MOSCOW, Dec 6: Russia revealed on Monday it was fitting its strategic bombers with cruise missiles capable of delivering a massive precision strike thousands of miles away - giving away the first clear hint of its post-Cold War military strategy.

"Russia's long-range air force finally has a new weapon," the government's Rossiyskaya Gazeta daily announced in a headline. "We now have a strategic cruise missile with a non-nuclear warhead," the paper wrote

"We have broken the US monopoly on the use long-range conventional cruise missiles," an unnamed senior air force commander told ITAR-TASS. The technology appears to be similar to cruise missiles that the United States has long attached to its own intercontinental bombers like the B-2 Stealth bomber.

The announcement followed months of cryptic statements from President Vladimir Putin and his top generals that Russia was developing a new missile program that is a step ahead of any Western rivals - including technology developed by the United States.

Mr Putin declared last month that Russia had "conducted tests of the latest nuclear rocket systems" in a cryptic comment that puzzled military strategists but seemed aimed at Washington and its mooted missile defence shield that Moscow considers illegal.

Russia has been developing a range of new missiles capable of penetrating US defences as a result. Generals announced earlier this year the successful tests of a hypersonic intercontinental missile that has no officially-confirmed rival in the United States.

Moscow is also believed to be developing a multi-stage intercontinental ballistic missile that uses cruise missile technology to zigzag and avoid being shot down once it re-enters the earth's atmosphere.

Finally Russia announced that it was making its most feared and powerful trans-Atlantic missile mobile within the next two years. But the latest technology announced on Monday would see old Soviet-era conventional missiles being carried by strategic bombers with a global range.

The Russian government daily said tests of the new system were being conducted in military exercises now under way in southern Russia. "This year, our strategic Tu-160 and Tu-95s bombers have been equipped with new non-nuclear precision weapons," ITAR-TASS quoted an unnamed Russian air force general as saying.

"These cruise missiles have a range of more than 3,000 kilometres and can miss a target by no more than a few meters while carrying a warhead of hundreds of kilotons," the source said.

The report failed to specify the type of missile being used. The bombers currently carry an intercontinental ballistic missile called X-55 (AS-15 Kent according to Western classification) that was first deployed in 1983.

But Russian news reports said at least some of the planes will now be re-equipped with a new smaller missile which in Russian is called OFAB-500 and which carries a massive cluster bomb weighing 515 kilograms (1,130 pounds).

The pudgy weapon only has a top speed of 1,200 kilometres (720 miles) an hour but would be launched from bombers that can reach any spot on earth. A military source told ITAR-TASS the first Tu-160 has been equipped with 45 tons of bombs - or about 90 missiles.

"These new cruise missiles are a very precise weapon," the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper wrote. "The crew will be capable of delivering, as they say, a 'present' through an open window," the paper said.

However, the Russian government daily pointed out that Moscow has a long way to go before it can catch up with Washington. Rossiyskaya Gazeta estimated said the United States now has 5,000 non-nuclear-tipped cruise missiles with up to 700 of them attached to global B-52 and B-2 bombers. The unnamed general told ITAR-TASS that Russia's technology was primarily aimed for "anti-terrorist operations" rather than a major war. -AFP