In Russia, a new heavy liquid-propellant intercontinental ballistic missile is being created, which will be capable of breaking through any existing and future missile defense systems that were put into service until the 2050s. According to ITAR-TASS, this was stated by the general director of the Rosobschemash Corporation Artur Usenkov. According to him, the order to develop a missile, which in the future will replace the R-36M Voevoda ICBM, was given in 2009.
In mid-December 2009, the then still acting commander of the Strategic Missile Forces, Andrei Shvaichenko, announced that a new ballistic missile would be created by the end of 2016. What the new ICBM will be, Shvaichenko did not specify. According to Usenkov, the missile being created, like the Voyevoda, will have a multiple warhead with ten individually guided warheads. It will be capable of overcoming any missile defense system, be it the US missile defense system or the European NATO missile defense system.
Voivoda is considered the heaviest and most effective ICBM in the world. The ICBM is capable of carrying ten warheads with a capacity of 550 kilotons each. The Voevoda's flight range is 11 thousand kilometers. The R-36M2 was developed in the 1970s at the Yuzhnoye design bureau, and later the Dnepr carrier rocket was created on its basis, since the START-1 treaty, which ended on December 5, 2009, assumed the destruction of half of the Voevod arsenal. …
As ITAR-TASS clarifies, the new START treaty, which has not yet been ratified by the United States, does not prohibit the modernization and replacement of strategic offensive weapons, including the creation of new types of such weapons. Once the new treaty comes into force, it will impose limits on the number of deployed and reserve carriers of strategic weapons, as well as on the number of nuclear warheads.
