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Russia Unveils 'Satan 2' Missile Powerful Enough To 'Wipe Out UK, France Or Texas' (telegraph.co.uk)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Telegraph: Russia has released the first image of its new nuclear missile, a weapon so powerful that it could wipe out nearly all of the United Kingdom or France. The RS-28 Sarmat thermonuclear-armed ballistic missile was commissioned in 2011 and is expected to come into service in 2018. The first images of the massive missile were declassified on Sunday and have now been published for the first time. It has been dubbed "Satan 2," as it will replace the RS-36M, the 1970s-era weapon referred to by Nato as the Satan missile. Sputnik, the Russian government-controlled news agency, reported in May that the missile could destroy an area "the size of Texas or France." Russian media report that the missile will weigh up to 10 tons with the capacity to carry up to 10 tons of nuclear cargo. With that type of payload, it could deliver a blast some 2,000 times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Russia reportedly tested a hypersonic warhead in April that is apparently intended for use on the Satan 2 missiles. The warhead is designed to be impossible to intercept because it does not move on a set trajectory.
Remember when Putin said that the defense systems installed in Poland and Romania will be useless because they are working on "something else"?
At least, they certainly didn't make a missile with that kind of damage potential.
While it could throw a single 40 megaton warhead, it would more likely carry a handful of weapons topping out at about 50 megatons, total. Maybe.
Which is a lot, but nowhere near big enough to "wipe out" a medium-sized country like France.
They could pretty much destroy up to 15 separate cities with 300 kiloton airbursts (if the MIRV systems gives them that much spread and control, which it probably doesn't), but everything in between would be effectively untouched, and with a single weapon, most of Paris itself would only be lightly to moderately damaged. Modern high-efficiency weapons don't drop a lot of fallout in air burst mode, so that's not a consideration.
If they used ground burst targeting, they could cause a lot of downwind fallout, but it would leave large areas untouched upwind.
Forty to fifty megatons sounds like a lot, but when you compare it with how big the world is...
I think my girlfriend has one of these in her drawer.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
The Telegraph article got the details wrong. Check out the RT version instead.
It is a 100+ ton missile that can carry about 10 tons of payload. They are also designing a new warhead that is maneuverable in order to avoid anti-missile defenses. They are claiming that it can hold 10 heavy warheads or 16 light warheads and/or a combination of warheads and decoys/countermeasures.
The whole "destroy an area the size of France or Texas isn't clear, but this is a missile announcement, not a warhead announcement, so they are probably talking about the area which could be covered in a single launch. I.E. one spread of warheads from a single launch could theoretically hit Paris, Barcelona and Milan. That would be pretty hard for anti-missile defenses to deal with.
Theres a big difference between "helping" and "saving". Russia contribute man power and equipment like tanks that the west has no concept of. For example there were literally 10x more Russian armies when Germany surrended. The truth is Russia WON ww2 by blood and guts.
Please dont tell me bullshit about LL. LL was arranged in late 41, just a few months later Russia won the biggest fight in history, involving about 4 -5 million soldiers - the battle of Stalingrad. That was the start of the end of the NAZIS. Befor eyou jump... theres no way anythign got thru to Russia by the time of Stalingrad.
Stop you hubris. America would not have landed in Europe without the UK as well, just like the UK would have had serious problems without its friends like Canada and the rest of Empire helping it from day one.
in sovjet-russia, payload carries rocket
Why would humans create a weapon like that? :(
Nobody in their right state of mind wants it to be used.
If it is ever used, it could mean the end of the world is nigh.
Why would anyone invest the resources in developing such a weapon?
Fuck the Russians, and the Americans, and the defense departments, and the technicians and engineers willing to take on such a job, and the generals and presidents commissioning such a thing. You are all assholes.
If you want your voice heard, you should probably vote for the person who you align with best.
Or to put it another way, you wouldn't tell a Trump voter in Massachusetts not to vote. Trump has a zero percent chance of winning in Massachusetts, but millions will still vote for him even though their vote is "wasted". You can say the same thing about Hillary voters in much of the south. Their candidate can't win in their state, but they'll still go out to the polls and make their voice heard.
The two-party lock-in is pure rhetorical garbage. I can't in good conscience vote for a completely unqualified demagogue or someone who is the closest thing to a living embodiment of the establishment.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.