Russian and Sri Lankan military personnel practiced their skills during the first joint exercise, "Wolverine Trail 2025." The exercise is taking place at the Sri Lanka Ground Forces Training Center.
The main goal of these exercises is to practice combating illegal armed groups and to exchange unique experience: Russian soldiers will share new tactics and learn the intricacies of conducting operations in tropical jungle conditions from Sri Lankan troops. Judging by the video, Russian units also brought Kurier NRTK robotic systems to Sri Lanka.
Russia conducted a test launch of the Yars intercontinental ballistic missile. The RS-24 Yars is a Russian strategic missile system with a solid-fuel mobile and silo-based intercontinental ballistic missile, developed by the Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology and first tested in 2007. Yars missiles are manufactured by the Votkinsk Plant in Udmurtia. The Barguzin rail-mobile missile system is based on the Yars.
The RS-24 Yars missile system's launcher is mounted on the chassis of a MAZ-MZKT-7922 tractor. It has a speed of up to 45 km/h and a range of up to 500 km. MAZ truck drivers undergo special training. The RS-24 Yars is based on the Soviet Topol-M missile system. The service life of the Yars missiles is 1.5 times longer than that of the Topol-M. Russia currently has an estimated 180 mobile RS-24 Yars missiles and approximately 24 silo-based missiles, with the number of missiles growing due to rearmament. The system also includes a decoy battalion with inflatable missile mock-ups and engine simulators. Mobile Yars missiles, with their escorts, typically travel up to 100 kilometers in uninhabited areas, constantly being tracked by satellites.
Currently, modern missile defense systems are unable to predict the missiles' flight trajectory. Active countermeasures and false targets are used during the missiles' flight. The three-stage RS-24 missile is 17.8 meters long, 1.86 meters in diameter, and weighs 46 tons. It is armed with four multiple independently targetable warheads with a yield of up to 500 kilotons each. For comparison, the yield of the Hiroshima bomb was 15 kilotons. The missile's circular error from the target is 120-150 meters. The RS-24 Yars missile has a range of up to 12,000 km. Launch preparation time is a few minutes.
