Last Friday, the launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile Bulava from the first batch put into military service was abortive. The emergency committee should find the causes of the incident.
The telemetric equipment was not mounted on the missile, because the launch was aimed at drilling the missile system of the submarine, but not the check of the Bulava features, sources of the Kommersant daily affirmed.
The daily recalled that Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu decided to suspend the state trials of two missile carriers - missile-carrying submarines Alexander Nevsky and Vladimir Monomakh. Their transfer into service of the Russian Navy was previously planned in 2013. Now the last stage of state trials will be delayed as long as the committee will finalize its work. According to the estimates of several members of the emergency committee polled by the Kommersant daily, this work may take no less than a month.
This means that the missile carriers will be put into service of the Navy only in 2014, the newspaper came to conclusion. This incident became the first one after six successful launches, which were made from October 2010 up to December 2011.
Nineteen launches of the intercontinental ballistic missile Bulava were made, including seven abortive launches and two partially successful launches, the newspaper reported.
The abortive Bulava launches may have geopolitical consequences, the Nezavisimaya Gazeta daily believes. It was planned that the missile-carrying submarines Alexander Nevsky and Vladimir Monomakh will be passed into service of the Navy before the end of this year. Now these deadlines will be moved to next year. It is not good, but it is not a big trouble, as most important is that the warships and the missile will be in full combat readiness and will not fail at a concrete moment of time, the newspaper believes.
The US experience also shows that failures take place. The US anti-missile GBI has been tested already for 20 years and each second launch did not hit the target. This fact, but not the intention to satisfy Moscow made Barack Obama refuse from the deployment of these missiles in Poland, the Nezavisimaya Gazeta daily explained.
Now one more abortive Bulava launch will also have geopolitical repercussions, the newspaper came to conclusion. If the Bulava launch had been successful, Putin’s statement that Russia will help Syria, if a military strike is delivered on that country, would have had a concrete overtone.