LAST MONTH, SOMETHING WENT VERY WRONG at a unique ballistic missile launch facility designed to test prototype missiles at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia. So wrong that subsequent satellite photos showed the silo facility had been reduced to a smoking crater measuring at least 62 meters in diameter. It had fallen victim, one way or another, to the advanced new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) loaded inside it.
This missile, the RS-28 Sarmat (NATO codename: SS-X-29 or SS-X-3, and already unofficially nicknamed “Satan-II”), is designed to be an apex engine of atomic annihilation in the event of a full-scale nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia. Each missile can shower up to 14 independently targetable nuclear warheads on targets thousands of miles away.
That is, if the missile can manage to make it out of its silo. The recent explosion is the third (or by some unconfirmed accounts, even the fourth) failed or canceled Sarmat test, and the missile has only seen one successful launch. The incident brings to mind the deadly January 2019 explosion of Russia’s “Skyfall” nuclear-powered cruise missile and a string of less explosive U.S. missile test failures over the last three years.
Is there a reason these modern and often nuclear-capable weapons keep on failing, and if so, is there a shared factor behind the U.S. and Russia’s difficulties?
The Trouble With Liquid Fuel
So far, experts are still trying to discern the exact cause of the latest Sarmat accident. On September 17, Russia warned pilots of a missile flight test that would take place sometime between September 19 and 23, only to abruptly cancel the notice two days later. On September 20, NASA’s fire-detection satellites recorded a major fire at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, specifically at the Yubileynaya test launch silo built in the 1990s to develop the Topol-M ICBM, one of the most modern missiles currently in Russian service.
The Yubileynaya facility reportedly had five meters of underlying concrete removed to accommodate the Sarmat missile, a monster-sized ICBM measuring 35 meters long and weighing 229 tons. (By comparison, America’s Minuteman III ICBM is 16 meters long and weighs nearly 40 tons.) Following the explosion, high-resolution satellite imagery showed the massive extent of damage to both the surface and internal aspects of the site.
Did Russian technicians actually test-launch the RS-28 only for it to explode while lifting off? Or was a planned launch canceled, with an explosion occurring either while pumping volatile propellants into the fuel tank before launch, or while de-fueling after the launch cancellation?
George Barros, an analyst with the Institute of the Study of War, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, wrote on social media that evidence, including blazing trees east of the facility and the presence of several fire trucks, “suggests that the missile exploded shortly after ignition or launch.”
Russian nuclear arms expert Pavel Podrig instead says the evidence suggests an in-silo explosion. John Ridge, an open-source analyst who specializes in rocketry, thought likewise, telling Popular Mechanics that the absence of RC-135 Cobra Ball spy planes the U.S. routinely uses to monitor missile test launches suggests a canceled test.
It’s not certain whether the issues causing Russia to cancel the test are the same ones responsible for the explosion, though, Ridge cautions.
Experts particularly wonder if a mishap occurred during fueling or de-fueling. Sarmat uses liquid fuel, a combination of N204 oxidizer and an unstable colorless liquid called UDMH (also known as Heptyl or unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine) for propellant. These emit orange and yellow fumes when burned, visible in the footage below, which depicts the only successful Sarmat test to date.
The U.S. no longer uses liquid-fueled intercontinental ballistic missiles; while they’re more energy dense, they’re also more complicated to engineer and maintain, posing safety risks and logistical complications. Liquid fuel, after all, cannot sit inside a missile indefinitely because it will eventually eat through the gas tank.
UDMH propellant becomes flammable when its vapors attain air concentrations between 2.5 and 95 percent, so leaks or spills during refueling pose serious risks. (For context, ordinary gasoline’s flammability range lies between 1 and 7.6 percent.) UDMH propellant is also extremely toxic; a similar substance is commonly administered in small doses to rapidly induce cancer in animals for medical experiments.
A “Practically Complete” Missile
Putin extolled Sarmat as one of Russia’s six strategic weapons in a March 2018 speech, promising they would overcome improvements to America’s missile defenses. But ironically, Russia’s rushed development of Sarmat, which began in 2014, is very much a direct consequence of its invasion of Ukraine that same year. That’s because the R-36M2 Voevoda ICBM (codename: SS-18 “Satan”) that Sarmat is replacing was built in Ukraine when it was still a part of the Soviet Union.
As recently as 2008, Russia ratified a deal with Ukraine to extend the R-36M2’s service life by 10 years. But Russia’s invasion spoiled Ukrainian interest in helping Russia refurbish its nukes.
“Sarmat is really a recapitalization of the R-36M2’s capabilities” before its shelf life expires, Ridge explains. Russia began retiring R-36M2s in 2021, with an estimated 35 remaining in service.
Sarmat does allegedly have greater range and accuracy than Voevoda, which has a maximum range of 6,435 miles and lands on average within 500 meters of a designated target—the latter is not great if trying to precisely knock out enemy nuclear missile silos. By contrast, Sarmat supposedly has a range of 9,940 miles and can deliver munitions on average within 50 meters of target.
Beside traditional ballistic attacks, Russian media claims Sarmat can be used as a Fractional Orbital Bombardment System that drifts unpowered in partial Earth orbit before releasing weapons to the surface, or that it can release up to three Avangard hypersonic-glide vehicle weapons designed for tricky maneuvering while skip-gliding above the atmosphere. Both methods are intended to evade missile defenses.
