Even names are not left to chance in a military sense. Take, for example, the case of Russia, an undisputed historical power. Last year, Putin announced that the country was continuing to expand and diversify its nuclear capabilities. Behind this speech was a major announcement: none other than the not-so-important Poseidon: the world’s largest torpedo (plus: nuclear-powered). And not just Poseidon, Russia also has Satan II. And it proved it.

News. Late last week, it was learned that the Russian military planned to launch the Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in a test flight from the Plesetsk cosmodrome, but there was no news that the test was successful.

Commercial satellite imagery taken over the weekend now appears to show two things: The test was carried out, though probably not as Russia intended.

The historical story of a terrible weapon. Designated Satan II by NATO and officially known as the RS-28 Sarmat, it is a Russian intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). Not just any missile, but one of the most powerful in the world, designed to replace the R-36M missile, or SS-18 Satan, from which it derives its nickname.

Additionally, it is designed to carry up to 15 nuclear warheads (MIRV) or 3 Avangard hypersonic gliders or a combination of warheads, gliders and advanced countermeasures and missile defense penetration vehicles. In other words, it is a key strategic weapon in the country’s nuclear arsenal.

First pre-launch visual

Measurements and power. It is known to weigh 208 tons, is about 35.5 meters long and 3 meters in diameter, and can carry up to 178 tons of liquid fuel. According to Russian media, the Satan II “can carry 10 large nuclear warheads and 16 small nuclear warheads.”

All these features give the missile a yield of around 40 megatons, 2,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb dropped in World War II, which killed 150,000 people. What’s more, its range of up to 18,000 kilometers allows it to attack targets almost anywhere on the planet.

Second picture

First test. Before we get into today’s news, it’s important to note that this is actually the third test conducted. In 2022, the Russian Defense Ministry reported that it tested the Sarmat from a silo launcher at the Plesetsk State Test Cosmodrome in the Arkhangelsk region. The launch was the most extensive yet for a missile that was being tested for the first time.

Days later, Western experts said the threat to the United States or its allies was “extremely low,” describing the test as a lot of “nuclear noise” and suggesting Putin’s real motivation was to distract his domestic audience from Russia’s recent military failures, such as the sinking of its flagship Moskva in the Black Sea.

Second test. US government officials announced these days that another launch was planned for February 2023 and that this test failed in the second burn phase.

Russia had planned additional Sarmat tests in 2023 and 2024, but the cancellation of those alerts would mean the launches were cancelled or failed, according to airspace alert announcements.

Image after ignition

New test. And now we’re back to last week. After learning that Satan II’s test was about to take place, there was only silence. Now, thanks to commercial satellite imagery collected by Maxar and Planet, we’re seeing before-and-after images of the Sarmat missile silo at Plesetsk, a military base about 500 miles north of Moscow.

But the images did not show evidence of success. An image from one of the imaging satellites revealed significant damage to the launch site, with a large crater in the opening of the underground silo. That is, the missile exploded either before or immediately after the launch. The crater seen is apparently about 200 feet (62 meters) wide.

What happened? As George Barros, a geospatial intelligence analyst at the Institute for the Study of Russia and War, explained in X, “extensive damage is visible in and around the launch pad, suggesting that the missile exploded shortly after ignition or launch.

Not only that. According to the analyst, “small fires also continued to burn in the forest east of the launch complex, and four fire trucks could be seen near the destroyed silo.”

What does Russia say? According to Reuters, there is no official statement yet, so Russia is not currently aware of the failure. Meanwhile, Pavel Podvig, a senior researcher at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research in Geneva, shared a link to a video of the 1986 R-36 missile failure (see below), in which the missile falls back into its silo after breaking apart during launch. “The devastation seems comparable,” he wrote.

A world without satellites and secrets. The truth is that with the proliferation of commercial satellites today, any government attempt to secretly conduct tests of this magnitude is nothing short of a utopia. And we are not talking about one or two powers with this technology. There are commercial satellite operators in the United States, China and Europe that are capable of transmitting high-resolution images.

Image | Maxar Technologies

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