For when Russia targets Sarah Palins house in Alaska?

And all that unnecessary “maintenance” money was siphoned off to an offshore account in 1996.

Who would have thought soviet ICBMs were so fragile!

It seems any time I read about some big Soviet (USSR) research/innovation/accomplishment, the scientists and engineers making those achievement were… Ukranian. Makes me wonder if Putin wants to conquer Ukraine to indenture all of that talent again because Russia has been stagnating since the collapse of the USSR.

That’s just a theory of mine, take it as you will.

🌻

They probably haven’t unlocked enough of the tech tree yet for those.

Nah, i think it is aerodynamically unstable. Something with the weight balance. I would put 4, 8, 16 fins to stabilize it, until i finally put an overpowered engine because no use.

They should’ve just reverted to vehicle assembly.

daisy chains of boosters too. it needs that

That patch of grass 15 m from the launch site really had it coming.

I think that was 2013 Proton M launch.

I tried looking up this video and at first AI kept adamantly demanding this is the proton m launch. But then a new convo and suddenly it agrees this is prolly 28 November ICBM test.

But yeah the 2013 proton m spiraled hard

I can’t image how well the technical components can hold up.

I recently got back from the Smithsonian affiliate Atomic Testing Museum. Two things caught my eye in the exhibits that gave me a similar realization about Russian nuclear readiness.

#1 The USA is currently undergoing a nuclear warhead modernization program refurbishing the existing inventory of nuclear warheads and the result of this “will extend the life of the warhead by as much as 25 to 30 years”. I understand this to mean that the useful life of a nuclear warhead sitting on the shelf is less than 30 years. That means nearly 100% of the warheads that were ready to use when I was born are now non-viable, unless they’ve undergone refurbishment sometime in my lifetime.

#2 at its peak count, the USA has had about 31,000 nuclear warheads at one time. Over the many years since, that number has been reduced to about 2,500 in inventory right now. There are an additional 2000 warheads that are not considered “ready to go” that are schedule to be dismantled and disposed of.

The treaties reducing nuclear warhead stockpiles wasn’t about peace, it was about cost! The US government, even with its incredibly high budgets decided to drop from 31,000 warheads to just 2500 because they are just so expensive to maintain, which it has carried on with the maintenance of the warhead.

Now, Russia has just a tiny fraction of the USA’s military budget, and much more corruption. What are the chance any of Russian’s warhead have been maintained? If the USA’s warheads only have a 30 year shelf life, and Russia’s are the same, that would mean that an unmaintained warhead would have had to be be built in the early 1990s (right when the Soviet Union was collapsing), which doesn’t seem likely.

This leads me to guess that the vast majority of Russia’s current warhead stockpile probably don’t work!

I like the idea that the only thing that has stopped Russia from starting world war 3 is their poor maintenance. If the occasionally swept up, we’d all be floating ash right now.

Then you haven’t been paying attention

Yea, it almost looked like the FTS attempted to activate, but failed to destroy the missile.

While this is just a test so I don’t know if it’d be the same, actual nuclear ICBMs have absolutely no remote cancel or detonation options at all.

Introducing them would introduce the possibility of your enemy hacking them and detonating them to protect themselves, so they’re completely out of human control once launched.

Afaik the Russians don’t believe in flight termination procedures. Luckily, this gives us glorious fireballs like this one or the gorgeous Unscheduled rapid disassembly of the Proton M. Russians know how to make a show spark!