Russia To Postpone RS-26 Ballistic Missile Deployment To 2017

Russia has postponed deployment of its Ballistic missile RS-26 Rubezh to 2017.

The deployment has been postponed several times although it has been said that it is ready for deployment. The initial plan was to begin deployment in 2015, but the date was changed to 2016.

Given that the recent reports don't mention RS-26 in 2016, it is quite possible that the deployment of first missiles of this type has been moved even further "to the right" - at least to 2017, Russian Forces reported Thursday.

The missile was said to be fully tested and ready for deployment more than a year ago. But maybe not quite - a test launch of RS-26 is scheduled for the second quarter of the year 2016.

According to a report in Kommersant in March this year, Russia conducted a test of the RS-26 missile on March 18, 2015. The missile was launched from the Kapustin Yar test site and the warheads (or warhead) successfully reached the target at the Sary-Shagan site.

RS-26 differs from RS-24 in that it has fewer stages and a shorter range. If true, this appears to confirm that RS-26 is a two-stage missile based on RS-24 very much in the way SS-20 was a two-stage version of Temp-2S.