Russian submarine test fires ballistic missile
Pastor Dale Morgan
Russian submarine test fires ballistic missile*
AFP - Wednesday, August 8
MOSCOW (AFP) - - Russia successfully test fired a ballistic missile from
a strategic nuclear missile submarine in the Pacific Ocean on Tuesday, a
navy spokesman said.
"The strategic nuclear missile submarine Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky...
successfully fired a ballistic missile as part of military exercises at
a testing range in northern Russia," the spokesman Igor Dygalo told AFP.
The Interfax-AVN news agency reported that the missile was of the new
long-range Sineva, or RSM-54 type, acquired for use by the navy last month.
Dygalo declined to confirm this.
The Delta-class submarine used in the test dates from the Soviet era and
was designed to attack cities and military installations.
The test firing comes as tensions have increased between Russia and the
United States over missile defence.
President Vladimir Putin has angrily hit out at the United States' plans
to place missile defence facilities in the Czech Republic and Poland,
countries that were once ruled from Moscow, and has said that this could
lead to a new Cold War.
The Sineva missile had already been test fired from a submarine at the
North Pole last year.
It has a maximum range of 8,300 kilometres (5,200 miles) and can be
launched with up to 10 independently targetable warheads from a maximum
depth below sea level of 55 metres (180 feet), according to the Russian
military technology site www.arms-expo.ru.
It is equipped to overcome missile defence technology and its course can
be corrected with the aid of satellites.