The Soviets – for most of their history – pioneered and dominated the field of thermonuclear weapons. Weapons of mass destruction were their trump card, a card inherited by the Russian Federation. The nuclear weapons at the Kremlin’s disposal today are more powerful than ever, giving Moscow nuclear dominance and a significant deterrent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although there are several types of strategic nuclear missiles, one of the most interesting are missiles launched from trains. Yes, you heard that right, there are railcar-based launchers. These weapons fall under land-launched nuclear missiles, along with silo-launched missiles, road-launched missiles, etc. All these weapons form one of the three branches of Russia’s nuclear triad, i.e. land-based launch. The other two are submarine-launched and air-launched nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Barguzin: Russia’s nuclear train<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In this analysis we will focus on Russia’s new nuclear train, namely the Barguzin BZhRK missile which is launched from a special rail-car launcher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So the RS-27 program, popularly known as Barguzin BZhRK and less known as SS-X-32Zh, is developing an intercontinental ballistic missile of the same name for the Russian Strategic Missile Forces (RVSN). The new weapon will replace the country’s previous missile train, the Molodets BZhRK SS-24 Scalpel. BZhRK stands for railway strategic missile train. All we know about the timing of this secret program is that it was expected to begin testing in 2019 and be operational in 2020. No further public updates have been made regarding its progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Frightening Abilities<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Like any of Moscow’s intercontinental nuclear weapons, the RS-27 is terrifying. The missile is said to weigh 55 tons and carry 4 nuclear warheads. Rumors suggest that although the rail system is still under development, the missile it will launch has been in service for years, as it can be launched from both fixed silos and launchers on wheeled vehicles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Five missile railway regiments will be created from Barguzin, each of which will consist of one train and six ballistic missiles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The operational range of the missile is said to reach 12,600 kilometers, while its inertial navigation is supported by the Russian GLONASS satellite system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Soviets – for most of their history – pioneered and dominated the field of thermonuclear weapons. Weapons of mass destruction were their trump…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1808],"tags":[1821,4446,58,4447],"class_list":["post-14389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-defense-space","tag-missiles","tag-nuclear-train","tag-russia","tag-strategic-nuclear-missiles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14389"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14389\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14391,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14389\/revisions\/14391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}