Russia’s New Sea-Based Nuclear Missile System Fails
MOSCOW: Russia’s new sea-based ballistic missile has failed in a test launch for the fifth time, signaling serious trouble with the highly advertised key future component of the nation’s nuclear forces. The Bulava “self-destroyed and exploded in the air” after a launch from the Dmitry Donskoy nuclear submarine beneath surface of the White Sea, said Navy spokesman Capt Igor Dygalo.
Russia has been making an aggressive effort to upgrade its missile forces after years of underfunding and a lack of testing. The Kremlin has hailed the missile as capable of penetrating any prospective missile defenses. Washington’s plan to deploy a ballistic missile defense system in Eastern Europe has sparked increasingly belligerent comments from the Kremlin and the Russian military, who say it will undermine the nation’s security.
The Bulava is reportedly designed to have a maximum range of about 6,200 miles and carry six individually targeted nuclear warheads. It is expected to equip three new Borei-class nuclear submarines that are under construction. “This is a serious blow to Russia’s military plans to deploy the Borei submarines,” said independent military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer. “The failure delays (Bulava’s) production and deployment indefinitely.
Russian news agencies said that yesterday’s test was the fifth failure out of 10 launches since 2004. After the last successful launch in late November it hit test targets on the Kamchatka Peninsula, some 4,000 miles to the east of the launch site in less than 15 minutes. Windfall oil revenues in recent years have allowed the Kremlin to buy weapons and fund the development of new missiles. But a plunge in oil prices coupled with the ongoing financial crisis cast doubt over the future of the troubled weapon
. The navy said several more launches of the Bulava are planned for next year.
In another development, Russia may place nuclear-capable Topol missiles in neighboring Belarus as a response to a controversial US missile shield in eastern Europe, a Russian defense ministry source was quoted as saying yesterday. “If the United States continues to bring elements of its strategic forces closer to Russia’s borders, including missile-defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic, which are aimed at the reduction of our nuclear deterrent, mobile Topol complexes could be placed in Belarus,” t
he source told Interfax news agency.
A defense ministry spokesman contacted by AFP declined to comment on the report. Returning nuclear weapons to Belarus would be a major turnaround for Moscow, which removed its last nuclear missiles from the ex-Soviet republic in 1996, several years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The report came one day after Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko met his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow and reached a deal on the deliveries of Russian gas to Belarus.
Russia has reacted angrily to US plans to place elements of a missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, threatening counter-measures including the deployment of Iskander short-range missiles in its western Kaliningrad region. A top Russian official reiterated the threat yesterday, stressing that the Iskanders would not be deployed in Kaliningrad-which borders the European Union-if the United States backed down on its missile shield.
If there will be no third position area of missile defense, there will be no Iskanders in Kaliningrad,” Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said in an interview published in the Izvestia daily. “We are in no way preparing to get caught up in an arms race,” he added. The term “third position area” refers to US plans for an anti-missile radar facility in the Czech Republic and interceptors in Poland. The first two parts of the missile shield are in the US states of California and Alaska. The United States s
ays its missile shield is not a threat to Russia and is instead meant to protect against “rogue states” like Iran. - Agencies
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