Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Merry Christmas Mr Bush
The Russian submarine Tula in the northern Barents Sea successfully test-fired a new ballistic missile on Tuesday, hitting a target on the Kamchatka peninsula полуо́стров Камча́тка minutes later, the Russian Ministry of Defence said.
“The launch was carried out from the submarine platform in line with military training. The rocket warhead arrived down range at the designated time,” the ministry said in a statement.
The RSM-54, or Sineva, is a hybrid ballistic missile that in its final stages becomes a modified cruise missile. In this guise, the warhead cannot be targeted by anti-missile systems that rely on a ballistic trajectory for their calculations.
Tuesday’s launch is the second such test-firing of the Sineva in less than a week. The first was fired from the Tula on December 17.
Speaking after the last successful launch, Colonel-General Nikolai Solovtsov, Commander of the Strategic Missile Forces, said Russia could thwart any anti-missile system in the foreseeable future.
“The military hardware now on our weapons, and those that will appear in the next few years, will enable our missiles to outperform any anti-missile system, including future systems,” General Solovtsov said.
The launch was conducted from an underwater position as part of training to test the readiness of the marine strategic nuclear forces
The test missile was also fired from the Tula Ту́ла (K114), one of seven Delfin-class submarines which is capable of carrying 16 intercontinental rockets and torpedoes. The Tula submarine, built in 1987, has been modernized at the Zvyozdochka (Starlet) Engineering Plant in Severodvinsk in the Arkhangelsk Region.
The submarine is equipped with 16 intercontinental RSM-54 missiles and torpedoes. Tula submarines form the mainstay of the strategic nuclear fleet. Seven of the series were built between 1984 and 1992.
The RSM-54 is a three-stage liquid-propellant ballistic missile with a range of 8,300km. The warhead consists of four to ten multiple, independently targeted re-entry vehicles (MIRVs) each rated at 100 kt. The missile uses stellar inertial guidance to provide a circular error probable (CEP) of 500 m. The CEP value is a measure of the accuracy of strike on the target and is the radius of the circle within which half the strikes will impact.
“The launch was carried out from the submarine platform in line with military training. The rocket warhead arrived down range at the designated time,” the ministry said in a statement.
The RSM-54, or Sineva, is a hybrid ballistic missile that in its final stages becomes a modified cruise missile. In this guise, the warhead cannot be targeted by anti-missile systems that rely on a ballistic trajectory for their calculations.
Tuesday’s launch is the second such test-firing of the Sineva in less than a week. The first was fired from the Tula on December 17.
Speaking after the last successful launch, Colonel-General Nikolai Solovtsov, Commander of the Strategic Missile Forces, said Russia could thwart any anti-missile system in the foreseeable future.
“The military hardware now on our weapons, and those that will appear in the next few years, will enable our missiles to outperform any anti-missile system, including future systems,” General Solovtsov said.
The launch was conducted from an underwater position as part of training to test the readiness of the marine strategic nuclear forces
The test missile was also fired from the Tula Ту́ла (K114), one of seven Delfin-class submarines which is capable of carrying 16 intercontinental rockets and torpedoes. The Tula submarine, built in 1987, has been modernized at the Zvyozdochka (Starlet) Engineering Plant in Severodvinsk in the Arkhangelsk Region.
The submarine is equipped with 16 intercontinental RSM-54 missiles and torpedoes. Tula submarines form the mainstay of the strategic nuclear fleet. Seven of the series were built between 1984 and 1992.
The RSM-54 is a three-stage liquid-propellant ballistic missile with a range of 8,300km. The warhead consists of four to ten multiple, independently targeted re-entry vehicles (MIRVs) each rated at 100 kt. The missile uses stellar inertial guidance to provide a circular error probable (CEP) of 500 m. The CEP value is a measure of the accuracy of strike on the target and is the radius of the circle within which half the strikes will impact.
# posted by TzarVal @ 8:16 PM 
