Russia’s new ICBM with lots of warheads keeps running into problems, leaving it stuck with older, inferior missiles

• Russia is struggling to get its new intercontinental ballistic missile working properly.

• Moscow has put a lot of money and propaganda behind the ICBM.

• Failures leave Russia reliant on older missiles that won’t last forever, experts warn.

Russia has the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, but it’s having trouble getting its newest intercontinental ballistic missile to work. The debacle leaves it dependent on capable but inferior missiles at a time when other major powers are modernizing their nuclear forces.

Russia’s new RS-28 Sarmat ICBM appeared to suffer a catastrophic failure during testing in September, with satellite imagery showing a big crater around the launchpad at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome.

That apparent failure followed what missile experts have described as a host of other issues. Ejection tests and its flight testing were repeatedly delayed, according to the Royal United Services Institute think tank in London, and it had at least two canceled flight tests and at least one other flight test failure.

The Sarmat is meant to replace the Soviet-era R-36, which first entered service in 1988. NATO calls the long-range missile, which has been modified over the years, the SS-18 “Satan.” Without the new Sarmat, Russia has to rely on older missiles, extending their lives, but that can’t go on indefinitely.

Stuck with inferior missiles

Delays to the Sarmat, or even its cancellation, would mean Russia has to keep using older systems as nations like China field new DF-41 ICBMs and the US pushes forward with upgrades for its ICBM force as part of the Sentinel program.

The R-36 is “already really, really past its service life,” said Timothy Wright, a missile technology expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, yet the Russians keep having to extend it.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said at the turn of the century they were going to be out of service by 2007, but here they are, still in operation nearly two decades later.

“There’s only so much they can do,” Wright said. “Parts will start failing at some point.” He said the R-36s “will eventually start failing because their parts just will need replacement, and they don’t make the parts anymore.” If Moscow tried to launch 40 R-36s, he said, “you might not get all 40 out the ground, frankly.”

Fabian Hoffmann, a missile expert at the Oslo Nuclear Project, said the R-36 has been “sitting there for a really long time.”

Russia was required to reduce the size of its arsenal of missiles under the New START treaty with the US. Hoffman said that Russia could use old parts from those missiles to keep its usable ones running. But the supply is not infinite, he said. “Who knows how much these missiles can still take, how many years?”

There’s the possibility Russia would “have to start cannibalizing existing missiles, taking them out of service or retiring them or taking them off what they call combat duty alert, which is where the missile is literally ready to go,” Wright said.

Russia has other ICBMs, but the R-36 carries the largest and most strategically significant payload. The Sarmat, as its replacement, will likewise carry a substantial payload.

Big missiles with lots of warheads

The purpose of the Sarmat was “to constitute a big bulk of their warheads in the future,” Wright said. The ICBM is a large, long-range weapon able to carry a heavy MIRV payload, meaning multiple independent re-entry vehicles.

The Sarmat has an estimated maximum range of 18,000 miles. It has a ten-ton payload and can carry 10 large warheads or 16 smaller ones, per a Missile Threat fact sheet from the Center of Strategic and International Studies. The R-36 it is meant to replace has a shorter range but similar payload, able to carry 10 multiple independent re-entry vehicles.

Other Russian ICBMs are “much smaller,” Wright said. They can’t carry the same heavy MIRV payload. Russia’s RS-24 Yars ICBM, for example, can only carry three MIRV warheads.

As of May 2023, Russia had 1,674 warheads deployed, with a total stockpile of 4,489, per the CSIS. Many of these are deployed on other missiles and elements of the Russian nuclear triad, which provide it with deterrence, but Russia wants the big missile with the tremendous destructive capacity.

Russia was understood to have 46 R-36s in April 2016. Wright said that “if they then took that missile out of service, then they have a bit of a gap.”

“And for Russia, it’s important to ensure they have warhead parity with the Americans,” he said. “Whatever number the Americans have, the Russians want it as well.”

Russia appears to be keeping its warheads limited in accordance with the New START treaty. But if that changes, and it may as Russia has suspended its involvement with the treaty, Russia may want to deploy more warheads. Without the Sarmat, Russia will need to find other places for its warheads.

The Sarmat’s problems

Hoffman said the most recent Sarmat test was “catastrophic.” He said that “it’s not even like the missile failed to hit its target and you can say, ‘Oh, the guidance system didn’t really work.’ No, the whole thing blew up.”

That means it was either a freak accident, or “there’s something fundamentally wrong with the propulsion system, which is of course catastrophic,” he said. “And so if I was Russia, I think at this point I would be concerned about that.”

Some experts have warned that Russia’s struggles could make it desperate, making problems more likely.

Wright said he can’t see Russia deciding to cancel the Sarmat program. He said Putin “has invested a lot of propaganda into the system. When he unveiled it in 2018, it was all these fantastic reasons why it’s so good.”

Putin bragged in 2018 that “missile defense systems are useless against them, absolutely pointless” and that “no other country has developed anything like this.”

The Russians have also dumped a lot of money into this project, making cancellation unpalatable.

Hoffman agreed, saying Russia had little choice given the state of its older missiles. It wants Sarmat for propaganda reasons, and “it’s also just desperation in terms of: ‘What else would there be?'”

But big delays in getting Sarmat operational would likely cause problems for Russia, with nothing in line to replace the Sarmat.

“Sarmat’s designed to fulfill a very specific purpose, which is to essentially have lots of warheads on top of it,” Wright said, and there is no direct replacement in Russia’s arsenal or in the works.

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