MILITARY & STRATEGIC:
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SARMAT TEST WAS MORE THAN JUST AN EMBARRASSING FAILURE

The recent failure of the SARMAT ICBM test in Russia was the cap on a week long Russian effort to persuade the west that red lines still existed and we were close to crossing them.
During the preceding week, Lavrov, Medvedev, Putin and Russian state TV made various comments and ran programming, making it seem they were frustrated with the way we were not accepting their earnest insistence that American or British/French missiles, might be used on Russian territory- and this was a step too far.  The SARMAT test was supposed to be a clear signal that Russia meant it - TV pundits actually used the example of SARMAT hitting Paris or London in a little over three minutes (it’s actually nearer fifteen with a three minute impact warning but at that stage does it matter?)
Let’s just discuss this fearsome missile known as the RS-28 SARMAT (Russian for satan).
During the Cold War most Soviet missiles of this type were designed by the state bureau and manufactured in Ukraine. When it came to engineering excellence Ukraine was the Soviet Union’s go to industrial region. Heavy shipbuilding at Nikoliyev - all the carriers were built there, Antonov aircraft manufactured in Kyiv, etc etc.
The largest Soviet ICBM was the SS-18. A range of 18,000km and a throw weight far above anything America had ever made, its delivery bus could distribute ten 500kt warheads and their decoys across a wide area. It was a fearsome weapon.
It also had another technological advantage that made a difference: cold launch.
This is a pressurised inert gas canister under a platform on which the missile sits.
As the silo door opens the pressurised canister blasts the platform with the missile on it as much as 20m in the air - watch a test and you can see the platform discards instantly, at which point, as the missile momentarily hovers, the main booster cuts in with enough power to drive the missile rapidly skyward.
The resulting smoke and heat is considerably less, which means that American infra red satellites that are their for the purpose of detecting a launch, have precious fewer seconds - as many as 60 less, before they can detect for certain the heat plumes of the missiles.
This system is I am sure what went wrong in the silo. The gas canister wasn’t pressurised at all or partially. The sequence of the launch is automated by timing, so no ejection, missile in silo, platform still attached, missile boosters fire all in sequence, missile cooks itself into a humongous explosion - there is little more explosive than solid fuel - and bang, silo
incinerated in massive high temperature detonation.
The SS-18 you see, was an engineering masterpiece of destruction built by Ukrainians.
The SARMAT is a Russian copy of it they have taken twenty years or more to duplicate and back-engineer and it still doesn’t work reliably. Three out of four tests have failed, this one was just the most spectacular. 
That having been the case and
still thinking they haven’t made their point - the UN meetings were due this week and Zelensky would meet Biden for one last effort to get permissions across the line, another new effort was made by Putin personally.
Russian Nuclear doctrine would now be modified to consider the use of the missiles supplied by a nuclear power (important because that covers off the UK and France too), but used by a non-nuclear power (Ukraine), as a joint attack against Russia, and therefore open to nuclear response.
It’s an interesting twist on removing the line between ownership and supply, but it also fits in with his previous and long standing statements about what he claims is Ukrainian inability to operate these weapons without western help.
For that we can lay the blame at Olaf Sholz. Who was it who insisted that German troops would have to work in Ukraine if Taurus was supplied? Thus adding fuel to Putin’s already distorted beliefs. The actuality is that isn’t true but it’s too late now. CONTINUES…