Russia's Ailing ICBM Program

Even before the latest failure, Russian military industry experts had been speculating about systemic weaknesses behind the problems. Two weeks before the spiral failure over Norway, Sergey Kovalev, a designer of missile submarine at the Rubin Design Bureau, in Saint Petersburg, told a reporter for the weekly Argumenti i Fakti [Arguments and Facts] that for many components of Bulava, well-tested standard equipment had been replaced with new and untried products. "The Bulava is built with much more modern materials and a different component base" than the Topol, the missile on which it was supposed to be based, he said.

Igor Korotchenko, editor in chief of the trade journal Natsionalnaya Oborona [National Defense], pointed to the industrial base as the culprit. "A portion of the components are seriously defective," he wrote. General Vladimir Popovkin, deputy defense minister for acquisitions, also blamed the manufacturers of critical components for sloppy work in an interview in the newspaper Vremya Novostey.'

Kovalev, in his interview in Argumenti i Fakti, agreed. "One of the reasons for the failed Bulava launches is unsuitable metal piping," he said. "[This was] because the plant, which earlier had manufactured it in accordance with state standards, now sets its own norms, which allows various deviations. Poor-quality work in the race for money. The piping leaked, and the missile blew up." Kovalev said that shoddy materials like that wouldn't have been tolerated under the Soviet regime, and he predicted that more such stories would come to light in future test flights.

The next test flight is now planned for sometime in June, with the eyes of the Russian defense industry focused on it. UFO watchers in Norway and Finland should keep their camcorders handy as well.