April 20, 2004 :: News
Russia has test-launched a mobile-launched Topol-M (RS-12M2) missile today, Russia’s most advanced ICBM. The Topol-M is already currently deployed, but not on a mobile launcher.
The missile was fired from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in northern Russia and was directed into the center of the Pacific Ocean. Russian Defence Minister Sergey Ivanov said at a conference with President Putin that the launch was similar to the one carried out last winter at Plesetsk, and that one more launch remains before a decision is made about transferring the mobile launchers into service. Ivanov also noted that the test was of the missile’s maximum range, of 11,500km. Putin responded that the launch was an “important event for the armed forces of Russia.”
Excerpt from Izvestia April 28, 2004 report on Topol M launch:
In January-February a strategic command and staff training exercise was held in Russia. The president was shown a superweapon — a hypersonic air vehicle: the latest warhead for Topol-M-type missiles. Its flight follows a “nonclassical scenario”—the hypersonic air vehicle can fly not only on a ballistic trajectory at hypersonic speed but also in the atmosphere, changing flight trajectory at will. This enables it to penetrate any missile defense systems.
In accordance with the Russian-US START I Treaty, Moscow has given Washington the exact coordinates of all missile silos (the Americans have done the same) and of mobile systems’ basing locations (the Americans have no such systems). But were Russian Topols to leave their base’s territory, no surveillance satellite would be able to give their exact coordinates. In 24 hours Topol or Topol-M system mobile launchers can travel hundreds of kilometers through roadless terrain—forests and bogs. All this makes our mobile systems an ultradangerous weapon that guarantees that an aggressor country’s actions will not go unpunished.
The Strategic Missile Troops currently have 360 Topol system mobile launchers. They are stationed near the cities of Barnaul, Nizhniy Tagil, Bologoye, Yoshkar-Ola, Teykovo, Yurya, Novosibirsk, Kansk, and Irkutsk and near the settlement of Drovyanaya in Chita Oblast—that is, virtually all over Russian territory. It is not hard to imagine that, as new mobile Topol-M systems come into service, they will replace their predecessors in the same combat patrol areas.
(Article)
» More stories on: Russia, Testing - Foreign
» Missile details: SS-27
