The Sarmat, being developed by the Makeyev Rocket Design Bureau in the city of Miass, just east of the Ural Mountains, will replace the RS-36, a family of ICBMs and space launch vehicles that entered service in the 1970s and 1980s.
Featuring a large payload capacity, the heavy missile is expected to carry up to 10 heavy warheads, or 16 lighter ones, or a combination of warheads and countermeasures meant at overwhelming enemy missile defenses.
The Sarmat could be armed with Project 4202, a hypersonic glider which, after separating from its ICBM launch vehicle, will be able to accelerate to speeds between Mach 7 and Mach 12, acting like a hypersonic cruise missile, and capable of maneuvering to overcome any existing or prospective missile defense to reach its target.
If Russia was successful with creating Mach 12 boost and glide missiles then state-of-the-art US missile defense weapons would absolutely
impotent against it. Also currently planned anti-missile systems which the United States has not yet begun to develop would also be ineffective.
Prototype tests are being carried out using obsolete RS-18B Stiletto silo-based ICBMs, which serve to boost the hypersonic missiles. After Item 4202 is made operational it will be placed both on new RS-28 Sarmat ICBMs as well as on advanced developments. It is expected that this will occur in the period from 2020 through 2025. Production of 20 hypersonic warheads is planned in the first batch. They will make upkeep of the American missile defense system senseless. Three hypersonic nuclear warheads will be mounted on each Sarmat
SOURCES- OE Watch
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