MOSCOW, January 2 (Itar-Tass) —— A second regiment from the Teikovo missile force division in the Ivanovo region will be rearmed with the newest Yars systems in 2012.
Rearmament will also start at the Novosibirsk and Kozelsk missile divisions this year, Strategic Rocket Forces (RVSN) spokesman, Colonel Oleg Koval told Itar-Tass on Monday, January 2.
“In the Kozelsk division the Yars system will be deployed in silos. In the future, several more divisions will be armed with these systems,” he said.
“When a second missile regiment is armed with the newest Yars systems consisting of MIRVed RS-25 ICBMs, the rearmament of the Teikovo missile force with Topol-M and Yars system will on the whole be completed,” the spokesman for the Strategic Rocket Forces told Itar-Tass earlier.
With the start of the summer training season, special attention has been paid to combat duty practices in a simulated combat environment.
The first missile regiment in the Teikovo missile force has already been fully manned.
“On March 4, the regiment composed of two missile divisions armed with the Yars system with the RS-24 intercontinental ballistic missile went on combat duty,” Koval said.
“The divisions carried out the tasks of trial duty and confirmed all of the declared tactical and technical characteristics of the missile system, its reliability,” Koval said.
With the adoption of the RS-24 system, “the Strategic Rocket Forces increased their capability for piercing missile defence”, the spokesman said.
“This has strengthened the nuclear deterrence capabilities of the Russian strategic forces,” he added.
Koval said RS-24 missiles would replace RS-18 and RS-20 missiles that will be decommissioned upon the end of their service life.
The RS-24 Yars missile system was put on combat duty in Russia last summer.
Prior to that, the chief designer of the Moscow Heat Engineering Institute, which created the system, said that one of the RS-24 systems had already been delivered to the Strategic Rocket Forces at the end of 2009.
Yuri Solomonov said, “All journalists are writing about Bulava, but are saying little about the new mobile missile system RS-24 Yars with multiple warheads that we created at the same time.”
The Strategic Rocket Forces intended to deploy the missile system RS-24 with multiple warheads in December 2009.
“The intercontinental ballistic missile RS-24 put into service will reinforce combat capabilities of the attack group of the Strategic Rocket Forces. Along with the single-warhead silo-based and mobile missile RS-12M2 Topol-M already made operational the mobile missile system Rs-24 will make up the backbone of the attack group of the Strategic Rocket Forces,” former Commander of the Strategic Rocket Forces Lieutenant-General Andrei Shvaichenko said earlier.
Silo-based and mobile missile systems Topol-M, as well as RS-24 mobile missile systems were designed by the Moscow Heat Engineering Institute.
The warheads of Russia's newest Topol-M and RS-24 intercontinental ballistic missiles can pierce any of the existing of future missile defences, the current commander of the Strategic Rocket Forces Commander, Lieutenant-General Sergei Karakayev said earlier.
“The combat capability of silo-based and mobile Topol-M ICBMs is several times higher than that of Topol missiles. They can pierce any of the existing and future missile defence systems. RS-24 missiles have even better performance,” Karakayev said.
In December 2011, Karakayev said that the Strategic Rocket Forces’ attack capabilities included more than 350 launch systems for different types of missiles, “two-thirds of all carriers and more than half of Russia’s strategic nuclear weapons”.
He said the strategic nuclear forces would have 86 Topol-M and Yars systems by the end of 2011.
The Strategic Rocket Forces have six regiments armed with silo-based Topol-M missiles and two regiments armed with mobile Topol-M missiles. Each missile carries a single warhead. Last year, Russia began deploying RS-24 ICBMs with MIRVs. There is currently one regiment armed with RS-24 missiles.
Speaking of other ICBMs, Karakayev said that RS-20V Voyevoda (Satan by Western classification) would remain in service until 2026. “Their service life has been extended to 33 years,” he said.
On July 30, 1988, the first regiment armed with RS-20B Voyevoda missiles was placed on combat duty in the Dombarovka missile formation in the Orenburg region.
“This is the most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile in the world at the moment,” the press service of the Strategic Rocket Forces told Itar-Tass.
With a takeoff weight of over 210 tonnes, the missile's maximum range is 11,000 kilometres and can carry a payload of 8,800 kilograms. The 8.8-tonne warhead includes ten independently targetable re-entry vehicles whose total power is equal to 1,200 Hiroshima nuclear bombs. A single missile can totally eliminate 500 square kilometres of enemy defences.
By 1990, Voyevoda missiles had been placed on combat duty in divisions stationed outside of Uzhur, Krasnoyarsk Territory, and Derzhavinsk, Kazakhstan. Eighty-eight Voyevoda launch sites had been deployed by 1992.