Russian President Vladimir Putin has suffered an emabarassing setback as his feared Satan 2 nuclear arsenal failed four out of five missile tests, according to arms experts and satellite imagery from the launch site.
High-resolution satellite images of the launch pad at Russia’s Plesetsk test site, where the RS-28 Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile exploded, shows extensive damage.
A crater approximately 60 meters wide at the launch silo at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia, along with visible damage in the surrounding area that was not present in images taken earlier in the month.
I’m sorry the hwhat?!
I know that a nuke would literally create a hell on earth but there’s no way you can name the fucking thing Satan and not be the bad guy.
They didn’t. They named it “Sarmat”.
NATO also had reporting names for Soviet weapons. IIRC surface-to-surface missiles start with “S”. A few are rather…less-than complimentary, “Satan” – the name used for the weapon that this replaces – probably being the most so.
This missile doesn’t have the reporting name “Satan 2” for NATO, though. The only link it has with the original surface-to-surface missile with the NATO reporting name “Satan” is that it’s supposed to replace it and so Western media, which very much enjoyed mentioning “Satan” wherever possible, dubbed the new missile “Satan 2”. But it’s not an official name with NATO or Russia, just something that the media uses for the clicks.
The original missile:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-36_(missile)#R-36M
The new one:
No wonder the media is using Satan II. NATO hasn’t given it one or is just referring to it by number. I’d do the same thing if I was reporting on it.
They gave it one. It’s just not as evocative as “Satan”:
NATO reporting name: SS-X-29 or SS-X-30
Well they couldn’t very well call it the Sexy 29.
No you can’t, because Russia can’t get it up!
I’ll show myself out…
Stupid sexy ICBM…
Found a Techpriest
NCD might
NATO hasn’t given it one or is just referring to it by number.
I’m not surprised the media went with Satan II.
Sounds like NATO should name it “Stupid”
But really we should name all nuclear weapons Stupid anyway.
The Kremlin is probably happy to hear it called Satan. They’re getting desperate and empty threats of global nuclear war are one of the only cards they have left.
Extremely angry at my military for naming it’s unlimited genocide machine “Big Evil Monster” rather than “Widdle Fuzzy Bunny Wabbit”.
Almost don’t even want them to use it anymore.
Can just give it a simple code. We don’t need fun names for this stuff.
We actually need the fun names. The point is that barely-educated Private Joe in the military remembers what it is and how it looks like, and does not mix it up with other things if he sees it.
It’s not a nickname, it’s an official reporting name.
Satan 2 literally is a nickname.
The official NATO reporting name is SS-X-29
That’s why he named it Satan 2.
I wonder how China feels having a North Korea on both sides of its country.
Meh, ij mnay ways China IS north Korea, I doubt they have issues with it.
its north koreas all the way down?
Hey, north Korea’s nuclear missiles work
Everyone said I was daft to build missile in Russia, but I built it all the same, just to show them. It blew up on the launchpad. So I built a second one. That blew up on the launchpad. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then blew up on the launchpad. But the fourth one stayed airborne! And that’s what you’re going to get lad, the stupidest named missile in all of Russia
What, the [Iron] Curtains?
Who would have thought that simply robbing an entire nation and giving all the proceeds to your corrupt friends would lead to an inability to manufacture practically everything? TIL
And I bet the ones who had an issue with corruption tended to be more competent than those who were ok with it, biasing those who sent to gulags or slipped out of open windows towards those who could compensate for the corruption.
Front fell off
hopefully it gets towed outside the environment. before it removes the environment.
No more cardboard derivatives.
Try to copy Ukrainian missile from 58 years ago
Fail
Second greatest military in the world!
Second greatest military in the world
I think they might be second best in Russia by now lmfao
Third best after prigozhin.
Has Wagner done anything since Jeka’s definitely not suspicious death?
I think I remember hearing in Jake Hanrahan’s Popular Front podcast in an interview that they have all been absorbed into the regular army.
They were hunted down a couple of times by Ukrainian spec ops in Africa.
Try to copy Ukrainian missile from 58 years ago
When both Russia and Ukraine were part of the USSR?
Second greatest military in the world!
The USSR hasn’t existed for >30 years, since then, Ukraine and Russia have done little but feed on its corpse. Does anyone honestly think modern Russia has a better military than China?
Ukraine has done a lot more to move forward then Russia ever has.
True the engineering were always done In Ukraine, Russia just got carried by the others nations
The USSR couldn’t have achieved a fraction of what it did without all its SSRs working together.
Hell it probably wouldn’t have survived getting invaded by every country with a military after WWI without both Russia and Ukraine.
And? I only said the Ukraine has been doing more to increase the quality of life for its citizens then Russia.
Also, it’s a pretty bold claim to say that EVERY nation with a military has tried to invade. I’d like to see a list of that.
it’s a pretty bold claim to say that EVERY nation with a military has tried to invade
It’s only the slightest exaggeration..
