MOSCOW, December 21. /TASS/. Russia’s Strategic Missile Force will get 13 launchers with Yars and Avangard intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) in 2021, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said at the ministry’s enlarged board meeting on Monday.

"In 2021, the Defense Ministry will deal with a number of priority rearmament tasks. It will have to put 13 launchers with Yars and Avangard intercontinental ballistic missiles on combat duty in the Strategic Missile Force," the defense chief said.

Russia also plans to complete the construction of the necessary infrastructure for Yars and Avangard ICBMs in Kozelsk, Yasny, Uzhur, Novosibirsk and Yoshkar-Ola, Shoigu said.

"Additional funds allocated for the production of these systems, will help reach the level of the strategic nuclear forces’ provision with advanced weapons at 88.3%," the defense chief stressed.

The first missile regiment armed with Avangard hypersonic weapons assumed combat duty in the Yasny missile division in the Orenburg Region in late 2019. The Avangard boost-glide vehicle is capable of flying at a hypersonic speed of up to Mach 27 (about 32,000 km/h) in the dense layers of the atmosphere, maneuvering by its flight path and its altitude and breaching any anti-missile defense. The Avangard hypersonic weapon was first mentioned by Russian President Vladimir Putin in March 2018.

The RS-24 Yars is a Russian strategic missile system comprising a mobile or silo-based solid-propellant intercontinental ballistic missile with MIRVed (multiple independently targetable vehicle) warheads. The ICBM was developed by the Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology under the supervision of academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Yuri Solomonov. The Yars is a modification of the Topol-M missile system.