Russia is likely to deploy submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles (SLBM), called Bulava or Mace, in 2012 as it has successfully flight tests recently, Russian state-run news agency, Ria Novosti reported Tuesday.
“We have made a very important step - we have completed the cycle of flight tests… of the Bulava missile,” President Dmitry Medvedev told a commission ceremony of military officers. “Now it will be put into service.”
President Medvedev did not reveal when the high-tech missiles will be deployed.
However, an officer of the Russian Navy Command told the Interfax that the missiles will be loaded on the Navy fleet. Bulava, 12 meters long, 2 meters in diameter and 38.6 tons in weight, is capable of carrying up to 11 warheads and flying over 8,000 kilometers. The power of the missile is 100 times that of the atomic bomb which dropped on Hiroshima terminating World War II.
Russian has test-launched a total of 19 missiles since the first test in September, 2005. But the Bulava has been blamed as a failure due to poor scores of as many as eight failures against 11 successes.
However, two Bulavas successfully hit designated targets at the Kura test range on Kamchatka, some 6,000 kilometers to the east on Dec. 23 in their 18th and 19th launch from the Borey-class Yury Dolgoruky nuclear-powered submarine in the White Sea, according to the Ria Novosti news agency.
The three-stage ballistic missile is designed for deployment on latest Borey-class nuclear submarines, including Yuri Dolgoruky, as a main arsenal. Russia has been constructing two other Borei-class submarines of Alexandre Nevsky and Vladimir Monomakh. Russia plans to build a total of eight Borei-class submarines, each of which are capable of carrying up to 20 Bulava missiles, by the year 2020.