Can hit targets worldwide
Kremlin puts nuclear-capable Sarmat missile into service
9/1/2023 3:23 p.m
In the spring of 2022, Moscow reports the first successful test of its Sarmat ICBM. With a range of several thousand kilometers, the rocket can attack any target on earth, according to Russian information. Now the weapon system is said to be available to the armed forces.
According to official data, Russia has put into service the new powerful ICBM RS-28 Sarmat. The head of the Russian space agency Roskosmos, Yuri Borisov, said on television, as reported by Russian agencies. Earlier in June, President Vladimir Putin said the nuclear missile would soon go into service.
According to Russian information, the weapon with the NATO designation SS-X-30 Satan 2 stationed in underground missile shafts can carry up to 15 individually controllable nuclear warheads. The US military is more likely to assume up to ten warheads. With a total weight of 208 tons, the rocket is extremely heavy and has a range of 18,000 kilometers. This allows Russia to attack both the North and South Pole and reach targets worldwide.
The new missile is intended to replace the RS-20 (NATO: SS-18 Satan) ICBMs from the 1980s. In April 2022, the Russian armed forces had tested the RS-28. The rocket was launched in Plesetsk in northern Europe, the dummy explosives reached their targets in Kura on the Far Eastern peninsula of Kamchatka. Serial production takes place in Krasnoyarsk in Siberia.
President Putin used the missile test last year to threaten the West. The Sarmat can overcome all forms of anti-missile defense and “makes people think twice who, in the fervor of hardened, aggressive rhetoric, try to threaten our country,” he said. For a long time there will be nothing in the world that can compare to the rocket. In addition, only components from Russian production were used in their development.
The Sarmat missile is one of a series of weapons presented by Putin in 2018. At that time, he also presented hypersonic missiles of the Kinzhal and Avangard types. According to Russian sources, Kinzhal missiles were first used in a war of aggression against Ukraine.