On Monday, Russian aerospace forces tested a newly upgraded
anti-ballistic missile (ABM) at the Sary-Shagan test site in Kazakhstan.
The Russian Ministry of Defense confirmed the launch and said
the weapon is designed to protect the Russian capital from air and space attacks
The missile is designed to fly at speeds
in excess of three kilometers per second or around Mach 9. So, the missile is a hypersonic one.
To give viewers a perspective, this is more than four times faster than a bullet from an AK47.
As per reports, the missile has not been named yet.
In this video Defense Updates reports on Russia's new anti-ballistic missile designed
to protect Moscow. Let’s get started
This video is sponsored by the free-to-play military vehicle combat game War Thunder. We
talk a lot about military vehicles on this channel, but what about trying them out for
yourself? In War Thunder, you can chose from more than 1200 playable vehicles from the 1930s
to the 1990s and go to battle on more than 80 theaters of war. You can fly aircraft,
helicopters, drive tanks and command ships of all types and sizes, which have all been carefully
recreated from their real-world counterparts. It's available as a free download on PC,
PlayStation4 and Xbox One with cross-platform support, so grab your friends and give it a try!
All viewers of Defense Updates that register using the link in the description below will
also get a free premium tank or aircraft or ship and three days of premium account time as a bonus.
Nuclear tipped ballistic missiles fly in high
sub-orbital paths before returning to Earth’s atmosphere to strike their target.
Advance militaries are developing and deploying a missile defense system
that can counter the nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles.
The idea is to knock out an incoming enemy missile
with its own interceptor missile - it is like hitting a bullet with another bullet.
Satellites identify ballistic missile launches from outer space
and provide this information to radars stations on the ground.
The enemy missile is continuously traced and the trajectory is feed to the battle station
which then launches interceptor missiles to knock out the incoming threats in mid-air.
Only a few nations have this kind of capability.
The U.S has been investing a significant amount of effort in developing anti-missile defense systems.
One of these is GMD or Ground-Based
Midcourse Defense which is designed with an aim to protect against incoming missiles
by engaging them during the midcourse phase of ballistic trajectory flight in space.
In November, the U.S. Navy also successfully tested a sea-based missile defense system,
the Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block IIA missile,
against an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) representative target.
Russian Col. Sergei Grabchuk, the commander of the anti-missile defense system told the
Russian state-run Ruptly, “At the Sary-Shagan training ground in the Republic of Kazakhstan,
the combined crew of the air and anti-missile defense forces of the Russian Aerospace Forces
and the Strategic Missile Forces successfully conducted another test launch
of a new ‘anti-missile’ of the Russian missile defense system.”
He added, “During the test of the missile,
the effectiveness of the predetermined characteristics was reliably confirmed. The combat
crews successfully completed the mission, hitting the conditional target with a given accuracy.”
The missile is expected to be inducted into the A-135 missile defense system that protects Moscow.
While Russia has not divulged much,
it is likely that the missile is a variant of PRS-1M interceptor.
As per reports, the Russian Military conducted the first test ever of the PRS-1M interceptor
in November 2017 from Kazakhstan and the second one on February 12, 2018, from the same location.
The PRS-1M is estimated to have a range of 2000 km or 1250 miles.
As stated in an article by gazeta.ru which was analyzing the missile,
'the new product's kill zone is practically one and a half times greater
in terms of altitude and range.' It added, 'Interception of enemy
ICBM warheads is now assured at an altitude substantially higher than 50 km (31 miles).
The missile carries a nuclear warhead of several kilotons.
This will make sure that even if the interceptor's warhead
doesn't directly hit the incoming missile, it can still knock it out because of the nuclear blast.
The way the reliability of the interception is increased
many folds compared to the 'hit to kill' methodology.
A-135 is a successor to the previous A-35 and complies with the 1972
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
The system is operated by the 9th Division of Anti-Missile Defence,
part of the Air Defence and Missile Defence Command of the Russian Aerospace Defence Forces.
The A-135 system attained "alert" (operational) status on February 17, 1995.
A-135 consists of the Don-2N battle management radar and two types of Anti Ballistic Missiles.
It gets its data from the wider Russian early-warning radar network,
which is sent to the command center which then forwards tracking data to the Don-2N radar.
The Don-2N radar is a large battle-management phased array radar with 360° coverage.
A-135 has 2 types of interceptor components - short-range endo-atmospheric nuclear-tipped
interceptor missiles and long-range exoatmospheric
nuclear-tipped interceptor missiles distributed in multiple launch sites.
Missile defense is one of the most technologically challenging quests
and it requires detection as well as interception systems to work perfectly in tandem.
When it comes to strategic equilibrium and deterrence it is paramount that Russia
fields a well-equipped ballistic missile defense. This is especially true since on 2nd August 20119
one of the most important arms control treaties - the INF Treaty formally expired.
Russia is lagging behind the U.S when it comes to early warning satellites
and there is already work going on in that area.
The new interceptor missile is another critical component
that will certainly enhance the protective layer around the Russian capital.