Rearmament of Russian Barnaul missile formation with Yars PGRK to be completed by end 2021.

The Russian Ministry of Defense announced on March 29 that the rearmament of the Barnaul missile compound (Altai Territory) with the Yars mobile ground missile system will be completed by the end of 2021, the commander of the Strategic Missile Forces, Colonel-General Sergei Karakaev, stated.
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The rearmament of the Barnaul missile compound (Altai Territory) with the Yars mobile ground missile system will be completed by the end of 2021 (Picture source: Russian MoD)

According to the commander, the re-equipment of the missile division will fully complete the rearmament of the mobile group of the Omsk missile formation: "All divisions in Siberia, equipped with mobile ground-based missile systems, will receive the latest weapons," Colonel-General S. Karakaev specified.

 As previously reported, the re-equipment of the Irkutsk and Novosibirsk missile formations with the Yars mobile ground missile system has already been fully completed.

Along with the latest Yars autonomous launchers, the missile unit receives samples of special equipment like the Foliage remote mine clearance vehicle, an engineering support and camouflage vehicle, Typhoon-M anti-sabotage combat vehicle, and UTM-80M universal heat engines.

In the course of the rearmament of formations, the infrastructure of the positional areas of missile regiments is also being improved, which will provide better conditions for the operation of missile weapons, the training of duty forces, personnel on alert and rest.

The RS-24 Yars (RS - ракета стратегическая, strategic missile) - modification 24) also known as RT-24 Yars or Topol'-MR (NATO reporting name: SS-29 or SS-27 Mod 2) is a MIRV-equipped, thermonuclear armed intercontinental ballistic missile first tested on May 29, 2007, after a secret military R&D project.

START Treaty prohibited increasing the number of warheads attributed to ICBMs, so Russia claimed the RS-24 was a completely new ICBM to justify the designation SS-29 instead of SS-27 Mod 2, to circumvent treaty prohibition. The US National Air and Space Intelligence Center NASIC always believed that Yars was just a Topol M in violation of the START Treaty, something that is reflected in both the Mod 2 designation and the illustrations showing the SS-27 Mod 1 and Mod 2 to be identical.

It is essentially the same missile as the Mod 1 version Topol-M except the payload “bus” has been modified to carry multiple independently targetable warheads (MIRV). Each missile is thought to be able to carry up to 4 warheads, although there is uncertainty about what the maximum capacity is (but it is not 10 warheads, as often claimed in Russian news media).

RS-24 is a missile that is heavier than the SS-27 Mod 1 (Topol-M), and which some reports say can carry up to 10 independently targetable warheads. The 2007 tests were publicized as a response to the missile shield that the United States was planning to deploy in Europe. RS-24 has been deployed operationally since 2010, with more than 50 launchers operational as of June 2017.