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Russia’s Yars ICBM is capable of reaching the United States and is 12 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Photo/The Defense Post
The Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda reported that the Yars missile silo complex, loaded in the Kaluga region, has a capacity 12 times greater than that of the American bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. This report refers to the atomic weapons that the United States dropped on a Japanese city on August 6, 1945.
The newspaper’s report outlines some of the missile’s specifics, which include a launch displacement of 46,000 tons, an operating range of up to 12,000 kilometers that can strike the United States or any region of Europe, and a payload of up to 500 kilotons.
The RS-24 Yars missile is an improved version of the earlier Topol-M missile. Known in the West as the SS-29, this missile was developed by the Moscow Thermal Engineering Institute and was first tested in 2007.
Able to prepare for launch in seven minutes, according to the Military Today website, the missile can be launched from a prepared location, a dedicated garage with a sliding roof, or from an unprepared location during field deployment.
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The Russian Defense Ministry said on Wednesday that the missiles were being installed in silos using special transport and loading units in an operation that took several hours.
The operation comes ahead of Russia’s annual Strategic Missile Forces Day, to be held on Saturday 17 December.
“The significance of this operation lies in the fact that the next missile will be in combat service as planned,” said Alexei Sokolov, commander of the Kozelsky missile formation.
“The motherland will receive another sample of nuclear missile weapons, which will enable us to complete any task at the strategic level,” he added, according to the state news agency TASS, quoted by Newsweek on Wednesday (12/14/2022).
