Rocket Flop Threatens Rearmament Program
// Third accident in a row
The test of the newest version of the Bulava naval atomic missile from on board the nuclear submarine Dmitry Donskoi ended in failure. This is the third accident in a row for the Bulava. The problems with testing the rocket cast doubt on the weapons program under which submarines are to be equipped with those rockets beginning next year so that they become the basis of the Russian naval strategic forces.
Kommersant learned that the Dmitry Donskoi went to sea for the purpose of launching a Bulava at the end of last week. Yesterday, the submarine returned to its base at Severodvinsk. The rocket launch was to take place on Sunday, but there was no official report that it occurred. The Defense Ministry always reports successful missile launches, and sometimes Defense Minister Sergey Ivanov reports them to Russian President Vladimir Putin personally on television. A Kommersant source in the Navy General Staff stated that, after the unsuccessful launch of a Bulava on October 25 (the sale day that Putin spoke with the public on live television), a ban was placed on the distribution of any information on missile tests.
Igor Panarin, press secretary for the Federal Space Agency, which is responsible for creating the Bulava, would not confirm or deny yesterday that there had been an unsuccessful rocket launch. He told Kommersant that “the agency's commentary will come immediately after the official Defense Ministry statement.” The ministry had made no statement as of last night. Head of the Defense Ministry information and public relations department Sergey Rybakov declined to comment on the Bulava launch for Kommersant yesterday, but Capt. Igor Babenko, press secretary of the Northern Fleet, noted that responsibility for Bulava test carried out the day before by the Fleet lies with the Naval Thermotechnics Institute.
After tests of the Bulava ended in failure in September and October 2006, changes were made in the test program. Those test were made with the Dmitry Donskoi submerged, while Sunday's test was conducted with the craft on the water's surface.
In 1997, after three unsuccessful launches of the modernized Bark naval nuclear missile, the Russian Security Council scrapped its development and the Moscow Institute of Thermotechnics began developing a unified naval missile for production at the Votkinsk plant in Udmurtia. That institute was the developer of the strategic land rocket force.
A source in the Defense Ministry says that an interagency commission will begin an investigation today of the causes of the failed launch. “The failure places under threat the implementation of the state armament program to equip the Russian strategic naval forces with Bulava missiles in 2007,” the source said. Delays in the Bulava program, the source continued, could prevent the Sevmash plant in Severodvinsk from supplying the Navy with even the Yury Dolgoruky, the first of three model 955 Borei missile-carrying submarines, by the end of 2007, in spite of statements by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Ivan Safronov; Elina Bilevskaya, Murmansk
All the Article in Russian as of Dec. 26, 2006
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