New Russian heavy ICBM - Sarmatian

The flight tests of the Sarmat missile system were successful - Commander of the Strategic Missile Forces

Taken from numerous sources on Twitter.

Sarmat flew today? I can't see any information

Article from TASS. Doesn't actually say that any Sarmats have been launched recently...

Russia successfully conducts flight tests of Sarmat ICBM — commander

MOSCOW, November 18. /TASS/. Russia’s Strategic Missile Force successfully conducted flight tests of the advanced RS-28 Sarmat silo-based intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), Strategic Missile Force Commander Colonel-General Sergey Karakayev said at an enlarged meeting of its Military Council on Friday.

"The Strategic Missile Force continues its rearmament for advanced missile systems. The flight tests of the Sarmat missile system have been successfully carried out. The Yars road-mobile missile system has also proven its capabilities by launches at the Plesetsk state testing spaceport," the Defense Ministry quoted the commander as saying.

The Russian Strategic Missile Force has assimilated new methods of maneuverable operations by missile regiments. In the 2022 training year, the Strategic Missile Force has conducted more than 550 marches, with over 50% of them at night, he said.

The level of troop preparedness has increased this year. The Omsk missile formation has been recognized as the best in the Russian Strategic Missile Force in the 2022 training year. The Yoshkar-Ola missile force has achieved the best results among road-mobile missile formations. The Uzhur missile unit has demonstrated the best results among formations armed with stationary missile systems, he said.

The RS-28 Sarmat is a Russian state-of-the art silo-based missile system armed with a heavy liquid-propellant orbital intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying nuclear charges. The missile has been in the process of its development at the Makeyev State Rocket Center (the town of Miass in the Chelyabinsk Region) since the 2000s to replace the R-36M2 Voyevoda ICBM operational in the Russian Strategic Missile Force since 1988.

The Sarmat ICBM was first test-launched from the Plesetsk spaceport on April 20. The advanced ICBM proved its designed characteristics at all the stages of its flight.

Based on experts’ estimates, the RS-28 Sarmat is capable of delivering a MIRVed warhead weighing up to 10 tons to any location worldwide both over the North and South Poles.

source

Sarmat also suggested as a basis of planetary defense (counter-asteroid), due to its high energy, throwweight and readiness. Some preliminary design works on hit-to-kill/"strike" interceptor capable of destroying small-size (10 to 100 meters) space objects. wrote:

Russia begins deployment of new state-of-the-art Sarmat ICBM

The new model has already been successfully tested and will enter service next year, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has said

Russia’s first new silo-based Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) will be deployed into service next year, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has said at a meeting of Russia’s senior defense officials with President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday.

“Successful launches of the new heavy Sarmat missile system during state-run tests made it possible to begin work on its deployment,” Shoigu said.

In total, some 22 new strategic nuclear missile launchers, including the silo-based Sarmat, as well as the Avangard and Yars systems, are set to be deployed to the country’s Strategic Missile Forces (SMF) next year, the minister revealed.

Putin said that efforts would continue to improve the country’s SMF, adding that “the share of modern types of weapons in [Russia’s] strategic nuclear forces has exceeded 91% this year.”

We will continue to maintain and improve the combat-readiness of our nuclear triad. This is the main guarantee for preserving our sovereignty and territorial integrity, strategic parity, and the general balance of power in the world,” he stated.

The liquid-fueled heavy ICBM was first successfully test-launched back in April. The new system is ultimately set to replace the aging silo-based R-36M2 Voevoda missiles, the backbone of Russia’s strategic nuclear deterrence.

Speaking with Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star), the official newspaper of the Russian military, the head of Russia’s SMF, General Sergey Karakaev, said the new missile boasts vastly larger capabilities than its predecessor.

“The missile system Sarmat has a wide range of capabilities for deploying various types of combat payloads and is based on principles that assure guaranteed penetration of any anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system, both now and in the future,” Karakaev told the newspaper last week.

source

Strange that they will begin operational deployment after only 1 test flight.

This isn't that companies first liquid fuelled heavy ICBM, they know what they are doing...

