MOSCOW: Russia has unveiled its new nuclear missile Satan 2 capable of destroying an area equal to the United Kingdom.
Russia has released the first image of its new nuclear missile, a weapon so powerful that it could wipe out nearly all of the United Kingdom or France.
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The RS-28 Sarmat thermonuclear-armed ballistic missile was commissioned in 2011 and is expected to come into service in 2018.
The first images of the massive missile were declassified on Sunday and have now been released to the media for the first time.
The missle has been dubbed “Satan 2”, as it will replace the RS-36M, the 1970s-era weapon referred to by NATO as ‘the Satan missile’.
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Sputnik, the Russian government-controlled news agency, reported in May that the missile could destroy an area “the size of Texas or France”.
Russian media report that the missile will weigh up to 10 tons with the capacity to carry up to 10 tons of nuclear cargo.
With that type of payload, it could deliver a blast some 2,000 times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Russia is already facing the western sanctions over its act of overrunning Crimea and interference in the Ukraine.