The massive Sarmat has hit technical issues (Picture: East2West)
Vladimir Putin’s ‘doomsday’ nuclear rocket is facing trouble thanks to Western sanctions which have hit its key components, according to a new report.
The Russian leader boasted in his state-of-the-nation address that Sarmat – known in the West as ‘Satan-2’ – is ‘already…. in service with troops’.
He told his audience: ‘We will soon demonstrate them in the combat duty mode at their deployment bases.’
Yet there is mounting evidence the ‘unstoppable’ 208-tonne intercontinental nuclear weapon – which can travel at speeds of 15,880mph and is the size of a 14-storey tower block – is far from ready for use.
An expected test flight by the world’s biggest ballistic missile over the South Pole has not happened.
Russian Telegram channel VChK-OGPU reported: ‘The Krasnoyarsk Machine-Building Plant is experiencing a serious shortage of electronic components….for production of the strategic missiles.
One launch was done in early 2022 (Picture: East 2 West)
‘The electronics of the new RS 28 [Sarmat] missile system are largely of foreign origin and, due to sanctions, [they] are experiencing a serious shortage.
‘Now all efforts are being made to somehow correct the situation with the supply of sanctioned electronics.’
The sanctions have also hit Russian production of S-400 air defence missiles, used in the war with Ukraine.
The report says that Satan-2 – which carries ten nuclear warheads of 750 kilotons each – has only had a limited number of successful tests ahead of deployment.
Its arrival at a launch site late last year was more in hope than expectation.
‘The missiles can be counted on one hand and it is unknown how they will behave during launches,’ the channel said.
The missile is 14 storeys high (Picture: East 2 West)
Earlier there were reports that it should be tested with a chilling flight over the South Pole – which has not yet happened.
Putin’s own state news agency TASS reported last year that ‘even a truncated LCI [flight development tests], and assuming all launches are successful, would require several more launches, including via the South Pole’.
Only one fully confirmed successful test of the nuclear weapon is known – in April 2022.
Kyiv military expert Oleksandr Kovalenko, of the Information Resistance Group, said after Putin’s speech that Satan-2 ‘is unreliable and dangerous’.
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He told RBC-Ukraine: ‘It’s a very problematic missile. The Russians couldn’t even manage test launches. When they launched a model at 30 metres to check the powder booster, they couldn’t prepare in time.
‘And overall, there was only one full-scale test of Sarmat, although during Soviet times, intercontinental ballistic missiles were tested for years. There were dozens of tests with constant error correction.’
The Sarmat-Satan-2 complex is due to replace the Voevoda – or Satan – missile which has been in service since the 1980s.
The R-36M2 Voevoda missile was tested 17 times in the Cold War before it was put on combat duty.
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