Four missile regiments to be rearmed with Yars missile complex in 2017 - commander
MOSCOW. Dec 15 (Interfax-AVN) -The mobile and stationary components of the Strategic Missile Troops are being rearmed with the brand new Yars missile complex, Col. Gen. Sergei Karakayev, Commander of the Strategic Missile Troops, said on Thursday ahead of the Troops' professional day marked on December 17.
"In 2017 four missile regiments will be re-armed, the work of refitting them will be carried out in the Troops' Kozelsk, Yoshkar-Ola, Novosibirsk and Irkutsk units," Karakayev said.
"The Yars missile complex has already significantly strengthened the Troops' mobile grouping, and in the future it will no doubt play one of the key roles in fulfilling a number of strategic deterrence tasks," he said.
For all their similarities in outward appearance, the Topol missile complex and its Yars successor are "completely different," he said.
"It [Yars] has increased capabilities for use of launch sites (which has increased both territorially and qualitatively). Yars design features enable it to carry out launches from sites where a Topol could only be deployed after getting special extra engineering equipment. [Yars] has improved characteristics in terms of communications systems and the chassis frame, and the missile itself has become more potent and practically immune to existing hostile counter-missile defense. The Yars warheads have also changed qualitatively," the commander said.