Russia successfully test-fired a new intercontinental ballistic
missile Tuesday featuring multiple warheads designed to overcome
missile defense systems, the Defense Ministry said.
A ministry spokesman said the RS-24 missile was fired from a
mobile launcher at 10:20 GMT from the Plesetsk cosmodrome about 800
km 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 defense systems and thereby strengthen the
potential nuclear deterrent of Russia's strategic nuclear forces,"
the Strategic Missile Forces command said in a statement.
Russian military experts said the new missile launch formed part
of a "highly effective response" promised by President Vladimir
Putin to a missile defense shield which Washington aims to build in
Europe to detect and shoot down hostile missiles.
"It can overcome any potential entire missile defense systems
developed by foreign countries," Colonel-General Viktor Yesin told
the official Russian Today television channel.
The plans have alarmed Moscow and strained relations with the
United States. Russia says the missile defense shield is a threat
to its security but Washington dismisses such fears, saying the
shield is intended to counter "rogue states".
Putin stepped up his attacks on the shield Tuesday, saying its
deployment in Europe would turn the continent into "a powder
keg".
"We consider it harmful and dangerous to turn Europe into a
powder keg and to stuff it with new weapons," Putin told visiting
Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates at the Kremlin.
"It creates new and unnecessary risks for the whole system of
international and European relations," he told Socrates, whose
country takes over the rotating EU presidency on July 1.
First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said the deployment of
medium and short range missiles by Russia's neighbors to the east
and south now posed a "real threat".
Ivanov, a former defense minister, is widely seen as a
front-runner to succeed President Vladimir Putin in an election
next March.
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.
Its development is part of a drive to re-equip Russia's military
with updated weaponry and replace hardware dating from the Cold
War.
Missiles carrying multiple independently targeted warheads are
more difficult to intercept and destroy completely once they have
been fired, making defenses against them much harder.
(China Daily via agencies May 30, 2007)
