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Russia's Topol-M Nuclear Missile Has 10,000 Kilometer Range; 75 Times Deadlier Than Hiroshima Bomb |
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Written by Staff
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Monday, 26 December 2005 |
Sparking fears of a renewed strategic nuclear arms race between former cold war foes, the former USSR and the United States, Russian President Vladimir Putin has deployed ten state-of-the-art intercontinental ballistic missiles with a range capability of 6,200 miles or 10,000 kilometers. Russia already has 46 Topols deployed in various silos throughout the country.
Under the direction of Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev, the newest nuclear batallion is situated in that country's Saratov region, 452 miles south-east of Moscow. Sergeyev who on Saturday declared the weapon ready for combat, describes the Topol-M missile as "a weapon for the 21st century" with "a lot of capabilities that make it a weapon for the future."
Adding to growing concerns that the two nation superpowers have surreptitiously renewed the cold war race for weapon supremacy, Russian military commanders have been publically vocal on the power of the Topopl-M missile saying it has the ability of performing unpredictable flight maneuvers, "is capable of piercing any missile defence system" and is completely immune to electromagnetic blasts used by current US anti-missile systems.
Russian Defence describe the Topol-M as being technically unique:
-length - 22.7 meters (74.5 feet)
-diameter - 1.95 meters (6.5 feet)
-range - 10,000 kilometers (6,200 miles)
-weight - 47.2 tons
-blast capacity - one megatonne impact (75 times the power of the 1945 Hiroshima bomb)
-can evade existing ballistic missile defence shields
The deployment of the Russian Topol-M and the contentious rhetoric mark the fastest expansion of nuclear missiles in the last 25 years when the Pershing II nuclear missile was rolled out.
In an article in the prestigious 'Jane's Strategic Weapons Systems' published in November, British analyst Duncan Lamont described the Toplo-M missile along with the Russian-made Bulava missiles as new classes of ballistic missile "armed with some sort of hypersonic payload which would be capable of maneuvering in its midcourse and terminal phase, and thereby evading the sort of ground-based, midcourse ballistic missile defenses currently being fielded in Alaska and California."
The Russian parliament has drafted a bill which will guarantee strategic missile funding through 2010.
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