April 27, 2004 :: Itar-Tass :: News
One week after Russia test launched a mobile-launched Topol-M ICBM, Yuriy Solomonov, the director of the Moscow Institute of Heat Technology said in an interview with the ITAR-TASS news agency that the mobile launched version would be ready for deployment by 2006. The mobile launch capabiity serves the purpose of making it difficult for the United States to know where Russia’s missiles are at any given time, and thus make it more difficult to defend against them.
BBC also reports that on April 26 Radio Mayak in Moscow carried a description of the Topol-M’s resistance to American missile defenses, part of which was the following:
The Topol-M currently has a 60 percent chance of overcoming US air defence systems and this will rise to 87 percent, partly because it is very hard to find the mobile launchers. They can travel, camouflaged from satellites, along ordinary roads so that a missile can be launched from any location while interception becomes considerably more difficult. In addition, each mobile-launched Topol-M will have from four to six nuclear warheads as well as several dummy targets.
(Article)» Transcript of Russian radio discussion of Topol M (subscription)
» SpaceDaily: Mobile Topol-M Deployment by 2006
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