(Videos Incl.)America Knows That Russia’s Fast And Elusive TOPOL-M Ballistic Missile Is Scary As Hell

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Russia’s Fast And Elusive TOPOL-M Ballistic Missile Is Scary As Hell

Russia’s Fast And Elusive TOPOL-M Ballistic Missile Is Scary As Hell

The giant TOPOL-M road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile is one frightening creation of mankind. It can hide in cities, forests, or even nuclear-attack hardened bunkers. It’ll travel at over 15,000 MPH while taking evasive action and pumping out decoys on the way to its target.

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TOPOL-M, known by NATO as the ‘Sickle-B,’ was the first ICBM created by Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. Topol in Russian is the name for the White Poplar tree, which is very similar to the Aspen tree in North America.

First fielded in 1997 as an upgrade of the first generation TOPOL, this new system was originally designed in the 1980s, and then redesigned in the mid-1990s, with America’s push for a ballistic missile defense shield in mind. Since its introduction, there have been about 80 TOPOL-Ms put into service, with close to a third of those being road-mobile versions and the rest being placed in highly fortified concrete silos. Another 170 older generation road-mobile TOPOL missiles remain in service to bolster the more modern TOPOL-M road-mobile fleet.

The TOPOL-M missile was designed to penetrate an American anti-ballistic missile shield by leveraging high-speed, a relatively small infrared signature during its boost phase, advanced decoys (as many as ten carried on a single missile), maneuvering mid-course capability, and maneuvering independently targeted reentry vehicles, of which it can carry up to six, although they are said to carry just one operationally.

The missile’s high speed shortens the time anyone can react to it, and every second matters when it comes to ballistic missile defense. The rocket motors were designed for a short, very powerful boost stage so that American space-based infrared detection satellites (SBIRS, DSP) have less time to detect and track it. Its decoys make it hard for radar to adequately track the correct target, and its countermeasures are said to have been upgraded to fool infrared tracking systems, which are use for mid-course interception. The missile and reentry vehicles’ ability to dynamically maneuver outside of their ballistic track makes producing an effective kill solution, or even predicting the TOPOL-M’s target, problematic. All these features come together to make a missile that is probably outside of America’s missile defense capabilities today, and the sheer number of them that exists makes the idea of defending against anything but a limited barrage totally invalid…….MORE HERE

 

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