Russia Test-Fires Intercontinental Missile From Nuclear Submarine

Russia successfully test-fired an intercontinental missile from a submerged Northern Fleet nuclear submarine on Wednesday, the country’s defense ministry announced in a statement.

The submerged vessel fired the missile from the Barents Sea to the Kura Range on the Kamchatka Peninsula in the country's far east. The Sineva, which has a range of about 12,000 kilometers (7,500 miles), was deployed in 2007 as part of the country's efforts to maintain its nuclear power status, according to Reuters. This is the second such test of a missile by Russia in a week after it had successfully test-fired a new intercontinental ballistic missile on Oct. 29.

“Within the frameworks of testing the reliability of marine strategic nuclear forces, the Tula (nuclear submarine) launched a Sineva intercontinental ballistic missile from the Barents Sea to the Kura Range [in Kamchatka],” the Russian defense ministry said in a statement, obtained by RIA Novosti.

Last week, the Russian navy’s Yuri Dolgoruky nuclear submarine test-fired a Bulava missile from an underwater position in the Barents Sea. The missile successfully reached the selected targets at a testing range in the Kamchatka Peninsula, the Associated Press reported.

According to media reports, the Bulava missiles can hit targets as far as 5,000 miles away and can cause a blast 100 times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped by the U.S. on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.