Russia Tests new rocket

[buckthesystem]

http://www.stuff.co.nz/4078051a12.html

Russia tests new rocket

Reuters | Wednesday, 30 May 2007

Russia has successfully test-fired a new intercontinental ballistic missile featuring multiple warheads that Moscow said could pierce any missile defence system, including the planned US shield in Europe.

At the same time, President Vladimir Putin stepped up his attacks on the missile shield, saying its deployment in Europe would turn the continent into "a powder keg".

Russian military experts said the new missile was part of the "highly effective response" to the shield promised by Putin earlier this year. Moscow fiercely opposes the missile shield as a threat to its security.

Asked about the launch, First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said Russia's "new tactical and strategic complexes are able to overcome any existing or future missile defence system," Itar-Tass news agency reported.

"So from the point of view of defence and security, Russians can feel safe," Ivanov said.

A defence ministry spokesman said the RS-24 missile was fired from a mobile launcher at the Plesetsk cosmodrome about 800 km (500 miles) north of Moscow.

Less than an hour later, Russia's Strategic Missile Forces command said the missile had hit its targets at the Kura test site on the sparsely inhabited far eastern peninsula of Kamchatka to the north of Japan.

"The RS-24 intercontinental ballistic missile will strengthen the military potential of Russia's strategic rocket forces to overcome anti-missile defence systems and thereby strengthen the potential nuclear deterrent of Russia's strategic nuclear forces," the command said in a statement.

Russia says the US missile defence shield is a threat to its security and will change the strategic balance in Europe, but Washington dismisses such fears, saying the shield is intended to counter "rogue states".

Putin issued his latest broadside against the shield after meeting visiting Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates at the Kremlin.

"We consider it harmful and dangerous to turn Europe into a powder keg and to stuff it with new weapons," Putin told Socrates, whose country assumes the European Union's rotating presidency on July 1.

"It creates new and unnecessary risks for the whole system of international and European relations".

Ivanov, speaking separately, said the deployment of medium and short-range missiles by Russia's neighbours to the east and south now posed a "real threat".

"The Soviet-American treaty (on intermediate nuclear forces) is not effective because since (its signature) scores of countries have appeared that have such missiles while Russia and the United States are not allowed to have them," Ivanov told a military-industrial commission.

"In these conditions, it is necessary to provide our troops with modern, high-precision weapons."

Ivanov, a former defence minister and leading hawk, later watched the launch of a separate short-range missile in the southern Astrakhan region.

He is widely seen as a front-runner to succeed Putin in an election next March though he has not said whether he will run.

The new RS-24 missile can be armed with up to 10 different warheads and is intended to replace Russia's earlier generation intercontinental missiles such as the RS-18 and RS-20.

(for rest of article go to link)