By Prensa Latina,
Moscow : Russian space forces launched an RS-18 intercontinental ballistic missile Wednesday from the Cosmodrome of Baikonur, (Kazahstan) that impacted in a target located in the polygon of Kura, in Kamchatka.
Launched successfully by the Rocket Strategic Troops, the projectile demonstrated its reliability and justified the decision of maintaining it in combative disposal after 2010, informed the First Television Channel.
With a takeoff mass of 105.6 tons, a longitude of 24 meters, diameter of 2,5 meters and with capacity of carrying up to six autonomous warheads with superior reach to 6,210 miles, this missile was incorporated to the arsenal in 1975.
Four years later the first artilled regiment entered in operational service with these rockets in the divisions Tatichev and Kozelsk, in the Ural Mounts.
The Russian government approved a federal program to prolong between 10 and 15 years the useful life of this dissuasive armament, in 1995. The necessary annual expenses to extend the exploitation of the RS-18 are comparable to the production of a new rocket, but they allow preserving near 120 of those vectors in their silos.
Once full with fuel and installed in their launching units, the RS-18 do not require any maintenance type until the moment of their retirement from the regime of combative disposition.
Russian Rocket Strategic Troops head, General Colonel Nikolai Solotsov, informed that as soon as the period of exploitation of these modernized projectiles expires, they will be replaced by the mobile rocket RS-24 with multiple warheads.
Recently, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev attended a launching test of an intercontinental rocket of the type Topol RS-12M from the Cosmodrome of Plessetsk, as part of the Russian maneuvers of dissuasion strategy, known as Stability 2008.
The Topol-M rockets were designed in the Moscow Thermo Technical Institute to be placed in ground silos or mobile platforms and they are fed with solid fuel. Specialized sources pointed out that this armament cannot be neutralized by any antimissile defense in the current world, because its atomic warhead is a multiple re-entry vehicle.
This characteristic allows the rocket to carry out evasive maneuvers in its course toward the objective and avoid any phase of the final interceptor.