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Thursday, August 14, 2014

Russia's Fast And Elusive TOPOL-M Ballistic Missile Is Scary As Hell

The giant TOPOL-M road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile is one frightening creation of mankind. It can hide in cities, forests, or even nuclear-attack hardened bunkers. It'll travel at over 15,000 MPH while taking evasive action and pumping out decoys on the way to its target.

TOPOL-M, known by NATO as the 'Sickle-B,' was the first ICBM created by Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. Topol in Russian is the name for the White Poplar tree, which is very similar to the Aspen tree in North America.

First fielded in 1997 as an upgrade of the first generation TOPOL, this new system was originally designed in the 1980s, and then redesigned in the mid-1990s, with America's push for a ballistic missile defense shield in mind. Since its introduction, there have been about 80 TOPOL-Ms put into service, with close to a third of those being road-mobile versions and the rest being placed in highly fortified concrete silos. Another 170 older generation road-mobile TOPOL missiles remain in service to bolster the more modern TOPOL-M road-mobile fleet.

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The US has the same weapon and technology; it's called the MX Missile.

Anonymous said...

So who praytell has the advantage? Once we've blown each other up who is the winner?

Anonymous said...

China, and the cockroaches