Russian military officials and analysts are bragging about the development of a nuclear weapon “immune to any missile defense” shield.
The new heavy intercontinental ballistic missile is designed to replace a weapons system NATO dubbed the SS-18 Satan, which was slated to be phased out under the terms of an arms control treaty that President George H.W. Bush’s administration signed with the fading Soviet Union. With Russia looking to emerge once again as a great power, state-run media offered a preview of a new ICBM called the SS-X-30, which carries at least 15 nuclear warheads each.
“We have no intention of being the first to deliver a nuclear strike,” Viktor Yesin, a military advisor to Russia’s strategic missile force commander, told TASS news agency. “We will be able to launch them while enemy missiles are still on the way. We are building Voronezh-class missile attack warning radars along the borders capable of identifying any approaching missiles. Hypothetical enemies are aware of that. The SS-X-30 will guarantee our security.”
TASS, a Russian government-owned media platform, described the new ICBM as a weapon that can “pierce any defense” offered against it. “The flight path’s altitude and direction will be changing all the time, thus making the weapon immune to any missile defenses – current or future one, even those relying on space-based elements,” the report said.
The new system is expected to be deployed in 2018. The news comes within weeks of Russia deploying two battalions of an intermediate-range cruise missile, a weapons system that was developed in violation of a 1987 arms control treaty negotiated by Ronald Reagan’s administration.
Even so, Putin has accused the United States repeatedly of trying to create “a global offensive combat system” that could threaten Russia. “President Putin spoke in detail about the United States’ missile defense systems and their plans to establish here in Northeast Asia another positioning area for what we consider part of a global offensive combat system, in addition to the missile defence bases already established in Europe, the Mediterranean, and in Alaska now too, of course,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in December following a meeting between Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
