While the UN General Assembly met to discuss the situation in Syria in the face of escalating threats made by Western powers and the Gulf countries, on Thursday, 7 June 2012, Russia conducted two ballistic missile (ICBMs) launches.
The Strategic Missile Troops of the Russian Federation (RSVN) carried out a successful test launch of a Topol intercontinental ballistic missile, reported the Russian media on Friday.
RSVN spokesman Colonel Vadim Koval said the missile, fired Thursday from the Kapustin Yar launch site in the southern Russian region of Astrakhan, had successfully hit its target in Kazakhstan.
See also parties 2, 3, 4 and 5 down.
The basic Topol model has a single 550 kT yield nuclear warhead, but the latest versions can carry up to six MIRV warheads with an estimated range of 11,000 km. Hours later, the inhabitants of Palestine/Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Armenia and Cyprus observed an unknown phenomenon in the sky, interpreted by some as a UFO, and by others as an apocalyptic sign.
Witness accounts strongly suggest that what they saw was the Bulava R-30, Russia’s most advanced generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles which represents the future of the Russian missile arsenal.
With a range of 8000 km, it can be equipped with ten hypersonic warheads with a yield between 100 and 150 kilotons each on independently-controlled trajectories. Its flight characteristics and highly sophisticated electronic measurement instruments are technically far more advanced than those of their U.S. rivals, to the point that the missile defense system currently being developed by NATO has already been superseded.
The Bulava R-30 was launched from one of the fourth Borey-class strategic nuclear-powered submarines, that is to say either the Alexander Nevsky or the Yuri Dolgorukiy which were officially scheduled to be deployed in June/July 2012 and one of them at least is already in Mediterranean waters.
Without an identical show of strength on the part of the Pentagon in the coming days, the successful test launches of the Bulava and Topol have shifted the global ballistic balance in favor of the Russian Federation.
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