Russian Missile Launch Goes Wrong - Again

Putin's much-publicised appearance at military exercises is marred by missile malfunction on two days running

Feb. 20, 2004

MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin oversaw one of Russia's largest strategic military exercises in years for a second day on Wednesday, and, for a second day, something went wrong.
President Putin looks on during the missile tests. His appearance at the exercises is seen as highlighting his role as the commander-in-chief of a revived military. -- REUTERS

An intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) fired from the nuclear submarine Karelia in the Barents Sea veered wildly off course 98 seconds after launch and then self-destructed, a navy spokesman said.

The cause of the malfunction would be investigated.

The missile was supposed to cross the Arctic and land in a missile range in the Far Eastern region of Kamchatka. Instead, it exploded in the upper atmosphere over the Barents.

On Tuesday, the launch of two missiles from the submarine Novomoskovsk in the Barents failed - for reasons that are still in dispute - as Mr Putin watched from the deck of another submarine.

Officials had described the planned launches on Tuesday as a centrepiece of the exercises, which involved Russia's strategic nuclear forces.

On Tuesday, Admiral Vladimir Kuroyedov denied initial reports that the missiles had malfunctioned. He said the missile tests had always been planned as simulations, not as live firing exercises.

But Kommersant and Izvestia reported on Wednesday that the launches were aborted because of a malfunction in one of the missiles. Both newspapers reported that the navy was trying to cover up an embarrassing failure.

Mr Putin's much-publicised visit to the exercises came 3 1/2 weeks before the presidential election on March 14 and appeared to highlight his role as the commander-in-chief of a revived Russian military.

Mr Pavel Felgenhauer, a military analyst and journalist, said the glitches in the exercises reflected the ageing of Russia's ICBMs, many of them nearly 30 years old.

Mr Putin on Wednesday announced plans for deploying a new generation of strategic weapons, which some analysts said may be weapons with warheads that zigzag on their way to a target, an idea dating to the Soviet era.

The new weapons would be 'capable of hitting targets continents away at hypersonic speed, with high precision and the ability of broad manoeuvre both in terms of altitude and direction of their flight', Mr Putin said. -- New York Times, AP

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