Bulava was made by a company that had not made SLBMs before and it was solid fuelled which, apart from the SS-N-20 from the Akula class was a new idea for them.

Bulava was sabotaged. One of the production facilities was close to the site where the US inspection teams were based. They relocated the Americans and lo and behold, everything started working smoothly.

GarryB:

This isn't that companies first liquid fuelled heavy ICBM

ummm what?

The design bureau of Sarmat, JSC Makeyev Design Bureau, is the designer of all the SLBMs used by Soviet navy. Sarmat is actually the first land based ICBM they have designed, not to mention that Sarmat is the first heavy ICBM designed and built completely in Russia, as its predecessor the R-36 Satan was designed and built primarily by Yuzhnoye and Yuzhmash in Ukraine.

GarryB:

Bulava was made by a company that had not made SLBMs before and it was solid fuelled which, apart from the SS-N-20 from the Akula class was a new idea for them

Correct, Bulava is designed and built by MITT which never made a SLBM before, and starting from September 2005, the Bulava needed 27 test launches (actually more because several of them were salvo launches) out of which 15 test were successful before being finally accepted officially into service in June 2018. https://tass.com/defense/1011538

I think its fair to say that Russia possessed the complete design information of the R-36. It may have been designed/manufactured by Yuzhnoye/Yuzmash but it was a Soviet project, not Ukrainian, and used Energomash engines. Russia has been maintaining its R-36s and converting them into Dnepr launchers long enough to have a complete mastery of the type. Sarmat is a modernised and Russified R-36 built with 21st century CAD/CAM manufacturing, modern avionics, and updated engines. It should be considered an evolutionary variant. The main differences will be mechanical and structural, and these can be validated on the ground.

Russians show plenty of due diligence when it comes to validating new designs. Bulava SLBM and Angara launcher are just two examples. If they feel that a single flight is required to fully close the loop on the validation cycle and put the basic Sarmat into service, who are we to disagree?

kvs wrote:The Bulava was the SLBM variant of the Topol-M. It was much shorter with two stages, but the solid rocket fuel was the same
as far as I can tell. It was not built by some liquid fuel newbie company that never built solid rocket fuel missiles before. There
is no analogy to the Soviet N-1 moon rocket fiasco. The Bulava was in its testing phase for an absurdly long time. This does not
make any sense if it was a design problem. You can't fix a broken design with testing. You have to start from scratch. So the
testing was showing technical failures that did not justify a restart of the project. There is no sunk cost fallacy involved.

IIRC the Bulava utilised some design solutions from Topl-M but it was essentially a clean-sheet design that was more advanced (lighter, better throw-weight performance). Test failures could be attributed to both manufacturing issues (Russian missile industry had to be rebuilt from the ground up after Yeltsins "Golden Years") and sabotage (Western intel with bulging pocket-books was able to find plenty of traitorous cnts in the 90s and 00s who would fck over the Motheland for a fistful of greenbacks).

Bulava is a generation ahead of the US Trident II, not that you will find any NATOstani exceptionalists who would be willing to admit it

The design bureau of Sarmat, JSC Makeyev Design Bureau, is the designer of all the SLBMs used by Soviet navy. Sarmat is actually the first land based ICBM they have designed, not to mention that Sarmat is the first heavy ICBM designed and built completely in Russia, as its predecessor the R-36 Satan was designed and built primarily by Yuzhnoye and Yuzhmash in Ukraine.

Going from SLBMs to ICBMs is less challenging that going the other way.

ICBMs don't need to fire on the move and you can make them as big as you need to, while the size of submarines limits the dimensions and weights for SLBMs.

GarryB:

Going from SLBMs to ICBMs is less challenging that going the other way.

This is only your opinion, which I respect, but I doubt the missile designers at Makeyev and MITT would agree with you. SLBMs and ICBMs are two separate beasts and each would have its own set of unique challenges. You cannot just simply give a sweeping statement like designing one of them is less challenging than the other unless you are a SLBM and ICBM designer yourself.

