Monday, December 02, 2013

Russians Tested Hypersonic Warhead...and it Failed

The only official confirmation of this launch came from the report given by the commander of the Rocket Forces - Sergey Karakayev said that there were eight ICBM launches in 2013. The open record, however, showed only seven, so one launch was missing. As it turned out, there was a reason it was unreported. The launch, conducted around 26 September 2013 from the Baykonur test site involved an UR-100NUTTH/SS-19 missile carrying the infamous "hypersonic" warhead. As I understand, the missile worked well, but the payload failed, so no announcement was made.

It's interesting that it's soon ten years since the "hypersonic warhead" first made an appearance (that was in February 2004, also in Baykonur and on UR-100NUTTH). That time it wasn't quite successful as well.


Pavel has more links and commentary on his blog.  Do go to the link.

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