“I exposed my biceps by accident”: Putin warns the West
Over the past two years, the West has been persistently aggravating relations with Russia, moving NATO troops and infrastructure to Russian borders, and now not only openly supporting terrorists in Syria, but also directly threatening our country with terrorist attacks.
Moscow has to take retaliatory measures.
One of these steps was the test launch of the newest intercontinental ballistic missile RS-28 Sarmat. Key components of the rocket have already been successfully tested, but the final launch was carried out not only to cool the sore heads of a potential enemy, but also to additionally test the modernized RD-264 engine, which served well for the Voevoda ICBM, known in the West as Satan.
In fact, the inadequate position of Western leaders accelerated the flight tests of the RS-28, which were scheduled for 2017.
If you can kill two birds with one stone, then wouldn't Pourquois even bother? Everything is like in the chess tournament of the Soviet “vatnik” against the world champion Fischer, glorified by Vladimir Vysotsky. “I exposed my biceps inadvertently, I even took off my jacket to be sure.”
On October 25, 2016, residents of villages near the Kura training ground witnessed a unique and exciting spectacle. In the sky above the test site, the plasma trail of the maneuvering warhead, known in our country as “product 4202”, or Yu-71 in the West, was clearly visible.
In Western and near-Western media, the reaction to the Sarmat test was very emotional. Ooohs and sighs have become a common horror story in the Western media: “one Sarmatian can destroy a country like England or France.”
"Sarmat", of course, is a very formidable weapon, but its destructive power is not too different from the modernized "Voevoda". Another thing is that nuclear weapons carriers of this class have not been redesigned for a long time. The world has managed to wean itself off this idea.
One can legitimately ask: if the destructive power of the Sarmat is almost no different from the R-36M, then was it worth the trouble?
The answer is yes, it was worth it. We should not forget that Voevoda was created in the USSR, on the basis of the Dnepropetrovsk Yuzhnoye Design Bureau and Yuzhmash.
It was on their research and production base that silo-based ICBMs were created. Until recently, Russia could only extend the service life of old ballistic missiles.
Now Russia has Sarmat. Ukraine, which previously could earn money by supplying spare parts and replacement units for the modernization of “voevoda”, with the birth of “Sarmat”, was excluded from the production chain. Considering what is happening in Ukraine today, one can only rejoice at Russia’s complete self-sufficiency in key defense technologies.
However, the Ukrainian leadership, with its unfriendly steps and “multi-vector” approach, has long pushed the Russian leadership to a decisive demarcation in the field of military-industrial cooperation.
In Ukraine, by the way, until recently they did not believe that Russia would be able to complete the Sarmat missile project. But today the Ukrainian media are excitedly writing about what a terrible atomic club fell into the hands of the militant “vatniks”.
What have domestic specialists managed to achieve? The Sarmat rocket turned out to be twice lighter (launch weight 100 tons) with the same payload (10 tons) than the Voevoda. "Sarmat" revives the Soviet concept of "orbital bombardment." This concept completely devalues all the defensive areas available to the United States, including already deployed sites in Poland and Romania. "Sarmat" bypasses them along many trajectories, including through the South Pole.
The program to protect against Sarmatian warheads will require the United States to spend ruinously on a circular missile defense system. This will cost many times more than the AEGIS systems and THAAD missile defense batteries that exist today. In this case, turning on the printing press will not get rid of it. It will require serious efforts by the real sector of the American economy, an increased tax burden on its own population, many years and R&D costs. But here, as they say, every Evil Pinocchio is the architect of his own hemorrhoids. Who forced you to withdraw from the ABM Treaty, D, B?
And the fact that the costs of missile defense will be enormous follows from the preliminary performance characteristics of Sarmat. According to TASS military observer Viktor Litovkin, the RS-28 Sarmat product will be able to send warheads to a range of about 17 thousand km versus 10 thousand km for the Voevoda. Such characteristics, in particular, will allow missiles to reach targets through the South Pole, which will provide an effect of surprise and prevent interception by the anti-missile systems being created.
The military observer also expects an increase in combat qualities in comparison with existing complexes. The R-36M2 can only carry 10 warheads. The multiple warhead of the Sarmat, in his opinion, will be able to carry at least one and a half dozen warheads with individual guidance. Warheads with a capacity of 150–300 kt will be able to be mounted at the breeding stage according to the “bunch of grapes” principle. The block must be reset in accordance with the flight program, at the moment of reaching the required trajectory.
Litovkin assumes that warheads will approach their targets at hypersonic speeds of more than 17M (17 speeds of sound, or 17x330 m/s). In this case, the unit will be able to maneuver in course and altitude, further complicating tracking and interception. In this case, the warhead will not be susceptible to interception by existing or future anti-missile systems, including those using space-based elements. Referring to unnamed missilemen, the observer claims that Sarmat simply will not notice the enemy’s missile defense system.
In parentheses, we modestly note that although a hypersonic warhead maneuvering in flight is a very complex and knowledge-intensive solution, it is not comparable in complexity and cost to anti-missiles.
