Russia announced another successful test launch of its RS-12M Topol intercontinental ballistic missile last week.
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Russia boosts Topol ICBM to beat U.S. defenses
By MARTIN SIEFF
UPI Senior News Analyst
Published: Sept. 3, 2008 at 12:53 PM
WASHINGTON, Sept. 3 (UPI) — Russia announced another successful test launch of its RS-12M Topol intercontinental ballistic missile last week.
The road-mobile Topol ICBM was test-fired from Russia’s most modern Plesetsk space center Thursday and covered a distance of 3,700 miles to strike its preplanned target on the Kamchatka Peninsula facing the North Pacific Ocean, RIA Novosti reported Thursday.
The ICBM — NATO designation SS-25 Sickle — was prepared for firing by a combined task force drawn from Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces and its Space Forces, the report said.
The exercise was carried out not only to evaluate the ICBM’s flight characteristics and extreme accuracy but also to explore the capabilities of a new warhead that had been installed on it to penetrate modern anti-ballistic missile defenses, RIA Novosti said.
“An experimental warhead hit a target at a testing range on the Kamchatka Peninsula with high precision, demonstrating its capability to deliver pinpoint strikes on well-defended targets,” Col. Alexander Vovk stated, according to the report.
“The performance data gathered during the test launch will be used to increase the effectiveness of future Russian mobile ballistic missile units,” Vovk said.
RIA Novosti also quoted Vovk as saying that the Topol, whose service life last year was stated to be 21 years, was still the mainstay of Russia’s mobile strategic missile forces.
RIA Novosti said the Russian missile forces currently were engaged in a program to upgrade the offensive penetration capabilities of their ICBMs in reaction to the Bush administration’s drive to deploy Ground-Based Mid-course Interceptors in Poland. The U.S. government wants to deploy those missiles to guard against any future Iranian ICBM threat to the United States or Western Europe, but Russia maintains the real purpose of the deployment is to neutralize any survivable second-strike capability by its own domestically deployed ICBM force.
The report quoted Vovk as saying the most cost-effective and rapidly practical way to allow Topol ICBMs to escape U.S. missile defense systems was to apply asymmetrical capabilities to them.
“These measures include enhanced ‘stealth’ capability, a variability of flight trajectory and the use of warheads capable of penetrating any missile shield,” he stated.
RIA Novosti said the RS-12M Topol could reach a maximum range of 6,125 miles with a payload of one 550-kiloton nuclear warhead. It said last Thursday’s Topol test firing was the first in nearly nine months. The last such exercise occurred on Dec. 8, 2007.
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