Russia warned that a second test of its huge new Satan-2 intercontinental ballistic missile may come before the end of December.
The announcement today (Tuesday November 11) follows apparent delays in Vladimir Putin ’s “unstoppable” 15,880mph hypersonic big beast, known in Moscow as Sarmat.
"The flight-design tests of the Sarmat [ICBM] may continue before the end of this year with a second test launch to be potentially carried out,” a defence ministry official told state news agency TASS.
The disclosure that it “may” conduct a second test follows earlier boasts that Satan-2 - as the West calls it, which is the size of a 14-storey tower block - would be fully deployed by the end of the year.
The new less-than-definitive statement will add to suspicions that the hypersonic Armageddon missile is experiencing embarrassing delays.
Its first test was announced to great fanfare as soon as it took place on April 20, with Putin in touch by video link.
The silo-based Satan-2 launch was from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia.
In May, former head of Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin, seen as a close Putin ally, said almost 50 Satan-2 missiles, which were in “mass production”, would soon be on combat duty.
In early June, a major ICBM test was scheduled and locals near the Kura test range were warned to stay clear of the target site in remote Kamchatka.
But this test never happened.
On June 25 Rogozin signalled: ‘We are absolutely on schedule, we are now preparing for the second flight test of the Sarmat.”
The following month Rogozin was fired for unknown reasons with a promised new job from the Kremlin yet to arrive.
He has been seen recently in the war zone, but has no new role despite reports he would be Putin’s personal representative for newly annexed regions of Ukraine.
His successor at Roscosmos, ex-deputy premier Yury Borisov, in July repeated the claim that the missile is in mass production without evidently reiterating Putin’s goal of Satan-2 being on combat duty by December.
Last month Russia agreed to allow US teams to inspect the missile under international agreements - but only by February 2024.
Defence analysts suspecting hypersonic hyperbole have pointed out that Russia’s earlier R-36M2 Voevoda missile was tested no less than 17 times before it was put on combat duty.
Another missile - RT-2PM Topol - was tested a dozen times before deployment.
“In this context, the truth of the terms bandied about by Rogozin — that Sarmat is in [serial] production and is soon to be placed on ‘combat duty’ — appear dubious,” defence expert Leonid Nersisyan has said.
“It is far likelier that Sarmat will undergo the same testing, prototyping and experimentation programme as its predecessors,” he wrote in Shephard Media.
“Actual acceptance of the ICBM into service with the Strategic Missile Forces looks impossible before the end of 2022 and is hardly achievable by 2024.”
In early July, Rogozin visited the Krasmash defence factory in Krasnoyarsk, in eastern Siberia, which he labelled the “Doomsday Plant” , to inspect the process of producing Satan-2 for flight tests.
The missile was rolled out into a forest for the cameras - and sabre-rattling Rogozin said: "The world’s most powerful global-range nuclear-tipped missile is being prepared for new tests.”
Back in April, after the first launch, Rogozin vowed there would be “a few more tests to prove the system's compliance with the technical parameters set by the chief client - the Defence Ministry”.
He later highlighted a 26ft deep crater made at the Kura test site by the missile without a nuclear warhead.
“With a nuclear charge, such a crater at an enemy site will be…well, very large and very deep - and radioactive.
“And not just one, but exactly as many as the most powerful nuclear missile in the world will deliver to the territory of a fierce enemy.
“And we will soon have almost 50 such Sarmats [the missile is known in the West as Satan-2] on combat duty.
“It remains only to advise the aggressors to talk more politely with Russia.”
Yet the official boasting over Sarmat has visibly ceased except on propaganda state TV shows where threats are regularly made to target it - or the high-speed underwater drone Poseidon - at the West.
News agency RIA FAN reported today that it “assumed” an expected second test would be from Plesetsk to Kamchatka, like the first in April.
