Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

WHAT NEW NUCLEAR MISSILE SYSTEMS DOES RUSSIA HAVE?

2004-11-19 13:34

MOSCOW, Nov 19 (RIA Novosti) - President Vladimir Putin mentioned the successful tests of new nuclear missile systems at a conference with the top leaders of the Russian Armed Forces on November 17. "...They will be supplied to the armed forces in the next few years," he said. "...The other nuclear powers do not have and will not have comparable systems in the near future." Nezavisimaya Gazeta decided to find out what the president meant.

Experts believe that he probably meant the Bulava system for Project 995 submarines, which are under construction. The Bulava SS-N-30 ballistic missile with ten warheads has a range of 8,000km. Work on it began in 1986 (project Bark, renamed Project Bulava in 1998), but no apparent results have been achieved. The 2004 tests entailed the launching of a practice round, the goal being to test the launcher that fires the missile from the submarine's silo. So far, Russia does not have a single live Bulava missile or control systems for it.

There is only one new missile in Russia, the ground-based Iskander-M, which has been recently put on combat duty in the armed forces. This unique missile is almost invisible to radars, can maneuver in flight and has a cruising speed of Mach 3, which allows it to avoid any of the modern ballistic defense systems. The missile is also a precision weapon. However, it is not a strategic but a tactical frontline missile with a range of 280km. In other words, it does not threaten "the other nuclear powers."

Besides, the creation of new nuclear weapons is impossible without tests, and nuclear explosions have not been held in Russia since 1990. "It is impossible to know the physics of a nuclear explosion without tests," said Academician Boris Litvinov, chief designer of nuclear and thermonuclear weapons at the Research Institute of Technical Physics. "The general belief that a perfect nuclear charge can be created only with the help of calculations is not true. The more sophisticated a physical device, the more experiments should be conducted with it."


http://en.rian.ru/rian/index.cfm?prd_id=160&msg_id=5107199&startrow=1&date=2004-11-19&am....

edit:
News Item for June 3, 2004

Russia Plans Test of Sea-Based Version of Topol-M
June 3, 2004 :: BBC Worldwide Monitoring :: News
Moscow plans to conduct the first test launch of the Bulava solid fuel ICBM this year, reported the Interfax Russian news agency yesterday. The Bulava (SS-NX-30) is the submarine-launched version of Russia’s most advanced missile, the Topol-M (SS-27).

The Bulava is set to be installed on strategic submarines of Project 995 later this year: “I can say that in the next five years the missile will definitely enter the inventory of the sea-based strategic nuclear forces,” said Yuriy Solomonov, director of the Moscow heating equipment institute, adding that the Buluva missile outperforms domestic and foreign equivalents in efficiency.

http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache:Sm0QGawhTwkJ:www.missilethreat.com/news/20040603090300.html+Pro...