<i>The missile, officially called the RS-28 Sarmat (pictured left), has been nicknamed Satan 2 and it serves as a replacement for the RS-36M, which was often called “Satan” by NATO.<p>...<p>The new missile is believed to be mostly an upgrade in electronic systems, with little or no changes to the ICBM’s range or power according to Robert Kelley, a former nuclear weapons expert from the U.S, Dept of Energy. Its important to note, however, that only one of these missiles is powerful enough to destroy huge landmasses – it is estimated that one could destroy an area as large as Texas or France, with each warhead capable of carrying 10 tons of nukes.</i><p>Absolutely ridiculous. If this is an upgrade to the R-36 family that doesn't upgrade the warheads, then we can look at the the 10-warhead variants of R-36 ("RS-36M" must be a typo; there is no such commonly used missile designation): <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-36_(missile)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-36_(missile)</a><p>Observe that the R-36 configuration with 10 warheads delivers at most 1 megaton per warhead. That's enough to ruin any nation-state's day, but it falls woefully short of destroying the Texan/French landmass. The widest-ranging immediate effect of large nuclear explosions is burns from radiant energy; for a 1 megaton airburst you can expect third degree burns from radiant energy out to a 12.6 km radius (497 km^2 area). With 10 warheads you can inflict that level of destruction across 4970 km^2, or about 0.7%/0.8% of the total area of Texas/France. No doubt it could kill a much larger fraction of the population in either location, because humans are very concentrated in urban areas, but there's another twist: the R-36M2 Voevoda (SS-18 Mod 5) that this new missile will replace is designed for <i>hard target kills</i>, e.g. attacking underground bunkers or missile silos with surface bursts. That's why the new missile will have accuracy upgrades: it's easy to destroy a city via ICBM even with sloppy guidance, but hardened targets need a relatively close hit to ensure destruction. This hard target attack role means that the lethal-to-humans radius is going to be smaller and that the targets are going to be missile silos out in the middle of nowhere rather than e.g. Houston or San Antonio.<p>You can play with Nukemap here to see the effects: <a href="http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/" rel="nofollow">http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/</a><p>All in all this was an impressively high level of stupid exaggeration for a topic that needs no exaggeration at all to be sobering.
Do not worry, this one does not fly. It is not even fully tested. In fact, it is not even assembled. Not a single one. It could be a weapon of mass destruction, but everything military in Russia after 1991 is more like a weapon of mass amusement.