Doomsday missile Putin brags could 'destroy UK' rolled out for first combat duty
Russia has announced the world’s most powerful nuclear rocket - dubbed Satan-2 - has been rolled out on "combat duty" for the first time.
The "unstoppable" 15,880mph intercontinental missile system, known to Russians as Sarmat, is the size of a 14-storey tower block. The head of Russia's space agency Roscosmos said that the missiles had entered active duty, the state-run news agency RIA reported.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has called Sarmat a "unique weapon" that would strengthen Russia’s military potential and force any country that threatens it "to think again." In June, Putin said that Sarmat missiles would be deployed for combat duty "soon."
At the time, he said: "The new complex has the highest tactical and technical characteristics and is capable of overcoming all modern means of anti-missile defence. It has no analogues in the world and won’t have for a long time to come."
People stand next to the hypersonic Satan-2 [Sarmat] missile to show its size (Rogozin /east2west news)Russian propagandists have boasted one strike could sink Britain under the sea. The move comes as Russia is smarting from setbacks in the war in Ukraine, as Kyiv gains ground and subjects Putin’s territory to increasing drone attacks. Putin TV propagandist Dmitry Kiselyov, also deputy head of the company running state-run Rossiya 1 channel, threatened Britain in revenge for a comment the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson never made about striking Russia with a nuclear attack.
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Downing Street dismissed the claim as "another example of disinformation peddled by the Kremlin", but it continues to be trumpeted in Moscow. Kiselyov said: "The island is so small that one Sarmat missile is enough to drown it once and for all. Russian missile Sarmat [Satan-2], the world's most powerful…is capable of … destroying an area the size of Texas or England. A single launch, Boris, and there is no England anymore. Once and for all."
The first and only known full-scale test of Satan-2 was announced to great fanfare as soon as it took place on 20 April 2022, with Putin in touch by video link. The following month, 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.
On 25 June last year, Rogozin boasted: "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 his promised new job yet to arrive. His successor, ex-deputy premier Borisov, in July 2022 repeated the claim that the missile is in mass production without reiterating Putin’s goal of Satan-2 being on combat duty by December of last year.
Defence analysts suspecting hypersonic hyperbole pointed out that Russia’s R-36M2 Voevoda missile was tested no less than 17 times before it was put on combat duty. Some experts will doubt the reality of today’s announcement.
More than a year ago, 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." But there is no evidence these tests happened.
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