Between 1915 and 1920, they were invaded by: United Kingdom, France, US, Japan, Italy, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Serbia, Romania, China, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, The Ottoman Empire, and I’m sure I missed a few more.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Russia_intervention
Czechoslovakia certainly didn’t invade in the traditional sense, because:
- The troops were there before the bolshevik revolution with the agreement of the Russian government and on the way out of Russia when they were attacked.
- Czechoslovakia didn’t exist yet.
Between 1915 and 1920
Not at all relevant to any current events.
The point was that it’s silly to try to divide up and assign individual responsibility for the achievements of the USSR 30-100+ years ago when those achievements were only possible because Ukraine and Russia were part of a greater whole.
Good point. Failing to copy your own missile would be even worse, though.
Does anyone honestly think modern Russia has a better military than China?
A good number of people did until early 2022. It looked a lot better on paper.
A good number of people did until early 2022. It looked a lot better on paper.
You are technically correct, the best kind of correct.
I mean the jokes comes from somewhere.
To try to be less technical, I’d go as far as saying it was a double-digit percentage of public commenters. I remember because I was there thinking how dumb that is.
A good number of people did until early 2022. It looked a lot better on paper.
Did it? I remember a ton of propaganda about Putin and Russia going back to the Obama era, but then they’d show off stuff the USSR had developed to fight a war in Germany/Ukraine against late 1900s American equipment and tactics.
Whereas China was showing off their modern fighters, tank and ship production, and an entire branch of the military dedicated to missiles, and greater numbers than any other military, all designed to fight their next war; defending against/driving the US out of it’s back yard.
If you’re talking about the whole “human wave” thing in WWII, the ex-Nazis made that up for their memoirs. The old AskHistorians subreddit went into it once; basically the USSR fought the same way everyone else did.
I think the smart money was still on China post 2010 or so, but there was actual debate. They had a lot of old weapon stocks, and a still respectable population, if not as huge as China’s.
If you’re talking about the whole “human wave” thing in WWII, the ex-Nazis made that up for their memoirs.
Ironically, there actual cases of human-wave like attacks in WWII, notably banzai charges by Japan and MacArthur’s Walking Fire.
Walking Fire is new to me. It sounds like it’s pretty much an older term for suppressive fire during an advance, from a quick search. Do you have an example of it leading to massive attrition like that?
The Japanese liked to do it as a last resort sometimes, that’s definitely true, and it was the plan if the home islands were invaded. In practice, I have no idea what proportion of those civilians drilling with melee weapons would have been dumb enough to try it IRL, though.
Ever consider rooting for a team that isn’t fascist?
It can be great fun, trust me.
Really hard to adhere to quality if money is being pocketed at every corner and then spend outside the hellhole you created.
Russia used to have some of the most advanced rocket science labs and physics programs in the world.
This is a truly sorry state of affairs for a country that has been strip mined from within.
Ukraine built a lot of it.
They’re also not looking so hot right now
I have to disagree. Ukraine is getting hurt, but they’re pretty successfully fighting off Russia. They sank a lot of Russia’s Black Sea fleet despite not having their own, caused nuclear-sized explosions in Russia, destroyed hundreds and hundreds of military jets and helicopters, took out several fucking AWACS, destroyed tens of thousands of armored Russian vehicles, killed hundreds of thousands of troops invading their home, developed very successful new weapons systems, held Russian territory for over a month.
The Kremlin has dragged the Russian economy into the dirt and the only “help” they’ll get after their barbaric land grab fails is one-sided deals with the CCP and India. Meanwhile, Ukraine has already received many billions of dollars worth of support from many different countries, and is on a path to membership in maybe the most valuable economic bloc on the planet.
Ukraine is getting beat up, but Russia is being destroyed.
The Kremlin has dragged the Russian economy into the dirt and the only “help” they’ll get after their barbaric land grab fails is one-sided deals with the CCP and India.
Seems like they’ve been doing a brisk and lucrative trade in fossil fuels with those two, plus Korea and Japan and Turkey. But that’s what is driving a sharp divide between eastern and western bloc nations. Definitely witnessing a reconfiguration, with Russia looking more like China’s Canada. But its deeply naive to believe Russian oligarchs aren’t profiting handsomely from the exchange.
Ukraine is getting beat up, but Russia is being destroyed.
The folks insisting that China is going to waltz in and claim Russia seem blissfully ignorant to mass privatization of Ukrainian public lands and capital. Ukraine is being balkinized in real time.
Their economy is growing while Russia is shrinking, and Russia started all of that
Their economy is growing
It absolutely is not.
ok slightly unrelated but the satellite pictures have an insane resolution for having been taken from, you know, space
Just imagine what the government has if that’s what’s available commercially to the public
We know from Trump’s heedless shitposting that they can get the theoretical maximum resolution out of whatever aperture they have. For the US ones with the Hubble-clone mirrors that means not quite enough to recognise a face.