However, before executing cunning attacks from space, Sarmat needs to get there. Tests of Sarmat components between 2017 and 2021 reportedly went smoothly, as did its first test launch in April 2022; this lone test was apparently sufficient for Moscow to issue a contract for 50 RS-28s that August. That seems to have been an overzealous move as the second Sarmat test launch on February 20, 2023 didn’t go so well due to failure of the second-stage booster, causing a premature crash.
The missile officially entered operational service in September 2023 with deliveries to the 62nd and 13th Missile Divisions. A media statement in December 2022 that work on Sarmat facilities was “practically complete” reveals the missiles still weren’t in fact operational.
That year, two planned test launches were scrubbed: the first due to a failure of the missile’s central control system, and the second due to a failure of telemetry systems (which automatically collect and transmit data midflight). There’s an unconfirmed report that on October 31, 2023, a Sarmat made it into the air, only to come plunging back down 77 seconds later, crashing nearly 200 miles away.
A Return to Soviet Strategy
Do Russia’s failed tests indicate systemic problems with its rocketry? It’s a tempting conclusion, but historically, rocketry has always involved a lot of failure along the road to success.
Ridge warns that the testing accidents doesn’t necessarily mean Sarmat won’t eventually be perfected, noting that the preceding R-36M “experienced multiple catastrophic failures during its test campaign, particularly towards the beginning.”
“In general, the test success rate of Russian ICBMs in service is quite high,” Michael Kofman, a prominent U.S. expert on Russia’s military, tells Popular Mechanics.“[Sarmat] has been a trouble program for sure. And it doesn’t appear remotely combat ready.”
From an American perspective, there’s schadenfreude to be had in seeing failures of weapons designed to destroy us. But America’s non-nuclear land-attack missile programs aimed at producing hypersonic glide-vehicle weapons like Avangard have had a rough couple of years, too.
The U.S. Army canceled three tests of its Dark Eagle missile in 2023 before finally conducting a successful test in June 2024. A June 2022 test launch of the Navy’s Conventional Prompt Strike missile (essentially the same as Dark Eagle) also failed.
Meanwhile, the Air Force’s promising AGM-183A ARRW air-launched hypersonic glide vehicle kept on failing following test launches from B-52 bombers. Despite rallying with some successes in 2022, another floundered test in April 2023 resulted in cancellation. Air Force press releases remained highly ambiguous regarding the results of three additional test shots made after program cancellation.
“It’s a strategy that somewhat works for them … but we wouldn’t tolerate [that] from our own defense industry.”
A defense policy analyst who formerly worked in U.S. aerospace tells Popular Mechanics that the U.S. and Russian failures stem from different underlying problems.
“[U.S.] doctrine relies on precision fires, much more so than Russia and China. Traditionally, that hasn’t mixed too well with high speed [missiles] and so [we] bet our money on low-observability [stealth] and accuracy for our munitions survivability, hence why we have slow but stealthy and accurate munitions like the JDAM, JSOW, JASSM, etc. Russia and China went in another direction and focused on speed for survivability.”
The analyst, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid professional retaliation, argues the U.S. belatedly realized hypersonic weapons had advantages, too, like compelling high-end air defenses to respond and betray their positions.
“The costs, technology, and manufacturing process for hypersonic munitions is much different than low-observable ones like the JASSM,” the analyst explains. “The quality control standard needed for something like the AGM-183A or even the LRHW to function properly needs to be high to maintain the structural integrity while in flight. And again we’re learning all this by going at an accelerated pace to keep up with development Russia and China have been doing for many years more than us.”
The analyst suspects Russia’s Sarmat issues arise from lower quality control “due to lack of budget and personnel all combined with the fact that they set expectations too high because they overhype their [weapons] for deterrence, but lose it all when they actually have to use it.” Further, he says, Russia acknowledges its weapons aren’t going to be as accurate or as reliable as American technology. “But they make up for it in greater numbers, just like the USSR did. It’s a strategy that somewhat works for them … but we wouldn’t tolerate [that] from our own defense industry.”
More Must-Read Defense News ⬇️
The latest Sarmat failures poke holes in Moscow’s hype of its supposedly fully operational doomsday weapon. But as Russia lacks fallback options for heavy ICBMs, the missile’s engineers will face pressure to double their efforts until Sarmat works—no matter the cost.
“The longer [R-36M2 ICBMs] remain in service, the more opportunities there will be for their material condition to deteriorate,” Ridge says. “If the Russians proceed with whatever the existing retirement schedule is for R-36M2, then delays to Sarmat entering reliable operational service increase the likelihood of a transient capability gap in their ICBM force.”
However, a March 2024 report from The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists estimates Russia has 326 ICBMs (mostly post-Soviet Topol-M and Yars missiles in both silo- and mobile launchers, as well as 32 remaining R-36M2s) with 1,246 nuclear warheads between them. So, Sarmat’s shortcomings will “not at all” affect U.S.-Russian nuclear deterrence, Kofman says.
Sébastien Roblin has written on the technical, historical, and political aspects of international security and conflict for publications including 19FortyFive, The National Interest, MSNBC, Forbes.com, Inside Unmanned Systems and War is Boring. He holds a Master’s degree from Georgetown University and served with the Peace Corps in China. You can follow his articles on Twitter.
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Publish date : 2024-10-04 10:51:00
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