A satellite overview of a launch site after the failure of a Russian RS-28 Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, according to arms experts, at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia on Saturday. (Maxar Technologies via George Barros on X)
According to satellite photos, a Russian Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile probably detonated during a test earlier this month, raising questions about Russia’s military capabilities and putting a dent in the Kremlin’s nuclear saber rattling.
Maxar satellite images from Saturday appear to show a crater roughly 200 feet wide and extensive damage to the surrounding area at the launch silo at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in the Arkhangelsk region in northern Russia. Imagery recorded earlier this month does not show any visible damage to the site.
“A large crater (approximately 62 meters wide) is visible at the launch silo and extensive damage in and around the launchpad can be seen which suggests that the missile exploded shortly after ignition or launch,” George Barros, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, wrote on X. “We must not understate the importance of this launch failure vis-à-vis the information war. … This a failure for a strategic Russian weapon system, but it is also an informational victory for Ukraine.”
Arms experts and open-source researchers said it is not clear whether the Sarmat failed during a launch or whether an accident occurred during fueling.
“By all indications, a flight test of the Sarmat ICBM, scheduled to take place between 19 and 23 September 2024 ended in failure,” wrote Pavel Podvig, an analyst based in Geneva, who runs the Russian Nuclear Forces project, in a blog post analyzing the images. “The character of destruction suggests that the missile exploded in the silo.”
Podvig added that a notification of an imminent test was canceled at the end of the day on Sept. 19, indicating that the test was either scrubbed of failed.
The Sarmat is Russian’s most modern ICBM and has been referred to by lawmakers in threats against the West. In response to calls from European leaders to lift restrictions on Ukraine’s use of long-range strikes on Russian territory, Vyacheslav Volodin, the chairman of Russia’s State Duma, the lower house of parliament, threatened last week to use the Sarmats in retaliation.
“For your information. The Sarmat missile’s flight time to Strasbourg is 3 minutes 20 seconds,” Volodin wrote in a statement published on Telegram. “Russia will give a tough response using more powerful weapons. No one should have any illusions about this.”
The 114-foot RS-28 Sarmat, known as Satan II, has a range of 11,000 miles and a launch weight of over 208 tons. It can carry multiple nuclear warheads as well as hypersonic glide missiles.
The Sarmat testing program has historically been plagued by problems and delays. Sarmat has had only one successful flight test, on April 20, 2022. There is at least one known failure, in February 2023, and other tests have either been delayed or scrapped.
In an article published by the Carnegie Endowment last year that dissected the crisis around Sarmat’s failures, nuclear analyst Maxim Starchak wrote that Russia put the missile into service “without knowing its full capabilities.”
“Can Sarmat carry a hypersonic glide vehicle or multiple warheads able to separate? Can it evade missile defenses and hit its target at a distance of 18,000 kilometers? There are no answers to these questions,” Starchak wrote. “That step is unique in missile production history. The Voevoda R-36M, for example, underwent thirty-six successful tests before being put into service, while the Voevoda R-36M2 was successfully tested twenty times.”
According to analysts, the Sarmat’s problems are partly the result of the financial losses and rising debts of Russia’s state space agency, Roscosmos, and its contractors. Some Roscosmos contractors have been under U.S. sanctions since 2014, and almost all their international contracts were canceled after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Sanctions and isolation from Western technology have entailed longer production delays and greater losses.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has described the RS-28 Sarmat as a “formidable weapon,” claiming that the system has virtually no range limitations and is capable of attacking targets both through the North and South Poles.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday that the Kremlin does not have information about the allegedly unsuccessful test of the Sarmat missile.
“We have no information on this matter. This is rather a question that falls within the competence of our military. Therefore, I recommend contacting them,” the press secretary said.