Big_Gazza:

I think its fair to say that Russia possessed the complete design information of the R-36. It may have been designed/manufactured by Yuzhnoye/Yuzmash but it was a Soviet project, not Ukrainian, and used Energomash engines. Russia has been maintaining its R-36s and converting them into Dnepr launchers long enough to have a complete mastery of the type. Sarmat is a modernised and Russified R-36 built with 21st century CAD/CAM manufacturing, modern avionics, and updated engines. It should be considered an evolutionary variant. The main differences will be mechanical and structural, and these can be validated on the ground.

Aside from the Energomash engines, R-36 Satan was primarily designed and manufactured in Ukraine (btw I think the R-36 Energomash engines were also manufactured by Yuzhmash), but basically yes its correct that Russia always had the capability to create a heavy ICBM, which it has demonstrated with creating the R-28 Sarmat. No other country on this planet can come up with an ICBM even remotely capable to Sarmat in the timeframe it took Russia to design one, even if they are provided a fully functional R-36 to copy.

Having said that, my original point still stands i.e. you cannot begin operational deployment of some thing as complex as Sarmat after just one test flight. I think we all know any way that despite what the army bosses say the designers and the RVSN will complete the full test cycle of Sarmat in 2023 and 2024 before deploying it operationally. R-36 still has several years of operational life left in it so there is no hurry.

This is only your opinion, which I respect, but I doubt the missile designers at Makeyev and MITT would agree with you. SLBMs and ICBMs are two separate beasts and each would have its own set of unique challenges. You cannot just simply give a sweeping statement like designing one of them is less challenging than the other unless you are a SLBM and ICBM designer yourself.

Reminds me of a joke...

A gynaecologist is sick of his job and wants a change and so he looks around to find something he can to that will have a more practical effect on his life and he realises he likes cars and being able to fix his own and his wife and adult childrens cars would save a lot of money, so he goes back to school and learns to be a mechanic.

He gets to his final exam which requires him to take an engine to pieces... completely right down to the nuts and bolts, lay them out on a tarp and label them and then put them all back together with no left over parts... he has four hours.

When it came time to get the results the person in charge of the school calls him in to his office to explain his results which were unusual.

He got 200%.

He asked how he could have gotten such a score and the examiner explained how the exam was marked.

We start every student with 100% and then take off points for mistakes or problems or issues.

The first thing to check is time, which he completed well within the allotted time, so he didn't lose any points for that.

Second is accuracy with labelling, which was all correct, and third was putting it all back together correctly and in the correct order with no extra or lost parts.

The student said, sure, an important part of my previous job was precision and detail, but why did you give me 200%.

The examiner said you got 100% for doing everything correctly and precisely and faultlessly, and an added 100% for doing it all through the exhaust pipe.

Building an ICBM when you build SLBMs is bound to be easier... but at worse no more difficult because space constraints are completely different, and they have plenty of experience with multistage liquid fuelled ballistic missiles.

Not having to worry about a salt water environment should make things rather easier too.

There would be more in common than there would be difference.

Having said that, my original point still stands i.e. you cannot begin operational deployment of some thing as complex as Sarmat after just one test flight. I think we all know any way that despite what the army bosses say the designers and the RVSN will complete the full test cycle of Sarmat in 2023 and 2024 before deploying it operationally. R-36 still has several years of operational life left in it so there is no hurry.

They likely performed hundreds or thousands of individual tests of all the components as well as computer testing to confirm performance parameters...

The term operational could be being used loosely.

The SKS rifle was tested in combat in 1944 but was not considered operational till 1945... hense the SKS 45 designation.

Of course its design was based on the Simonov 14.5mm anti tank rifle PTRS-41 so it wasn't really a brand new design either.

https://www.mk.ru/politics/2023/02/12/zapadnye-smi-nazvali-datu-zapuska-sarmat2.html

The test launch of the Russian 208-ton supersonic missile "Sarmat-2" will take place in the coming days. This was reported to the foreign press by their own sources.

They argue that the launch of a missile capable of carrying nuclear warheads could coincide with the day the JMD began in Ukraine. Presumably, Sarmat will be launched from February 15 to February 25 from the Kura training ground in Kamchatka.