"Bulava" nuclear missile completes Russia's strategic triad

On 7 May, the day he took up his fifth term of office in the Kremlin, Russian President Vladimir Putin handed over the "commissioning certificate" for the new strategic nuclear weapon RSM-56 Bulava - the "mace" - to the navy. A generation of strategic weapons on board various submarines dating back to the early 1980s with logistically complex, different propulsion systems in initially liquid and then solid form (SS-N-18, SS-N-23) had actually necessitated a new development at the turn of the millennium. However, initial design successes, including in Ukrainian armouries, were followed by misfires, which led to a new development based on the vehicle-borne nuclear weapons of the Topol series. This approach also failed quite quickly - the difference between land-based and sea-based launch of the weapon was too great.

K 549 Kniaz Vladimir, photo: Michael Nitz

In 1998, the missile went back to the drawing board and workbench of the Moscow Institute of Thermal Engineering. The completely new design of the two-stage solid fuel rocket with a third liquid propellant stage as the Bulava strategic underwater weapon system also suffered considerable setbacks and numerous misses, which delayed and increased the cost of this project by almost 15 years. SS-N-32 is the intercontinental ballistic missile for the nuclear submarines of the Borey class (Project 955), which is now ready for deployment after 30 years of development, production and testing in the course of 40 test firings. Ballistic missiles are carried in the 16 silos of each of these boats, each of which carries six (possibly up to 10) independently controllable 100/150 kt nuclear warheads with a range of 9,000 kilometres. It can be assumed that Russia is trying to maintain parity with the strategic underwater potential of the USA with a total of ten carrier boats. In any case, the formal commissioning marks the almost complete renewal of Russia's strategic triad of sea-, land- and air-based systems.