Russian President Vladimir Putin revealed a slew of new defense systems Thursday, including a new prototype missile that “can reach any point in the world” and a supersonic weapon which cannot be tracked by anti-missile systems.
Delivering his annual State of the Union address, Putin announced increased capabilities in the defense sector, saying that Russia “should not forget about security,” following a speech that had initially focused on domestic issues. Putin also said that, if attacked, Russia was ready to use nuclear weapons.
“We see increased opportunities with the armed forces,” he said. “We’ve done a lot to strengthen our army and navy and they are equipped with modern weaponry.”
He showed the audience a video of how one of the prototype missiles would work, explaining that the new system would have no limitation on range. “It can attack any target, through the North or South Pole, it is a powerful weapon and no missile defense system will be able to withstand,” the president said.
Telling the audience that more was to come, Putin also said Russia had another weapon that was a “small nuclear power energy system” — a nuclear warhead — that can be deployed on a cruise missile system that can also, he claimed, “avoid all interceptors.”
He said the country had tested this cruise missile with the “nuclear power energy unit” in 2017 and it was successful. Russia would start manufacturing this now, he added.
“This is unheard of and nobody else has such a system in the world. They might create something like this in the future but by then our guys will have created something new as well.”
Putin joked that the two new strategic nuclear weapons he described — the global cruise missile and the subsurface unmanned vehicle — did not have names yet and lawmakers could submit their suggestions via the Defense Ministry website.
Speaking more generally about the new developments, he said Russia had adopted 300 new models of weaponry providing the armed forces with 18 new ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles), two submarine-based ballistic missiles. He added that the country had commissioned three new nuclear submarines also increased the number of its high-precision long-range missiles.
“After the U.S. withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty we’ve been working hard to develop new promising weaponry systems and this enabled us to make a big step forward creating new strategic arms … U.S. global missile systems are mainly against ballistic missiles and these are the core of our nuclear deterrent. This is why Russia has been developing extremely effective systems to defeat missile defense and all our ICBMs are equipped with such systems now,” he said.
“Also we have developed a new generation of missiles, namely, (we) are testing a new missile system that uses a heavy ICBM.”
He also said Russia is developing new underwater drones that can carry nuclear warheads. These were described as un-manned, noiseless submarines that move at ultra-deep levels and at high speed. “This is just fantastic,” Putin said.
“There is no defense system that can cope with such subsurface vehicles that can be equipped with conventional or nuclear weapons, attacking coastal defenses and infrastructure facilities.” These underwater drones were 100 times smaller than a conventional submarine, Putin noted.
The State of the Union address is the last one that Putin will make before a president election on March 18. Putin is expected to win the election comfortably and enter a fourth term of leadership.
