Russia’s Ministry of Defence released a video demonstrating a successful launch of the Russian RS-28 Sarmat ICBM. President Vladimir Putin claimed the missile would be in service with Russia by the end of 2026, and that work on Burevestnik and Poseidon was in its “final stages”.
On 12 May 2026, the Russian Ministry of Defence (MoD) published a video of their RS-28 Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) undergoing a successful test launch. The footage was shown as part of an address by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who announced that “at the end of the current year, Sarmat will indeed be put on combat duty”. The first unit slated to be equipped with Sarmat is the 62nd Rocket Division, based at Uzhur, Krasnoyarsk Krai.
While the launch appeared to have been successful, the overall trajectory of development for the RS-28 Sarmat, Russia’s long-awaited replacement for the R-36M Voyevoda (NATO reporting name: SS-18 Satan), has been somewhat troubled. Back in September 2023, Yuri Borisov, the then-CEO of Roscosmos claimed that Sarmat was already on active combat duty. This was put into doubt with two failed launches – the first on 22 September 2024 at Plesetsk cosmodrome and the second on 28 November 2025 at Dombarovsky ICBM base – both of which were believed to have pertained to Sarmat tests. Putin’s latest announcement confirmed these doubts, providing top-level official confirmation that Sarmat has not yet entered service.
As part of his address, Putin discussed the capabilities of Sarmat, stating: “First, it is the most powerful missile system in the world, matching in power the ‘Voyevoda’ [R-36M] missile system currently in our arsenal, which, as was just mentioned, is of Soviet manufacture. The total yield of the delivered warhead is more than four times greater than that of any existing, most powerful Western counterpart. Second, and most importantly, the missile can travel not only along a ballistic trajectory but also a suborbital one, which, thirdly, allows for a range of over 35,000 kilometres with accuracy twice as high [presumably compared to R-36M Voyevoda] and, finally, the ability to overcome all existing and future missile defence systems.”
Fundamentally, Putin’s address mostly reads as a message intended for domestic consumption, to provide some compensation for what was a rather lacklustre 9 May 2026 parade. While Russia’s military parades since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 have featured diminishing quantities of military equipment over time, the 2026 iteration marked a particular low point for Russia, characterised by its complete lack of military ground vehicles, lack of visiting foreign dignitaries, and its extreme brevity, with proceedings concluded in under an hour.
While the planned in-service date was new, the same cannot be said regarding any of the claims Putin put forward regarding Sarmat’s capabilities. Russian officials have long since claimed the characteristics Putin quoted, and the missile has long been suspected of being able to operate as a fractional orbital bombardment system (FOBS).
FOBS itself is not a new idea, the Soviets operated a FOBS capability in the form of the R-36O from 1968 until 1983, when all such missiles were withdrawn from active service. In FOBS mode, the missile flies on a depressed trajectory at sub-orbital/low orbital altitudes (roughly in the region of <100-250 km) before being de-orbited on the way to its target; as opposed to a ‘minimum energy’ conventional ballistic trajectory (in which ICBMs can reach apogees in the region of over 1,000-2,000 km).
There were several advantages to the FOBS concept, such as effectively unlimited range (and so no restriction in launch point), and lower flight times (if travelling directly to target), lower warning times for early warning radars (due to the missiles’ lower flight altitude), and a more difficult to predict impact point. These came with the costs of lower payload compared to conventional ICBMs and higher cost. In the case of R-36O specifically, the missile was also less accurate than conventional ICBMs – though it is questionable whether this limitation would apply to Sarmat, owing to its use of a more modern navigation and guidance system.
In a strategic sense, the primary advantage of FOBS was that it would have allowed the USSR to launch a nuclear strike on the US from over the south pole, thereby avoiding the US’ norward-facing Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) radars.
