In the coming year, the program of re-equipping the Strategic Missile Forces with new equipment should be completed
In the coming years, Russia's strategic nuclear forces will reach a fundamentally new level. Already in 2021, they will be equipped with only the most modern equipment. The troops will begin to receive hypersonic systems and heavy intercontinental missiles, laser systems "Peresvet" and other advanced developments. In 2020, the Strategic Missile Forces (Strategic Missile Forces) implemented all the planned plans and successfully completed all launches. How the land component of the Russian nuclear triad is being updated and what adjustments the coronavirus has made to the development of the troops, military expert Dmitry Kornev understood.
From "Poplar" to " Yars»
The commander of the Strategic Missile Forces, Sergei Karakayev, said in early December that the troops had already received more than 150 of the latest Yars missile systems. This means that in 2021, the program of re-equipping the Strategic Missile Forces with the latest equipment will be completed. In some regiments of the Tver rocket connection, intercontinental RS-12M "Topol" in a mobile version still remain on combat duty. They plan to replace them with the most modern "Yars". Last year, these systems were delivered to the Barnaul missile connection (mobile version) and to Kozelsk, where they are based in mine launchers.
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Intercontinental ballistic "Yars" differ from the first modifications. These missiles and launchers have the ability to take commands from the most advanced control systems. Directly on patrol routes, they can receive orders for combat use, which significantly reduces the time of preparation and application of a retaliatory nuclear strike. In addition, it is believed that now in service are "Yars" with two variants of equipment — with light warheads, partially unified with the naval ballistic missiles "Bulava" and "Liner", as well as more powerful "Yars-S" with medium-power warheads. Such ammunition can be used on the most important and well-protected targets such as underground command posts and positions of strategic missile systems of a potential enemy.
In 2019, apparently, the first stage of flight design tests of the new Yars-M modification was completed, about the features of which its creator — chief designer of the Moscow Institute of Thermal Engineering (MIT) Yuri Solomonov told in an interview. Divide warheads new version of "Yarsa" will receive an individual propulsion system of breeding that increases missile potential of the product, and also will allow to expand considerably a coverage area of geography goals with one start. In the future, modern "Yars" can be armed with maneuvering hypersonic combat units, work on which at MIT has been going on for more than one year. But this will be the modernization of systems such as "Topol-M" and the first placed in the early 2010s "Yarsov". Most likely, these are plans for the coming decade, and not for 2021-2022.
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In 2012, the deployment of mobile and mine ICBMs "Topol-M" in the Teikovsky and Tatishchevsky missile formations was completed, and since then the composition of the grouping of these complexes has not changed. The forerunner of modern "Yars" in the next few years will remain quite a modern missile with a powerful megaton-class warhead with a complex of means of overcoming missile defense. In the fall of 2019, a successful combat training launch of the Topol-M ICBM was carried out from the Plesetsk test site at the target at the Kamchatka Kura test site.
The hypersonic, and a heavy blow
In December 2020, the third and fourth launchers with 15A35-71 missiles of the Avangard strategic missile system with hypersonic warheads were put on combat duty. The Avangard is a liquid-fueled siloed ballistic missile equipped with a single hypersonic maneuvering warhead. Each such combat unit is a fairly large aircraft with a megaton-class thermonuclear charge. And the mid-range missile, which includes the ICBM 15A35 (UR-100NUTTH), can carry only one such vehicle. More powerful heavy "Sarmatians", which in the coming years will be adopted by the Strategic Missile Forces, will be able to carry several such combat units.
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In 2021, the first regiment of the missile division in the Orenburg Region will be fully equipped with Avangard missiles. In total, until 2025, it is planned to adopt two regiments of six missiles each.
Heavy liquid-propellant missiles R-36M2, each of which carries 10 warheads, continue to remain in service with parts of the Strategic Missile Forces . In total, the troops have 46 Voevoda missiles, and, apparently, starting from 2022-2023, they will be replaced directly in the mines with the latest and equally heavy Sarmatians.
Until recently, it was planned to begin deploying the 15A28 Sarmat ICBM in the division in Uzhur in 2022. But this schedule turned out to be too optimistic. Flight tests of the new missile will probably take place in 2021-2022, and only from 2023 can we talk about the beginning of deliveries of the first serial samples to the Strategic Missile Forces.
Missile losses
The promising mobile ground-based missile system "Rubezh" and the complex with a railway-based "Barguzin", apparently, can be forgotten for some time, since work on their creation was stopped several years ago. One of the reasons was the reduction and optimization of the budget for new missile programs. If this is the case, then in the future, after reducing the financial burden on re-equipping the Strategic Missile Forces with new types of equipment, the development of these promising complexes can be resumed.
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In 2020, the deployment of laser combat systems for functional disruption of optical reconnaissance systems of satellites and reconnaissance drones "Peresvet"was completed in the field of experimental operation. They are deployed in five divisions of the Strategic Missile Forces, their main task is to ensure the most covert deployment of mobile missile systems in patrol areas during the threatened period. "Peresvet" can not shoot down any satellites or warheads with lasers, but they have the ability to disrupt the operation of optical surveillance systems that transmit a real-time image of the terrain to a potential enemy. This ensures a reliable disguise of any actions of ground forces.
Thus, in the next two or three years, the Strategic Missile Forces may not have any Soviet-designed missile systems at all, and by 2025, the technical re-equipment for new complexes will actually be completed. And although some programs are slightly shifted in terms of timing, but the dynamics are positive everywhere, and even the coronavirus pandemic has not had a noticeable impact on these changes. The Strategic Missile Forces passed through the crisis without losses.
Dmitry Kornev