads would grow to just under 900.

Strategic bombers

Changes in this leg of the triad are quite unlikely, but not entirely impossible. The currently deployed bombers, Tu-160 and Tu-95MS, are relatively new - most were built in the mid- to late-1980s. They are undergoing overhaul and will probably stay in service for a long time. According to the START treaty rules, the bombers are capable of carrying 844 ALCMs. The actual number of weapons associated with the bomber force is probably smaller, but we could assume that if no arms control restrictions are in place, Russia could easily keep a bomber force equipped with about 800 nuclear weapons.

Given a chance, the military and the industry would definitely be pushing for expansion of the bomber force - the Air Force would not mind having a new Tu-160 aircraft every year or two, so it could bring the total to 30 by 2025-2030.

So, what do you get for free?

It is a good rule of thumb that generally you get what you pay for. What the United States will get "for free" is not a "dramatic decline of Russia's nuclear numbers", but something more like a Russia's force of about 2400-2500 warheads. The number might be adjusted somewhat to meet the Moscow treaty requirement - 2200 warheads by 2012, but it could easily go up after that. None of that would be transparent - Russia would be quite happy to part with all those START reporting and verification.

It is quite possible that this is the outcome that the authors of the Republican memo would like to see - I can easily see how, once the arms control process is broken, its authors will be complaining about "unconstrained growth" of the same Russia's nuclear numbers they say are in "dramatic decline" today. We've seen that before.

Some in the United States may still decide that the difference between a Russian strategic force of 1500 or 2500 nuclear warheads is not significant enough to be worth the price of a treaty that would constrain U.S. programs. There is half a point here - the numbers don't really matter. At this point the real benefit of the arms control process is in cooperation, trust- and confidence-building, and better communication that creates an environment that allows working on a much broader set of security issues than simple cold-war style bean-counting. We know that these things don't come for free - the Bush administration tried that.

Bulava launch expected this week

2009-10-12T00:29:20Z

It appears that the Dmitry Donskoy submarine will attempt to conduct a test launch of the Bulava missile later this week.

That would be the 12th full-scale flight test (14th if one counts pop-up tests). Previous attempt to launch the Bulava missile took place on July 15, 2009.

Two test launches of R-29R missiles

2009-10-09T06:45:26Z

The Russian Navy reported today that two Project 667BDR submarines of the Pacific Fleet conducted successful test launches of R-29R/SS-N-18 missiles. The first submarine, K-433 Sv. Georgiy Pobedonosets, launched its missile on October 6, 2009. K-44 Ryazan conducted the launch on October 7, 2009. Both launches were conducted from a submerged submarine deployed in the Sea of Okhotsk. Missile warheads reached their designated targets at the Chizha test range on the Kanin Peninsula.

Last START data exchange?

2009-10-09T05:59:50Z

Early this week the United States and Russia released the July 2009 START Memorandums of Understanding, which may well be the last START data exchange - the treaty will expire in December 2009. The data show that while Russia continued elimination of old strategic systems and deployment of some new ones, there were no dramatic changes in the Russian strategic forces in the first half of 2009.

As of July 1, 2009, Russia had 608 delivery vehicles that were capable of carrying 2683 nuclear warheads (26 launchers and 142 warheads fewer than in January). These numbers, of course, include launchers and warheads that are not, strictly speaking, "operationally deployed". For example, at least two submarines are in overhaul and some are being dismantled. Coming up with a number of "operationally deployed" warheads that would correspond to the number that the United States has been reporting in the Moscow treaty is not easy - operational status of some Russian delivery systems or the number of warheads they carry is not known. A simple estimate would give 2528 warheads, but this is most likely an overestimate, since it assumes for example that all Tu-95MS16 bombers have 16 ALCMs associated with them, which is unlikely.

Overall, the changes relative to January 2009 are not very significant. Russia continued to withdraw old R-36MUTTH/SS-18 and UR-100NUTTH/SS-19 missiles from service (nine and two respectively). These missiles account for most of the reduction in the number of warheads (102 our of 142).

Two data points in the MOU are worth mentioning. First, Russia reported 49 deployed silo-based Topol-M missiles - in January 2009 the number was 50. I consider it a quirk of the reporting requirement - it is likely that particular date the missile was not in its silo. I expect this number to return to 50 by the end of the year. Second, another Tu-160 bomber has been moved to the test bombers column, reducing the number of bombers that are listed as operationally deployed to 13.