Russia. Sarmat missile test fails

The missile could have exploded in the silo, causing significant damage to the cosmodrome and leaving a huge crater. The rocket was not armed, Voyenny Osvedomitiel reported.

An OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) analyst using the pseudonym MeNMyRC1 published a satellite photo on the X platform on Saturday that is supposed to show the place where the explosion occurred. “As you can easily see, the RS-28 Sarmat test ended in a complete failure. The missile exploded in the silo, leaving a huge crater and destroying the place where the test was carried out,” he wrote. He recalled that the Sarmat is a liquid-fueled missile and suggested that the explosion could have occurred, for example, during fuel unloading or other related activities. He also noted that four fire trucks appeared on the scene.

The FIRMS monitoring system recorded a serious fire at the site of the explosion, wrote the independent Russian-language website The Moscow Times.

Geneva-based Russian nuclear expert Pavel Podwig published an OSINT analyst's post, agreeing with his opinion that the crater's formation could have been related to the failed Sarmat missile test. “It looks like the test was not entirely successful, to put it mildly. It's a big crater,” Podwig wrote.

The first and last successful test of the Sarmat missile took place in April 2022. The president Vladimir Putin he argued then that “it is capable of overcoming any modern anti-missile defense means.” It has no analogues in the world, Putin maintained.

In May 2018, the American television station CNBC, citing its own sources, reported four failed tests of the Sarmat missile, which were supposed to have taken place from November 2017 to February 2018. During the “most successful” test, the missile spent about two minutes in the air, flying about 35 kilometers. Then it lost control and fell, CNBC reported at the time.

In February last year, the American television station CNN reported, citing two American officials familiar with the matter, that Russia had conducted a test of the Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, which probably ended in failure. This happened before the visit of the president Joe Biden In Ukraine – CNN reported.

READ: What is the Sarmat missile? Russians test new missile, Americans say it's a “routine” test

Sarmat belongs to the class of the heaviest intercontinental missiles, which are capable of carrying ten or more nuclear warheads. The missile was to be the successor to the Soviet R-36 Voivode intercontinental missiles (according to the nomenclature NATO: SS-18 Satan).

Work on the Sarmat missile began in 2013, and President Vladimir Putin promised that it would enter service as early as 2020. Designers and factories had to hurry: the missile was to replace the Voyevoda, which Soviet generals considered one of the best elements of the nuclear triad, The Moscow Times recalled. It added that the Russian army could have 40 Voyevoda missiles, and quoted Russian military expert Pavel Luzin, who said that one could just as well say that “this number is zero, because the warranty period for these missiles has long since expired.”

The explosion of an intercontinental missile during a test launch is a disaster that can happen literally once in half a century. The previous similar episode that can be recalled here was the explosion that occurred in October 1960 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome during the first test launch of the R-16 intercontinental ballistic missile. It can be assumed that in the case of the Sarmat missile test, the Russians are unlikely to officially recognize the fact of the disaster – the Ukrainian military portal Defense Express assessed this event.