The heedless shitposting for those who don’t remember: https://www.npr.org/2022/11/18/1137474748/trump-tweeted-an-image-from-a-spy-satellite-declassified-document-shows
It’s amazing that one person can do so much crazy shit even that’s forgettable.
I bet no one remembers even a quarter of this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_views_of_Donald_Trump
Just gotta hope they are not pointing the thing at you…
I mean, it’s hard to avoid any number of other, closer cameras.
still scary AF
IMO it’s one of the least worst forms of surveillance. Keyhole 69420 might be able to see you’re outside, but the NSA sees everything you put in Google, especially the embarrassing things.
for one thing, it’s mostly just lensing, and for another, it’s also partially due to the atmosphere of the earth actually working in tandem with the lensing of the satellites themselves. Dont ask me how it works but from what i understand, seeing out from earth is harder, but seeing in from space is easy. Something to do with the way that light refraction in the atmosphere works or something.
the weirdest thing about telescopes (essentially what these are), is that you can just put a hole in them, and they’ll still work just fine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlan_J._Smith_Telescope#Vandalism_damage
i imagine a bit of that is a software trick
Satan 2: This time, it’s personal.
Satan 3: Can’t Get Fooled Again
Satan 4: Moscow Drift
Satan Five
Satan 6.66: A rival from hell
Satan 2: Infernal Boogaloo
I’m sorry, the what missile? I know there’s already “hellfire” missiles, but proclaiming a sequel to Lucifer Morningstar seems a bit silly.
It’s just the NATO designation. Official name is Sarmat.
It is not the NATO reporting name, as I detail in my comment. That’s associated with an older missile.
The SS 18 MIRV missile (and later versions) right?
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I would be absolutely terrified of it.
If I lived in Russia.
Thing could blow up and throw radioactive material everywhere.
That’s what happens when you start the war, people who have the capabilities to build it are also the first to get out of the country
Article including the satellite imagery of the site where the RS-28 Sarmat missile exploded:
Putin, the limpest dick in Russia.
It only needs to work once.
Not so sure. What if these 4/5 nukes explode on the launch pad? Even if this is in a remote area you’ll cause some damage to your own country.
Based on the little bit I know about both Russian military history and the stuff they do now, I suspect they’d be okay with that.
They aren’t even shooting Ukraine nuclear plants afraid of retaliation from NATO, nuclear is even worse
Most nukes are designed such that they only create a nuclear blast when detonated electronically.
We’ve had nukes fall out of airplanes and explode, or nuclear-tipped missiles explode in the silo, without a nuclear blast.
All of those happened before the modern safeguards were adopted by the US. We’re lucky none of them went super-critical. We just don’t know for sure if the Soviet leftovers Russia has were upgraded to the same atandards.
All of those happened before the modern safeguards were adopted by the US.
Which modern safeguards are you talking about? There’s been ~32 official broken arrow incidents between 1950 and 1980, and multiple safeguards were tried during that period. Modern 2 point detonation safety goes back to the early 60s
We just don’t know for sure if the Soviet leftovers Russia has were upgraded to the same atandards.
We do know the soviets had their own share of accidents. I wasn’t able to find any info on soviet nuclear weapon design safety mechanisms, but I feel like we’d have seen at least one nuclear blast if they didn’t have them.
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Yeah, this is the wildest headline. “Don’t fear it, it only works 20% of the time!” Both the US and Russia have somewhere around 1700 known deployed nuclear warheads able to be launched from air, land, and sea. 20% is still 340 nuclear bombs, all of which are substantially larger than the ones dropped in Japan.
The fucking audacity to downplay nuclear war.
Nobody is going to put radioactive material on the top of something that explodes in the home country. Pelting that much hazardous material into the atmosphere will be a very bad outcome.
Check the username, he’s an ml.
He just wants you to understand we have no hope of standing against the might of a resurgent Russia and China and should surrender for better terms before his tankie friends can come in and make an example of you.
I signed up on ml because lemmy.world gave me an infinite spinner when I tried to post and ml was the second one I saw and figured it didn’t matter. I think living in Russia or China would be awful and think Ukraine is a victim of Russia’s terrible aggression. That doesn’t mean I can’t be anti nuclear war.
And last year you could have also said “nobody is going to threaten nuclear escalation with all of NATO at once” and I’d have believed it, but look where we are
Most nukes are designed such that they only create a nuclear explosion if they’re detonated electrically.
If the rocket explosion can create a 60 meters wide crater, my guess is it can still at least crack open the fission part and spill the material in the atmosphere.
American nukes… We’re talking Russian engineering here. I don’t want to give them any benefit of doubt considering some of the janky shit they have tried rolling out in this war.
I’m talking of an effect like a dirty bomb, not thermonuclear detonation.
