Putin's Armageddon Weapon

[Music] the thing that has prevented a world war since 1945 has been nuclear weapons or rather a doctrine concerning their use called mad mutually assured destruction you fire yours i fire mine everybody dies so it's no surprise that nato has been keen to avoid a direct military showdown with russia over ukraine because conventional war could relatively easily turn to nuclear war and nobody wants that because no one wins or do they it appears that russia has been very busy over the past decade or so developing a weapon that might render the old power balance well unbalanced we all know that russia like the united states has plenty of nuclear weapons russia's stockpile is believed to be around five and a half to six thousand warheads britain by contrast has just 225. like the united states russia deploys nuclear weapons in three ways from nuclear fields that is buried silos on land by submarine currently the only deployment used by britain or launched from aircraft these three delivery systems are known as the nuclear triad and underpin the mad theory until recently both the russian and the american silo based icbms were old 1960s and 70s designs upgraded cold war relics in the case of america it's the minuteman 3 and for the russians the r36m2 known in the west as the satan one the r36m2 ironically a product of the old ukrainian soviet socialist republic can deliver 10 multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles each with a yield of 550 to 750 kilotons by comparison the atomic bomb the americans dropped on hiroshima in 1945 was 15 kilotons or the satan 1 can carry a single nuclear warhead of up to 20 megatons to a range of 11 000 kilometers in comparison the us minuteman 3 in service since 1970 has an operational range of 9600 kilometers or 6000 miles and can deliver three warheads each with a yield of 475 kilotons but a new development has been worrying the us military and defense analysts all over the world for some years now in 2018 president vladimir putin famously announced a great fanfare the creation of a massive new icbm that he said was quote invincible end quote the rs-28 sarmat known in the west as the satan 2 and today it's already operational beginning to phase out the old satan ones so what is worrying about sarmat sarmat is a liquid-fueled multiple independently targetable vehicle-equipped super-heavy ballistic missile each carries around 10 nuclear warheads each warhead having a yield of 750 kilotons it can also carry up to 24 hypersonic boost glide vehicles enabling conventional strikes as well as nuclear onto multiple targets so sarmat has by some estimates a destructive yield greater than 35 times that of the american minuteman 3 missile sarmat's range is enormous satan 1 could manage 11 000 kilometers while sarmat can make 18 thousand or 11 000 miles what's got analysts worried is sarmat's range enables the missile to approach north america via the north or south poles sarmat also has a short boost phase after launch which gives nato less time to track it by satellite using infrared sensors and making it more difficult to intercept by flying unpredictable routes cymat can perhaps avoid u.s anti-ballistic missile defense systems which are still basically in the testing stage secondly even if anti-ballistic missiles were launched sarmat's advanced guidance systems and probable countermeasures are designed to trick anti-missile systems the missile may also have lightweight decoys to draw off kill vehicles from the deadly target further it's been suggested that the launch silos in russia are defended by an active protection system designed to kinetically destroy incoming weapons be they bombs cruise missiles or icbms up to a range of six kilometers altitude which removes the us first strike capability against russian silo fields as i mentioned u.s anti-ballistic missile technology is still in the testing stage and america has been concentrating very much on the threat posed by a possible north korean icbm strike and the sarmat threat may speed things along in this field the missile's ability to fly unpredictable routes due to its increased range is a direct threat to nato and its defensive systems may make its warheads very difficult to intercept and destroy not to mention the hypersonic boost glide vehicles it can also carry it is noted that russia expects to have replaced all of its aging satan ones with sarmats by 2027 of course the nuclear triad ensures that some element of the mad doctrine remains primarily submarine-launched nuclear missiles the submarines being very difficult to locate compare with static land-based missiles but it also seems that putin is taking the lead in increasing russia's capability are we entering a new arms race after decades of reducing the numbers of nuclear warheads in the world and defense spending more generally thanks for watching please subscribe and share and also visit my audiobook channel war stories with mark felton you can also 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Channel: Mark Felton Productions

Views: 2,169,103

Keywords: Mark Felton, Putin, ICBM, Ukraine War, NATO

Id: CjrPS8Lzs2g

Length: 6min 36sec (396 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 31 2022