To guarantee the interception of Sarmat warheads, anti-missiles will need to reach a speed of 20 - 22 Mach. It follows that even promising solutions cannot reassure a potential adversary. Anti-missiles at such speeds, even in high layers of the atmosphere, will inevitably be destroyed.
This leads to an even more interesting conclusion: in order to at least somehow defend against the hypersonic warheads of the Sarmat, the enemy will have to arrange a barrage nuclear explosion, and perhaps more than one, over its own territory. If he notices, of course.
It’s not in vain, oh, it’s not in vain that “Sarmat”, according to NATO classification, goes under the code name “Satan-2”.
Sarmat has another interesting feature. From the very beginning it was designed as a dual-use facility. This means that the rocket can be used with equal success for both military and space use. Definitely, the conversion experience was taken into account, when decommissioned “voivodes” were re-equipped to launch spacecraft into orbit. Thus, self-sufficiency is another advantage of the Sarmat project.
As you know, the RS-28 is a silo-based missile. The situation with its defense is no less interesting. For example, if an adversary tries to launch a pre-emptive strike on a site with an ICBM. The US withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, the admission of the former Soviet republics to NATO, and the destabilization of Ukraine led to the fact that in Russia, in 2013, work on the creation of KAZ, an active defense complex for the Strategic Missile Forces, which had been stopped in the early 90s, was resumed.
Experts call the KAZ “the last line of defense of the missile defense system.” It must destroy objects that managed to break through the curtain of existing Gazelle anti-missile missiles and the promising S-500 Prometheus complex. The KAZ includes radar detection and guidance systems, as well as special gun mounts.
In a number of parameters, KAZ gun mounts have something in common with Western R&D on the “Metal Storm” complex, but KAZ, unlike “Metal Storm”, is almost ready to go on combat duty and is much more technologically advanced. The peculiarity of the KAZ is that air targets are hit with metal arrows and balls with a diameter of 30 mm at an altitude of up to 6 km. Arrows and balls are fired with an initial speed of 1,8 km/s, which is comparable to the projectile of the longest-range cannon, and create a real iron cloud. One salvo contains up to 40 thousand elements. KAZ can be considered anti-missile artillery
KAZ is designed to cover point targets, such as missile launch silos, command posts, communication centers, and this differs from anti-missile missiles that cover the sky in sectors. The military expects that the complex will be able to destroy not only ballistic missiles, but also all types of modern precision weapons, including cruise missiles and GPS-corrected bombs.
In the early 90s, the development of KAZ progressed by leaps and bounds. The first KAZ products were called “Mozyr”. At the Kamchatka Kura training ground, they immediately hit not the mock-ups, but the real warhead of the Satan missile, accurately hitting the targets. The project was canceled only because of problems with financing, and not for technical reasons. At that time, technology made it possible to equally effectively destroy ballistic missiles or “smart” bombs and cruise missiles with a “steel cloud”. The current level of development of computer technology and radar equipment makes it possible to solve both problems simultaneously.
Finally, let's add a little pepper. If Western tabloids frighten the average person with the new Russian danger, then at the expert level there is amazing complacency. Thus, US Department of Energy nuclear weapons expert Robert Kelly compared the new Russian RS-28 Sarmat ICBM with Apple smartphones. In his opinion, the electronics in the iPhone demonstrate unprecedented progress, while the components of the Russian ICBM remained at the level of the 70s.
I don’t know how the expert managed to look into the inside of a top-secret Russian ICBM, even of which few people know the performance characteristics, but oh well. It would be better if Robert Kelly cast his eagle expert gaze a little closer. For example, the recently published photographs from the US Nuclear Strategic Command center, which horrified presidential candidate Donald Trump. The photographs showed in all forms the control and launch console of the Minuteman III ICBM, equipped with antediluvian computers with 7-inch disk drives and launch codes on the corresponding floppy disks, which were forgotten even in Albania.
And the brave American military work on this ancient antique, like petrified mammoth dung, and do not buzz. And if they buzz, then quietly.
In addition, this means that the expert is clearly not aware of the filling of American ICBMs. The same “minutemen” who went on combat duty back in the 70s. After all, if you take them apart, the electronic filling will be terribly far from not only that of an Apple phone, but even from the level of some “Tamagotchi” with Chinese Tetris. An expert will see ancient single-layer, compound-filled printed circuit boards with military-grade Motorola 68030 processors. And all because military equipment does not need a wow factor and technologies that are too modern, or, simply put, technologies that have not been tested by experience and time. But reliability, on the contrary, is very necessary.
He compared, as they say, dactyl with aphedrone. I don’t know which expert vocational schools in the United States train their nuclear weapons specialists - maybe they are secretly transferred from Ukraine? “Sarmat” may not have iPhone technology, but for many years it will be a formidable warning to enemies that a sudden attack on Russia and a victory with little blood will not work under any circumstances. Let the clowns frolic - it won’t hurt us. It is important that everything turns out as in the song: “and the vaunted, notorious Fischer immediately agreed to a draw.”
English version :: Read in English “I accidentally exposed my bicep”: Putin warns the West