Russia this week staged its biggest war games in 20 years aimed primarily at demonstrating that its powerful nuclear force could penetrate a missile defense shield being built by the United States.

Their launch only a month before Vladimir Putin's expected re-election on March 14 were also due help the president's tough guy image that has played so well among voters traumatized by Russia's loss of international prestige.

But little went according to plan in the Arctic waters this week.

Putin went out to sea in a nuclear submarine Tuesday to witness two failed launches of missiles that could theoretically deliver a nuclear strike on the United States.

A third missile veered off course and self-destructed the next day. It was the first such accident in 36 tests.

"Our fictitious enemy won" the war games, the popular Gazeta.ru Internet site scoffed.

"The navy's defense shield of Russia blew up over the Barents Sea," the centrist Nezavisimaya Gazeta daily agreed. "The naval exercises ended in complete failure."

The disintegration of Russia's ground and air forces -- equipped by Soviet tanks that no longer work and with planes grounded because there is no cash to pay for fuel -- has been an open secret since the military got bogged down in the first 1994-96 Chechen war.

The navy's troubles came to prominence with the August 2000 Kursk nuclear submarine disaster. But Russia has in fact not been sending more than a few ships out to sea for years. It has only one functioning airplane carrier.

Meanwhile morale among soldiers has largely collasped. Recruits regularly complain of brutal hazing, or initiation ceremonies, and corrupt generals who force them out into the Siberian cold in threadbare outfits. Food is limited and teenagers try almost anything to avoid the draft.

But Russia's nuclear arsenal has always served as a defensive backbone that keeps politicians here referring to their country as a "great power."

That backbone appeared to develop an unpleasant crack this week.

"These mishaps tell us one clear thing: We have little money and a lot of weapons. And these weapons are growing old," said Ivan Safranchuk of the Center of Defense Information.

"This shows that these weapons are reaching the end of their lifetimes and should not be further used."

Maxim Pyadushkin of the Center for the Analysis of Strategies and Technologies agreed that "what happened shattered all illusions that our nuclear and rocket forces are the most battle-ready element of our armed forces."

Russia's main problem is that it has been churning out only a handful of missiles a year while keeping in service rockets which were built as far back as the early 1970s.

Analysts urge the military to carry out an urgent re-think of their strategy.

But the official Krasnaya Zvezda defense ministry daily announced proudly that the missile that exploded Wednesday -- first constructed in 1979 -- would be "exploited for another 10 years, and possibly 20 or more, serving as our nuclear backbone."

And Russia's deputy chief of staff general reported Thursday that a new class of ballistic missiles would not be introduced until 2010.

"I wish that we had these rocket complexes yesterday -- but we fully understand the government's financial means," Yury Baluyevsky said.

Meanwhile analysts scorned the military's effort to cover up their embarrassment by initially denying and then giving conflicting accounts over the accidents.

The national state-controlled television stations refused to report on the test failures and instead focused on three other successful ground-based missile tests.

Military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer said the navy was trying to confuse foreign intelligence services which were closely following the war games.

"But if the most modern ballistic missile available to our navy really did misfire, any serious foreign intelligence service will eventually find out about it," Felgenhauer wrote in Novaya Gazeta.

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