In 2018, Russian troops received several new products at once. In the spring, it became known about the adoption of the Peresvet combat mobile laser complex, the details of which are still classified. Probably, its main purpose is missile and air defense. And by the summer, it successfully completed the tests and entered the newest hypersonic X-47M2 Dagger missile in the Russian Space Forces unit, capable of striking a wide range of both ground and surface targets. However, the domestic MIC will not stop there. As President Vladimir Putin said, answering questions during the “Direct Line”, as early as 2019, the Avangard missile system will arrive in the troops, and in 2020, the Sarmat missiles will take up combat duty.
The president assured that all the new items will be delivered to the troops on time. "I have no doubt that all of them will be put into service as scheduled," Putin said. These systems should become the new head of the national strategic forces. In addition, according to the president, the Dagger rocket, capable of moving 10 times faster than the speed of sound, was already on combat duty of the VKS of the Southern Military District. The words of the president are confirmed by surveys from the recent long-range aviation exercises provided by the Ministry of Defense.
According to the president, the Russian mobile ground rocket complex RS-26 Avangard, carrying an intercontinental rocket, is already in industrial production. “In 2019, we plan to place it in the Armed Forces,” Putin said. This rocket system is a modernization of the RS-24 Yars project. Her rocket, although it has an intercontinental range, is not ballistic, since it can move along a flat trajectory and change course and altitude depending on every second need. And the speed of the rocket at 20 max is a value that the nearest competitors will not soon surpass. The president has shared his conclusion that such countries will sometime appear in other countries, but by that time it will already be on duty in our troops for a long time.
The fifth-generation RS-28 Sarmat strategic missile system, known in the NATO countries as the “Satan-2”, will become the most powerful and heavy silo-based missile system in Russia. Split headpiece with blocks of individual guidance and active protection complexes, together with the suborbital flight trajectory, make this rocket the most formidable weapon in the world for the next decades. And the possibility of using a non-nuclear kinetic warhead significantly expands the range of applications of the complex. In addition, the rocket is able to bring objects into near-Earth orbit. Sending civilian spacecraft can be a great way to dispose of these systems by the end of their service life and return some of the money spent on production.
Work on other types of weapons under development or testing is underway as planned, the president said. For example, two products with a nuclear engine are in active development. The head of state noted only that it was a cruise missile and an unmanned submarine. Most likely, this refers to the project “Status-6” and the rocket, which does not have a public name yet, but is being developed in the Novator Design Bureau. A number of competent sources claim successful rocket tests at the Novaya Zemlya test site back in 2017. There is much more information available on the Status 6 project. This is an unmanned nuclear submarine of small size (about 24 meters in length) capable of striking surface and submarine targets when using non-nuclear ammunition. The installation of a nuclear warhead will allow the destruction of large naval fleets and coastal infrastructure. Even without directly hitting the target, the boat is capable of an explosion causing a large tsunami, the height of which even up to 100 kilometers from the epicenter of the explosion can reach 50 meters.
Vladimir Putin said that in both cases the stage of development and testing of the nuclear propulsion system had already been completed, but noted that many elements of the projects still require a long and painstaking refinement.
In conclusion, the president noted that the above developments are far from everything that goes into service in the near future. “As I said in the message, it’s too early to talk about it, but we’ll soon talk about it,” Putin concluded.
