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Moscow - Russian-American cooperation in strategic offensive arms will depend on how the United Sates will implement the plan to re-design its missile defense system, Russian military experts say.

"Everything will depend, of course, on the actual plans for the construction of a NATO missile defense system and on its outline, not on the declared intensions, and also on where the warships carrying Standard Missile (SM)-3 interceptors will be based," ex-head of the Strategic Missile Troops' main command Viktor Yesin said at a news conference at Interfax on Monday.

"If NATO warships carrying SM-3 interceptors do not enter the Black Sea, the Russian strategic nuclear potential will remain strong," he said. "But if they do after all and assume positions in Crimea - the situation will be absolutely different," the expert said.

Russia could also be alarmed, should an American radar facility appear in Georgia, Yesin said. "This would not be clear to Russia, because the Gabala radar, located near, can cope with early warning tasks," he said.

Chief researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences' International Security Center and former head of the Defense Ministry's Fourth Central Research Institute Vladimir Dvorkin said that if any tensions persist in Russian-American relations in the near future and if the American missile defense becomes stronger, Russia will have to look for an adequate response.

"When the American missile system acquires a doubtless strategic potential and if confrontation persists between Russia and the United States, then one will have to talk about an enlargement in Russian strategic offensive arms, both sea and land-based," he said.

In addition to that, Dvorkin said, Russia could hold back progress in the strategic arms reduction talks in every possible way, and get back to the deployment of Iskander missiles and strategic bombers at its western borders. "However, all this will have a political, not military dimension," Dvorkin said.