Russia demonstrates mobile nuclear missile launch from Plesetsk in full triad exercise

Russia fired an RS-24 Yars intercontinental ballistic missile from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome on August 28, sending it arcing across the country to the Kura test range on the Kamchatka Peninsula. President Vladimir Putin watched the whole thing via video link from the Kremlin. The launch wasn’t a standalone event. It was part of a coordinated exercise involving all three legs of Russia’s nuclear triad: the road-mobile Yars ICBM, a Sineva submarine-launched ballistic missile fired from beneath the waves, and cruise missiles released from Tupolev Tu-95 strategic bombers. Russia’s Ministry of Defense declared all objectives met and all targets hit. What the Yars actually is The RS-24 Yars is a solid-propellant ICBM that rides around on a mobile launcher, making it significantly harder to track and target than its silo-based cousins. Its defining feature is the ability to carry multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles, or MIRVs. Each warhead can be aimed at a separate target, which also complicates missile defense systems trying to intercept them. The system has been in testing at Plesetsk since May 2007 and achieved initial operational capability in the late 2000s. It now forms...