Russian nuclear missile trains to be phased out by year's end
RIA Novosti
Moscow, 15 June: By the end of 2005 Russia will no longer have any nuclear missile trains, RIA-Novosti has been told at the Strategic Missile Troops press service.
"Unfortunately missiles grow old, just like people, and their guaranteed service life runs out. It is precisely because the missiles' guaranteed service life has run out and cannot be extended (since series production was in Ukraine) that the removal from combat duty and scrapping of missile trains has been going on since 2001," sources in the press service reported.
According to the agency's source, on 14 June personnel of the Guards Red Banner Order of Suvorov Second Class Missile Division are sending the latest missile train to be scrapped.
As stated earlier by Col-Gen Nikolay Solovtsov, commander-in-chief of the Strategic Missile Troops, by December 2005 the last missile train will have been removed from combat duty and the division will cease to exist. "New systems of the Topol-M type, built in Russia, will replace the missile trains," the commander-in-chief said. [Passage omitted].
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