MOSCOW, October 31. /TASS/. Serial production of the new generation inter-continental ballistic missiles Sarmat is scheduled to begin in 2021. The first regiment armed with these missiles will enter duty later in the same year, a source in the Russian defense-industrial complex told TASS.
"The deadline for completing the Sarmat’s flight tests and authorizing it for service is 2021. Serial production is due to begin in the same year. The first regiment - two silo-launched Sarmats and a command center - will enter duty then, too," the source said.
On March 1, 2018 Russian President Vladimir Putin in his message to the Federal Assembly declared the ICBM Sarmat had entered the active testing phase. The Defense Ministry said in July that the missile would go operational within the expected deadlines.
The silo-based ICBMs Sarmat, developed at the Makeyev Rocket Design Bureau in Miass is meant to replace the R-36M2 missiles, which had been made at the Yuzhny Machine-Building Plant in Ukraine up to the early 1990s. The first Sarmats will be provided for a missile division in Uzhur, the Krasnoyarsk Territory.
In the long term the number of silos in the regiment will be increased to six - the standard strength. The Sarmat will be produced serially at the machine-building plant in Krasnoyarsk, the former Soviet Union’s leading manufacturer of missiles for submarines.