Russians Hold 50-Year Edge Ove U.S. In Most Powerful Weapons
CDI Russia Weekly-#250
28 March 2003
"Now we have the strongest nuclear weapon. Americans are mostly scared, not
with Russia's new mobile strategic missile complexes Topol-M, but with the
old SS intercontinental ballistic missiles created in the Soviet era. These
are the silo-based missiles that Americans call Satan. Russia also holds
wonderful developments of new plasma, laser and molecular weapons; it will
take American scientists up to 50 years to develop such kind of weapons.
Edited by David Johnson
Center for Defense Information
1779 Massachusetts Ave. NW
Washington DC 20036
phone: 202-797-5277; fax: 202-462-4559
[email protected]http://sg.news.yahoo.com/030327/1/39h5l.htmlThursday March 27, 9:42 PM
Russia successfully launches test ICBM
The Russian military successfully launched a test intercontinental ballistic missile from its northwestern Plisetsk base, military officials said.
The Topol rocket, which was 18 years old, was fired at the Kamchatka peninsula, the usual target for most Russian intercontinental test sights.
"It was a complete success," one military official told AFP.
The military stressed that the launch was in no way linked with the United States' decision to launch the Iraqi war.
"This has nothing to do with it. It has nothing to do with Iraq," an officer at the Russian Strategic Missile Forces press service told AFP by telephone.
"This has been in the planning for months," the official said.
Russia bitterly opposed strikes on Iraq, with President Vladimir Putin taking a tough stance against the war in recent days.
Analysts have interpreted Putin's comments to mean that there has been a rupture in Moscow's relations with Washington sparked by the war.
When contacted by AFP earlier, a Russian military space agency official had refused to answer whether the test had been planned before or after the US-British military attack on Iraq.
Officials said the Topol launch from Plisetsk was the 79th launch of this type of rocket since 1981.