High-resolution satellite images of the launch pad at Russia's Plesetsk test site, where the RS-28 Sarmat ballistic missile exploded shows extensive damage.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has suffered an emabarassing setback as his feared Satan 2 nuclear arsenal failed four out of five missile tests, according to arms experts and satellite imagery from the launch site.
High-resolution satellite images of the launch pad at Russia's Plesetsk test site, where the RS-28 Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile exploded, shows extensive damage.
A crater approximately 60 meters wide at the launch silo at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia, along with visible damage in the surrounding area that was not present in images taken earlier in the month.
NATO also had reporting names for Soviet weapons. IIRC surface-to-surface missiles start with "S". A few are rather...less-than complimentary, "Satan" -- the name used for the weapon that this replaces -- probably being the most so.
This missile doesn't have the reporting name "Satan 2" for NATO, though. The only link it has with the original surface-to-surface missile with the NATO reporting name "Satan" is that it's supposed to replace it and so Western media, which very much enjoyed mentioning "Satan" wherever possible, dubbed the new missile "Satan 2". But it's not an official name with NATO or Russia, just something that the media uses for the clicks.
The Kremlin is probably happy to hear it called Satan. They're getting desperate and empty threats of global nuclear war are one of the only cards they have left.
Everyone said I was daft to build missile in Russia, but I built it all the same, just to show them. It blew up on the launchpad. So I built a second one. That blew up on the launchpad. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then blew up on the launchpad. But the fourth one stayed airborne! And that's what you're going to get lad, the stupidest named missile in all of Russia
Who would have thought that simply robbing an entire nation and giving all the proceeds to your corrupt friends would lead to an inability to manufacture practically everything? TIL
And I bet the ones who had an issue with corruption tended to be more competent than those who were ok with it, biasing those who sent to gulags or slipped out of open windows towards those who could compensate for the corruption.
When both Russia and Ukraine were part of the USSR?
Second greatest military in the world!
The USSR hasn't existed for >30 years, since then, Ukraine and Russia have done little but feed on its corpse. Does anyone honestly think modern Russia has a better military than China?
We know from Trump's heedless shitposting that they can get the theoretical maximum resolution out of whatever aperture they have. For the US ones with the Hubble-clone mirrors that means not quite enough to recognise a face.
for one thing, it's mostly just lensing, and for another, it's also partially due to the atmosphere of the earth actually working in tandem with the lensing of the satellites themselves. Dont ask me how it works but from what i understand, seeing out from earth is harder, but seeing in from space is easy. Something to do with the way that light refraction in the atmosphere works or something.
Yeah, this is the wildest headline. "Don't fear it, it only works 20% of the time!" Both the US and Russia have somewhere around 1700 known deployed nuclear warheads able to be launched from air, land, and sea. 20% is still 340 nuclear bombs, all of which are substantially larger than the ones dropped in Japan.
Nobody is going to put radioactive material on the top of something that explodes in the home country. Pelting that much hazardous material into the atmosphere will be a very bad outcome.
I'm always curious about anti-NATO people. What is it about NATO that you don't like? I'm not very familiar with exactly what they do, but my understanding is that they are a defensive organization. They wouldn't exist if it weren't for Russia's expansionist goals.
Calling something that's not good to have delivered to you after a figurative evil being.. yea buddy that sure is some propaganda.
You act as if the actual 'weapon' is designed to re-seed old growth forests and clean aquifers instead of vaporize a sizable chunk of people/buildings.
US tested a Minuteman III missile out of Vandenberg earlier this year. It was not carrying a nuclear payload. It's fairly common for countries to test missiles. Some countries broadcast their intent publicly so as not to accidentally trigger a retaliatory launch. Others don't broadcast publicly, but they do communicate via the good-old-boy net for the same reason.
This may be off topic, but I absolutely loved reading about Minuteman III guidance system.
And unlike all those "missiles by subscription and good behavior" that many big countries sell to smaller countries, it doesn't rely on any satellite system or external corrections after launch.
BTW, I wonder what's inside Russian ICBMs. People often say that all the Russian big cool projects in defense after breakup of the USSR are just finished Soviet projects. If that is true, there must be an awfully complex, but geek-porn-ish thing inside, possibly with analog and maybe even mechanical elements. If that is not, it's still interesting. Right now yes, Russian military engineering relies on many foreign (NATO countries produced in fact) components. But that didn't become a thing immediately, so I wonder how did they solve problems.
for a ballistic missile 35 km is pretty ass. I think even ATACMs gets pretty close to this, upwards of like (edit 300km, i think i'm thinking of gmlrs lol) And that's just a missile.
Ballistic missiles should really be able to go intercontinental, that was kind of the point of them.
How many kilometers is one stick of dynamite? By one stick, I mean like the size of a soda's height with a diameter equal or Greater than an A in chemistry. The internal composition being 37.3 grains and the .3 grain was cut and licked properly....so yeah, how many kilometers would that be?
It can carry multiple warheads, including nuclear ones, with estimates suggesting it can deliver up to 10–15 independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs).
Oh good, if only one single missile in Russia's entire arsenal goes off, we'd only loose 10-15 cities.
The US even took them out of submarine launched missiles, because they made the soviets so nervous we had to promise that we couldn’t delete half of their country in 15 minutes.
But don’t worry, nuclear war happens so fast, and diplomatic channels are so slow, if anyone launches anything, everyone is practically forced to launch everything or risk losing it. So even if Russia did just launch one to destroy 10-15 cities, all of the cities everywhere would be destroyed anyway.
If you ever look up at the sky and see 5-10 diagonal lines almost in parallel... well, if you have a firearm nearby, that would be a good time to self-exit for sure.
Well, you can't pin that on Russia though. Their name for it is "Сармат". (Samaritan). The name Satan 2 comes from the predecessor R-36 missile, NATO nickname "SS-18 Satan".