Russia’s Next-Generation Nuclear Missile Failed a Test, Evidence Suggests

Satellite photos showing a 200-foot-wide crater at a launch site indicate that the Sarmat missile, said by the Kremlin to travel at five times the speed of sound, might not be ready for duty.

Two months after he launched his invasion of Ukraine, President Vladimir V. Putin declared that Russia had succeeded in creating a “truly unique weapon” that would force anyone threatening the country “to think twice.”

But more than two years later, there is growing evidence that Russia is still struggling to make sure that the weapon — a next-generation nuclear missile — actually works.

Researchers who study commercial satellite imagery said this week that photographs from space suggested that an attempt to test the intercontinental ballistic missile, known as the Sarmat, ended with the missile, which had no warhead attached, exploding in its silo. The images, taken on Saturday by the satellite imaging company Maxar Technologies, show what the company said was a 200-foot-wide crater at a Sarmat launch site in northwestern Russia.

In addition to the crater, “extensive damage in and around the launchpad can be seen, which suggests that the missile exploded shortly after ignition or launch,” Maxar said. “Additionally, small fires continue to burn in the forest to the east of the launch complex, and four fire trucks can be seen near the destroyed silo.”

Satellite images taken two weeks earlier of the same site, at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in the Arkhangelsk region of Russia, showed no such damage. And a Russian notice closing the airspace at the test site indicated it had been preparing for a test launch.

“I do believe that the most likely explanation was an incident at the time of the launch,” said Pavel Podvig, a Geneva-based analyst of Russian nuclear forces, confirming Maxar’s assessment of a test failure. “It’s a dramatic thing when you have, basically, as I understand it, a missile exploding in a silo.”

The Kremlin declined to comment on the episode on Monday, referring questions to the Defense Ministry, which did not comment.

While the apparent launch failure would be a setback for the Kremlin, Russia’s nuclear deterrent — its ability to carry out a devastating strike against the United States, with its enormous arsenal of more proven delivery systems — remained assured.

Mr. Putin announced the Sarmat to great fanfare in 2018, declaring it part of a new class of fast-flying weapons that would give Russia a leg up in its standoff with the United States. He said the missile could deploy nuclear warheads at hypersonic speeds — at least five times as fast as the speed of sound — and evade missile defenses.

Amid Mr. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the Sarmat has become central to the Kremlin’s attempts to deter Western aid to Ukraine.

In April 2022, Mr. Putin announced that Russia had successfully test-launched the missile — the Sarmat’s only known successful test. He said at the time that the missile would “force all who are trying to threaten our country in the heat of frenzied, aggressive rhetoric to think twice.”

In September 2023, Russia’s space agency declared that the Sarmat had been put on combat duty. And last week, the chairman of Russia’s lower house of Parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin, touted the missile in an angry post on the Telegram messaging app about a European Parliament resolution calling for Western governments to allow Ukraine to use Western weapons to strike deep inside Russia.

“The flight time of the Sarmat missile to Strasbourg is 3 minutes 20 seconds,” Mr. Volodin wrote, referring to the French city where the European Parliament meets.

But for all the bluster, evidence is growing that the missile is not yet ready for duty. This month’s apparent test failure was at least the second in the past two years; American officials said that a test of the Sarmat also failed in February 2023, U.S. news outlets reported at the time.

Still, analysts say that Russia’s nuclear arsenal remains devastatingly powerful, even if much of it continues to rely on older missiles.

“Of course, the developers are probably pretty disappointed,” Mr. Podvig said. “But I don’t think it changes anything, really, in the grand scheme of things.”

Haley Willis contributed reporting.