MOSCOW. Oct 21 (Interfax) - The Russian military has denied reports of a failed missile launch from the submarine Ryazan during the strategic exercise Thunder 2019 last week.
"The information on an alleged 'emergency situation' during the strategic command-post exercise Thunder is not true," the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.
At the same time, the ministry said a missile launch from the submarine Ryazan was planned.
"Having assessed the information on the technical condition of one of the missiles of the submarine Ryazan, which was received directly before the launch, a decision was made not to use it in the training launch. The cancellation of the launch of this missile did not affect the successful results of the strategic command-post exercise Thunder," the statement said.
The purpose of the exercise was to check the system of combat management of the Russian Armed Forces, not the ability to launch as many missiles as possible, it said.
"All tasks envisaged by the strategic deterrence forces exercise were achieved in full, the missiles hit the designated firing ranges, hitting hypothetical targets and confirming the designated characteristics," the statement said.
"A Russian Defense Ministry official had reported the maximal launch of missile systems of various types that could have been involved in the exercise during an announcement briefing to ensure voluntary transparency and for the purpose of preventing incidents," it said.
"The final decision on the number of intercontinental ballistic missiles launched is made from the command point of the Russian Armed Forces based on the operative situation and specific combat training tasks to hit a hypothetical enemy," the military said.
The newspaper Vedomosti earlier reported that the launch of an ICBM R-29R had failed during the strategic command post exercise Thunder 2019.
The report said that the nuclear-powered submarine Ryazan, which is included in the 25th battalion of the Pacific Fleet submarines, had fired only one R-29R missile instead of two.
The second R-29R did not come out of the silo and the submarine returned to its permanent base with a missile still on board, the paper reported. Yevgeny Ilyin, acting head of the Russian Defense Ministry's Main Directorate for International Military Cooperation, announced the launch of two R-29R missiles at a briefing on October 14, it said.
According to earlier reports, the ICBM R-29R was put into service in 1977. There are three possible sets of combat equipment for the missile: a monounit with a 450 kiloton warhead, with a multiple warhead with three heads, each having an explosion power of 200 kiloton, and a seven-unit multiple warhead with 100 kiloton units.
The exercise involved some 12,000 troops, 213 launch systems of the Strategic Missile Forces, up to 105 aircraft, including five strategic bombers, up to 15 surface ships and five submarines, and 310 items of combat and special equipment.