The RS-28 Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) of Russia, commonly known as “Satan II” in Western media and once described as invincible by President Vladimir Putin, has been deployed for combat duty, the head of the state space agency Roscosmos said Friday. The deployment of the new strategic missile system, which carries up to 12 warheads and has an operational range of 6,835 miles, puts Russia’s long-range nuclear capabilities at an unprecedented level.
Putin hailed the Sarmat in his 2018 state-of-the-nation address as the next generation of nuclear missile technology and a crucial component of the country’s national defense. It has an estimated explosive power of up to 500 kilotons, or enough to destroy a major city.
Developed by the Makeyev Rocket Design Bureau, the Sarmat is 116 feet (35.3 meters) long and weighs 220 tons (200 metric tons). Each warhead can be armed with up to 10 nuclear bombs, giving it an explosive potential more significant than the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
The RS-28 is designed to replace the Soviet-era Voyevoda ICBMs, known by their NATO reporting name of SS-18 Satan Mod 5, and will form the core of Russia’s silo-based strategic deterrent. It can carry multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs), allowing it to deliver several warheads to different locations worldwide with precision and accuracy.
It can be launched like a traditional ICBM, sending a payload high into the atmosphere before the warheads plummet to earth. However, Moscow claims that the Sarmat can also engage in fractional orbital bombardment, allowing it to simultaneously launch multiple reentry vehicles into a single target.
Moreover, according to the Russian news agency TASS, the Sarmat is designed to avoid missile defense systems. This includes speeding up its acceleration to escape the initial stages of a defense response and using its long-range to fly over the North or South poles to avoid more heavily defended areas.
The Sarmat is only one of several next-generation weapons Russia is developing to close the gap between it and the US regarding missile capability. The other two are the Kinzhal hypersonic missile and the Avangard hypersonic vehicle.
The rapid expansion of the Russian military’s arsenal has left the United States, the undisputed leader in intercontinental ballistic missile capability at the end of the Cold War three decades ago, trailing considerably in its ability to reach any part of the planet. The US’s current ICBMs have an effective range of just 13,000 miles. But if the new Russian weapons continue to develop as promised, that could change. The deployment of the RS-28 Sarmat and future weapons could leave the US unable to catch up and potentially face a world where Russia is a global nuclear power. That is a world that no American wants to see.
