The US administration had enough reasons to put an end to the Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles. One of them is the need to justify the existence of a number of weapons.
For example, the American combat UAV MQ-1 Predator, MQ-9 Reaper and Avenger, with a range of over 1.2 thousand kilometers, are able to carry air-to-ground missiles on board. It is worth noting that when Moscow and Washington signed an agreement, there was no clear understanding about short-range and medium-range weapons. Thus, according to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, these drones are subject to the INF and that the American side is well awared of this.
However, there are weapons, openly reformed the rules of the agreement. The well-known Mk-41 installations, being a universal system of vertical launch, may well serve also for launching Tomahawk cruise missiles from the ground. And the Tomahawks, as is known, have a range of about 2.5 thousand kilometers.
Washington has long argued that the Mk-41 are used exclusively at sea, but in 2016 it became known that the Americans “landed” the system, and not just anywhere, but in Romania and Poland – in fact, near the Russian Federation.
Also since 2013, modifications of the AGM-158 cruise missile, or rather its land version, have been conducted. Separately, it is worth noting that the rocket was developed using stealth technology. Modernization also allowed to increase the range of the projectile to a thousand kilometers. By the way, last year one of the versions of the rocket, the AGM-158C, passed the test launch from the Mk-41 installations.
Pershing II missiles and American Minuteman-II ICBMs were eliminated according to the conditions of the INF Treaty, however, they were successfully used to create a Hera target missile with a range of about 1.2 thousand kilometers, although the Americans did not cease to say that Hera is used exclusively for missile defense. Other target missiles – LRALT and E-LRALT – are also created without taking into account the conditions of the INF. Their radius of destruction reaches 2.5 thousand kilometers.