New Russian heavy ICBM - Sarmatian

Arrow wrote:

Don't make me laugh. Look at how many successful launches Trident II has, it's an excellent SLBM.

For the 80s. Now its just hilarious.

It features limited shielding and hardening to perform anti-interception maneuvering - meaning you can write off the standard use case of gravity turn trajectory to most efficiently toss as much warhead as possible. Scratch all dreams of 8*W88 or 14*W76 uploads, its just not happening.

They even tried to repurpose the damn thing into a first use weapon using depressed trajectories. Found out the fucking thing kept cooking the RVs before they are even released. End result, they couldn't even guarantee the fusion stage will work so they cut that stage entirely, nerfing the thing into a cute 7kT.  

Its about as usable as a weapon as its namesake in battle. A peasant tool. Bulava (mace) is a weapon of war meant for cracking heavily armored men-at-arms.

This is why you don't base shit on wikipedia.

With START essentially gone and most other agreements in limbo or gone they can easily massively build up warhead numbers by returning to MIRVS and MaRVs for most of their missiles... that is not a huge problem.

Actually I seem to remember the FOBS ban was part of the ABM treaty of 1972 so they could build an Angara 5 and have it sitting ready to be used when needed, and when it is needed they could they could load it up with about 25 tons of RVs and launch it to scatter its payload over North America or Europe... depending on the situation. In modern warhead terms that could be 250 RVs if they weigh 100kg each... they could be mini nukes based on 152mm artillery shells that are half that weight at about 15Kt... so 500 nuclear detonations... they will be fission, so they will be rather more dirty than larger more powerful fusion weapons... the weapon will be in orbit so every 90 minutes it will come over the US and be able to release more warheads... mostly targeting ABM sites and population centres no doubt.


Or just a really really big powerful bomb to set off an enormous EMP pulse over the US as they launch their ICBM and SLBM... and don't forget Poseidon and Thunderbird attacks...

Arrow my dear chap, you are confusing things terribly.

Their ICBMs didn't carry the warheads they could carry and were built in numbers they could build, the existing treaties strongly influenced what they did and what they built.

This means TOPOL carried far fewer warheads than it could because when it was put into service the START agreement of the time banned MIRVS.

With those warhead limiting parts of the agreements gone the pressure for warheads has also gone... they can load as many warheads as they please.

More importantly and what you are ignoring, is that with the INF treaty gone they can now make IRBM and IRCMs so they no longer have to waste ICBMS and SLBMs on targets in the Middle East, Asia, and Europe... because they will be able to make medium and intermediate range missiles to reach such targets easily enough.

Ironically, it is a huge step backwards for the US because their short range missiles located in Turkey and Poland can reach much of western Russia and could therefore be considered strategic weapons because they can hit the Black Sea Fleet, the Baltic Fleet, the Northern Fleet, and the Pacific Fleet and even the Caspian Flotilla, all from HATO or HATO friendly territory, yet targets in western Europe and the UK and most of the US are out of range of short range missiles from Russian territory.

I rather suspect in the near future they will be working on heavy ICCMs... intercontinental cruise missiles... either air breathing scramjet powered or nuclear powered missiles of long or unlimited range and enormous speed.

Such weapons can be smaller and lighter than ICBMs and will likely operate at very very high altitudes and very high speeds that actually make them harder to intercept than actual ICBMs that go slightly faster but follow a mostly predictable path and do not manouver very much.

The west has to spend enormous amounts of money just replacing all the stuff from storage that has been burned up and the replacement stuff is going to cost top dollar... Eastern European countries might start buying South Korean weapons and equipment because American stuff is inferior and 10 times the price.

This is going to really piss off the US, because that is what this was all about... getting more customers for US weapons, getting eastern europe to get rid of all its cheap and effective warsaw pact stuff, and to get europe to pay more for their defence instead of expecting the US cavalry from being the saviour yet again.

Ironically what they haven't thought about was that if they didn't make Russia an enemy in the first place they would not be spending all this money in the first place, but of course the US MIC don't want you to work that out...

Sarmatian is a new missile and will essentially replace older missiles already in service. If it takes an extra 5 years to get right then it takes another 5 years. They made the existing missiles and can keep them working till they can be retired and used to launch satellites.

Bulava can carry 10 warheads if needed... and currently there are no restrictions on that... it currently actually carries about 6 warheads AFAIK.

If they were desperate they could load Bulava on trains and trucks if they needed to...

GarryB wrote:
This means TOPOL carried far fewer warheads than it could because when it was put into service the START agreement of the time banned MIRVS.

START has never banned MIRVs.
It only reduced the number of deployed warheads, making both the Soviets and muricans decide if they preferred to have one missile with 20 warheads rather than 20 missiles with one warhead each.

START II was supposed to come in 2003 and was supposed to eliminate all MIRVs on ICBMs.

It was supposed to come into effect in 2003 but was talked about a lot before then so Russian nuclear missile production and deployment plans would be based around what they would be expecting to be in the new reduction treaties, and over time they would expect those reduction treaties to get more harsh and limiting, so TOPOL and TOPOL-M didn't have lots of MIRV warheads... like they could have had.

The restrictions on mobile launchers were quite strict... they were mobile but were only allowed in certain areas and couldn't drive where they pleased when they pleased...

Now the new START treaty essentially have very few limitations and were to be enforced on one day... so you could have more than you were allowed on the day before and the day after, but as long as you had the correct number deployed on that day you were in full compliance.

There is a reason it was called a weak agreement.

But by now we are not supposed to be enemies so it shouldn't have mattered.

The point is that now it is not in effect because the US would use visits and inspections for recon to gather target information for their Ukrainian nazis, means perhaps Russia will realise they don't need such agreements... let the US spend trillions on their nuclear weapons, they seem to be spending on all sorts of things that wont help their economy or improve the lot of their taxpayers...

If they wanted to massively increase their nuclear reach then producing Bulava and using them from trucks and train carriages... with one stage missing so their range is 3-5K km with 10 warheads each they can call them IRBMs that don't count towards START agreements now or in the future...

They also have Poseidon and Thunderbird which are also strategic nuclear weapons too.

Propellant traditionally burns rather than detonates, but the more powerful propellants they will be using to maximise acceleration to reduce the time period of the boost phase (to limit the time the missile is vulnerable to air or space based lasers as it launches and climbs up out of the atmosphere) might be rather more energetic.

I would ignore the initial reports with western spin and wait for the Russians to tell us what is actually happening.

The Soviets have a very long history of cold launch systems and they seem to be rather reliable... note the term cold launch does not mean there is no burning propellant involved... it means the missile is launched from the launch silo or container with its rocket motors off... they start clear of the launch tube/Silo, to reduce the chances of an engine detonation inside the tube/silo.