New missiles will guarantee Russia security-paper

MOSCOW, June 14 (Reuters) Two new types of ballistic missiles will guarantee Russia's security for decades, the army daily quoted the commander of strategic missile forces today as saying.

President Vladimir Putin has made the strengthening of Russia's armed forces a top priority. He has singled out strategic missiles as key instruments to ensure Russia's military security.

Russia last month tested the RS-24, a new intercontinental missile with multiple warheads which can be independently targeted.

Top officials said it was capable of breaking through any existing or potential missile defences, such as those planned by the United States.

''One can be absolutely sure that the new RS-24 missile together with the Topol-M mobile and stationary missile complexes will guarantee Russia's security for the next 20-30 years,'' Krasnaya Zvezda daily quoted General Nikolai Solovtsov as saying.

He said the deployment of RS-24s would start in the next few years.

Russian officials have said that a US decision to withdraw from the Soviet-era Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty to go ahead with the creation of a new missile defence system has sped the development and introduction of the RS-24.

During last month's test, an RS-24 was fired from a mobile launcher at a cosmodrome far to the north of Moscow. Officials said that under an hour later it successfully hit its targets at a test site on the sparsely inhabited far eastern peninsula of Kamchatka.

The 22-metre-long Topol-M is an intercontinental ballistic missile carrying a single warhead. It was first developed during the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Unio and has been later upgraded. It can be launched either from silos or from mobile launchers which can be camouflaged and hidden in forests.

Solovtsov said that RS-24s and Topol-Ms would become the backbone of Russia's strategic forces, replacing existing RS-20 and RS-18 missiles when they were decommissioned.

REUTERS SG DS1322