However, this concept was rendered significantly less useful even during the Cold War, with the US expanding its radar coverage over southern approaches to the continental US via the PAVE Phased Array Warning System (PAWS), and the Defense Support Program (DSP) infrared (IR) early warning satellites. The modern incarnations of these systems persist into the present day, with the US having replaced BMEWS and PAVE PAWS with the more capable Solid State Phased Array Radar System (SSPARS) from 1980-2001, and DSP with the more capable Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS) from 2011-2022. These have also been supplemented by additional radars and optical tracking systems.
Despite these US detection systems negating many of the advantages of FOBS, such missiles would have nonetheless represented a greater interception challenge for anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems. However, while the US did start numerous ABM programmes, from the 1950s to the 1980s, with a view to dealing with ICBMs, ultimately these efforts came to little.
As such, by the 1980s the USSR found itself having developed a large, expensive missile which had reduced payload capacity compared to a typical ICBM, and whose main utility was defeating an ABM system which did not exist, while their normal ICBMs remained as relevant as ever. As such, there remained little reason for R-36O to continue existing.
In the present day, with SSPARS and SBIRS operational, is there much utility to be gained from going down the FOBS path? It’s debatable.
The US does operate an ABM capability in the form of the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system. However, the system’s less than stellar intercept test record, along with its fairly limited number of interceptors – with around 40 estimated to be present at Fort Greely in Alaska, and another four at Vandenberg Space Force Base (SFB) – would offer limited protection against a strategic opponent with an ICBM arsenal the size of Russia’s.
Having said that, the US is in the process of improving its ABM capabilities through the development of the Next-Generation Interceptor (NGI), for which Lockheed Martin was selected as the prime contractor on 15 April 2024, with the project aiming for initial operational capability (IOC) in 2028. Moreover current US policy includes developing the ‘Golden Dome’ concept put forward by President Donal Trump, to defend the continental US from air and missile threats. NGI is understood to have been subsumed as a under the Golden Dome umbrella as the first line of defence against ICBMs.
As an aside, the Israeli ‘Iron Dome’ very short-range air defence (VSHORAD) system itself was originally intended to be called ‘Golden Dome’, however this was later changed to Iron Dome, because it sounded less ostentatious and less politically-charged – in the latter case because the concern was that ‘Golden Dome’ could be interpreted as a reference to the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, Islam’s third-holiest site.
Going back to Trump’s Golden Dome, however, the level of funding currently allocated to the project falls well shy of the estimated cost of over USD 1.2 trillion required to make it work. So while Sarmat could conceivably be characterised as a bit of strategic hedging from Russia, it remains fairly unlikely that Sarmat’s FOBS capability would realistically be needed for Russia to maintain a credible nuclear deterrent. Indeed, Russia has been exploring multiple other, arguably more promising, avenues for maintaining its nuclear deterrent, which brings us onto another portion of Putin’s address.
Sarmat was first announced in Putin’s now-infamous 1 March 2018 speech in which he detailed six strategic weapons Russia had been developing. Alongside the Sarmat, these also included the Kinzhal aeroballistic missile, the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle, the Peresvet high-energy laser system, the Burevestnik global-range cruise missile, and the Poseidon intercontinental range one-way attack (OWA) unmanned underwater vehicle.
In his latest address, Putin claimed the latter two were close to completion, stating: “Work on two systems with small nuclear propulsion units is in its final stages. These are the unique unmanned underwater vehicle ‘Poseidon’ and the unique global-range cruise missile ‘Burevestnik’.”
Poseidon and Burevestnik are indeed rather interesting and unique strategic weapons which would pose fairly strong detection and interception challenges – Poseidon owing to a combination of its underwater range, depth, and speed, and Burevestnik due to its extreme range and capacity to fly at fairly low altitudes. While Putin claimed these are in their “final stages”, a target date for entry into service was omitted. As such, neither are likely to enter service this year, however, with reports indicating that the Russians have made progress in late-2025 tests, it probably won’t be too long before both enter Russia’s strategic arsenal.
