Testing of the new RS-28 Sarmat, a futuristic Russian liquid-fueled, multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV), super-heavy thermonuclear armed intercontinental ballistic missile has been suspended until at least the second half of 2016, TASS reported.
The Sarmat is intended to replace the SS-18 Satan (who says Russians aren’t great at naming things?).
Even though the folks at the he Plesetsk space center have fixed the problems with the launcher and it is ready to handle the Sarmat prototype, there are problems with the missile, a source in the Russian defense industry complex told TASS on Wednesday.
“The missile’s pop-up tests have been postponed until the second half of the year,” the source said, explaining that “the tests were previously postponed because the silo was not ready, and now the missile is not ready.”
According to the source, the retooling of the silo for the Sarmat was completed in April.
A different source in the defense industry told TASS earlier that the pop-up tests of Sarmat were first set for March, then pushed to the second quarter of 2016, and now it looks like they need more time.
Sarmat has a large payload, allowing for up to 10 heavy warheads or 15 lighter ones, or a combination of warheads and massive amounts of substances intended to fool anti-missile systems. It is the Russian military’s answer to the US Prompt Global Strike (PGS), a system that will be able to deliver a precision-guided conventional weapon airstrike anywhere in the world within one hour, just like a nuclear ICBM.