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MOSCOW: A test launch of Russia's newest ballistic missile, Bulava, failed Sunday for a third time in the past four months, putting in jeopardy the national nuclear re-armament plan, a leading business daily reported Tuesday.
The national defense program envisions that the Bulava be deployed on nuclear submarines beginning in 2007. The missiles are expected to become the mainstay of the naval component of Russia's strategic nuclear forces in decades to come, Kommersant said.
“The failure puts into question the state weapons procurement program, which stipulates equipping Russia's strategic nuclear forces with Bulava missiles starting with 2007,” a Kommersant source in the Defense Ministry said.
The missile was initially launched December 24, but no official reports covered the event, the daily said.
Captain Igor Babenko, deputy chief of the North Fleet's press service, told the paper that the R-30 Bulava (SS-NX-30) ballistic missile was developed at the Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology.
“The military is not authorized to comment on the tests of the missile until it is commissioned by the Navy,” he told Kommersant.
The two previous unsuccessful launches occurred September 7 and October 25 from a ballistic missile submarine in the White Sea. The first missile failed to reach its target, and the second self-destructed after deviating from its trajectory.
A source in naval headquarters said a ban had been imposed on any reports about tests of Bulava after the October 25 failure, which coincided with President Vladimir Putin's question-and-answers conference.
Igor Panarin, a spokesman for the Federal Space Agency, neither confirmed nor denied the December 24 test launch.
In his state of the nation address in May, President Putin said current research was focused on the development of unique high-precision weapons and warheads “whose trajectory could not be predicted by a potential enemy.”
