Russia orders more nuclear missiles

RUSSIA’S military has commissioned another batch of intercontinental ballistic missiles — nuclear weapons that officials boast can penetrate any prospective missile shield, reports said yesterday.

The announcement comes amid tensions between Moscow and Washington over US plans for missile defence sites in Poland and the Czech Republic.

The three new Topol-M missiles are capable of hitting targets more than 6,000 miles away and, mounted on a heavy off-road vehicle, are harder for an enemy to track down, officials said.

The Topol-M missiles, which had been deployed only in silos before December last year, are stationed near the town of Teikovo, Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces said.

The same unit commissioned the first batch of such truck-mounted missiles a year ago.

The Topol-M’s chief designer, Yuri Solomonov, has said the missile drops its engines at a lower altitude than earlier designs, making it hard to detect the launch.

He said the missiles’ warhead and decoys closely resembled one another in flight, making it difficult for a foe to select the real target from false ones.

Windfall oil revenues in recent years have allowed the Kremlin to buy weapons and fund the development of new missiles. The deployment of Topol-Ms, however, has proceeded slowly and Soviet-built ballistic missiles have remained the backbone of the nation’s nuclear forces.

Teikovo, a small town in the Ivanovo region, is located about 240km north-east of Moscow.