MOSCOW, February 17, 23:42 /ITAR-TASS/. The Military Academy of Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces (RVSN) will get 35 new simulators for Yars systems in 2014, RVSN Spokesperson, Colonel Igor Yegorov said on Monday, February 17.

“The Academy will get 23 simulators for mobile Yars systems and 12 for ground-based ones,” he said.

Previously, cadets studied and learnt to operate the systems only during onsite training in military units.

Universities and training centres of the Strategic Missile Forces will get more than 130 new simulators in 2014.

“Unique simulators will be supplied to all units without exception. RVSN plans to supply about a thousand simulators for the training of specialists until 2020,” Yegorov said earlier.

About 30 tests will be run on the new simulators this year. Last year, 40 such tests were conducted.

In 2013, simulators were supplied to missile units which were rearmed with Yars missile systems.

Russia has started deploying new silo-based Yars missiles and putting them on combat duty late last year.

The RS-24 Yars missile is a solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) with a multiple warhead. It can be both silo- and mobile-based. Designed by the Moscow Heat Engineering Institute, the missile is a modernised version of the Topol-M ICBM and should replace RS-18 and RS-20 missiles in the future.

On December 24, 2013, a silo-based RS-24 Yars missile was fired from Plesetsk Cosmodrome and hit the target at the Kura testing range in Kamchatka.

The Kozelsk rocket division of the Strategic Missile Forces in the Kaluga region started removing RS-18 ICBMs from combat duty and converting silos for new Yars systems late last year.

The division is the first in the country to be armed with silo-based Yars systems with RS-24 missiles.

Similar preparations were made in Irkutsk and Novosibirsk divisions. By the end of last year, the Tatishchevo rocket division in the Saratov region were reported to have been armed with silo-based Topol-M missiles and the Teikovo rocket division with mobile Yars systems.

The Teikovo missile division is the first unit in the Strategic Missile Forcesto become fully armed with new land-based mobile Topol-M and Yars systems.

Topol-M and Yars systems will carry 5th-generation RT-2PM2 and RS-24 ICBMs respectively.

Rearmament has also started at the Novosibirsk and Kozelsk missile divisions this year.

“In the Kozelsk division the Yars system will be deployed in silos. In the future, several more divisions will be armed with these systems,” RVSN spokesperson, Colonel Vadim Koval said earlier.

“When a second missile regiment is armed with the newest Yars systems consisting of MIRVed RS-24 ICBMs, the rearmament of the Teikovo missile force with Topol-M and Yars system will on the whole be completed,” he said.

With the adoption of the RS-24 system, “the Strategic Missile 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 in the summer of 2012.