Trump: US has better weapons than the 'failed' Russian 'Skyfall' missile

President Trump weighed in on a suspected failed missile explosion in northern Russia, noting U.S. technology is far superior to the "failed" weapon.

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The suspected nuclear explosion occurred Thursday off the coast of Russia's Nenoska Missile Test Site, an installation suspected of developing Russia's next generation of advanced missiles. Seven people were reportedly killed.

"The United States is learning much from the failed missile explosion in Russia," Trump tweeted Monday. "We have similar, though more advanced, technology. The Russian 'Skyfall' explosion has people worried about the air around the facility and far beyond. Not good!"

Russian media reported radiation briefly spiked to 200 times the normal rate, according to the New York Times, but these reports were later scrubbed from the websites of Severodvinsk, a small city located 25 miles away from the explosion in Russia's Archangel province. Fears over radiation poisoning caused a run on iodine by local residents, which can protect the thyroid gland from absorbing radiation.

Experts and intelligence officials believe the explosion was the result of a botched test of a nuclear-powered cruise missile known by NATO as the SSC-X-9 Skyfall.

"Our working hypothesis is that the event in Russia yesterday was related to Russia's nuclear-powered cruise missile, the 9M730 Burevestnik (NATO name: SSC-X-9 Skyfall," Jeffrey Lewis, an arms control expert at the Middlebury Institute, said Friday on Twitter. "Possibly a botched recovery effort involving the Serebryanka [...]"

Jeffrey Lewis

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@ArmsControlWonk     

An August 8 image from @planetlabs showing the Serebryanka, a nuclear fuel carrier, near a missile test site in Russia, where an explosion and fire broke out earlier. The ship's presence may be related to the testing of a nuclear-powered cruise missile.

The Serebryanka is a Russian nuclear fuel carrier, which an image from Planet Labs shows was near the test site at the time of the incident. The ship was lastreported as of Monday in Murmansk, a port 355 miles from Severodvinsk.

Russia is believed to have conducted a partially successful test of the Skyfall on Jan. 29, preceding the Trump administration's announcement removing the U.S. from the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty on Feb. 2. The missile's small nuclear reactor theoretically makes it capable of traveling across the globe for an indefinite amount of time. It is also believed to be capable of avoiding conventional missile defense systems.

This isn't the first incident involving the Skyfall. Russian Navy ships were sent to search for the remains of a Skyfall missile in August after it landed off the coast of northern Russia in March 2018 during a failed test. Putin unveiled the missile that same month, bragging that it renders defense systems "useless." He went on to make a thinly-veiled threat against the U.S.

"I want to tell all those who have fueled the arms race over the last 15 years, sought to win unilateral advantages over Russia, introduced unlawful sanctions aimed to contain our country's development ... you have failed to contain Russia," he said.

"Nobody listened to us. Well listen to us now."

U.S. turning Gulf region into 'tinderbox': Iran's Zarif

DUBAI (Reuters) - Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif accused the United States on Monday of turning the Gulf region into a "matchbox ready to ignite", according to Al Jazeera television.

© Reuters/Wana News Agency Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif speaks during a news conference in Tehran

Oil tanker traffic passing through the Gulf via the Strait of Hormuz has become the focus of a U.S.-Iranian standoff since Washington pulled out of an international nuclear deal with Iran and reimposed sanctions to strangle Tehran's oil exports.

© Reuters/MAXIM SHEMETOV Iraqi Foreign Minister al-Hakim attends a meeting with his Russian counterpart Lavrov in Moscow

After explosions that damaged six tankers in May and June and Iran's seizure of a British-flagged tanker in July, the United States launched a maritime security mission in the Gulf, joined by Britain, to protect merchant vessels.

Zarif, in interview remarks cited by Qatar-based Al Jazeera, said the Strait "is narrow, it will become less safe as foreign (navy) vessels increase their presence in it".

"The region has become a matchbox ready to ignite because America and its allies are flooding it with weapons," he said.

Zarif, who arrived on Sunday in Doha, met on Monday with Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani for talks to convey that message, Iranian state-run media reported.

Qatar, which hosts one of the biggest U.S. military bases in the Middle East, is trying not to be drawn into the escalating conflict between Washington and Tehran.

Iraq, which maintains good relations with both Washington and Tehran, cautioned on Monday that the deployment of Western forces was fueling regional tension.

"The states of the Gulf can together secure the transit of ships," Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed al-Hakim said on Twitter. "Iraq is seeking to reduce tension in our region through calm negotiations...The presence of Western forces in the region will increase tension," he said.

Last month, Iran's Revolutionary Guards seized the British tanker, Stena Impero near the Strait for alleged marine violations, two weeks after Britain seized an Iranian oil tanker near Gibraltar, accusing it of violating sanctions on Syria.

The tanker dispute has tangled Britain in the diplomatic dispute between the EU's big powers - which want to preserve the Iran nuclear deal - and the United States which has pushed for a tougher policy on Iran.

(Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli Editing by Mark Heinrich)

The blast that killed 5 Russian engineers may have been caused by another failed test of Putin's doomsday missile

The blast that killed 5 Russian engineers may have been caused by another failed test of Putin's doomsday missile 

                                               © RU-RTR Russian Television via AP

A deadly explosion at a missile test site last week may have been caused by a failed test of a nuclear-powered cruise missile, although Russia has yet to say what its engineers were working on at the time of the blast.

Five Russian nuclear scientists were buried Monday after they were killed in an explosion last week. Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation, Russia's state nuclear agency, said they were testing a nuclear-powered engine at the time the blast occurred, BBC reports.
"The rocket tests were carried out on the offshore platform," Rosatom reportedly said in a statement over the weekend. "After the tests were completed, the rocket fuel ignited, followed by detonation. After the explosion, several employees were thrown into the sea."

Rosatom did not clarify what exactly went wrong during testing, explaining only that "there was a confluence of factors, which often happens when testing new technologies."
Read more: Russia gave posthumous awards to 5 nuclear experts who died in a mysterious explosion last week
The Russian defense ministry, by way of Russian state media, said earlier that only two people were killed when a liquid-propellant rocket engine blew up. The story has changed as the death toll has risen, and as some observers spotted a spike in radiation levels; it remains unclear if five is the total death toll from the blast.
The scientists and engineers "tragically died while testing a new special device," Alexei Likhachev, the head of Rosatom, said at the funeral Monday.

The men were buried in Sarov, a city known for nuclear research, Bloomberg reports, explaining that experts suspect that what blew up might have been a compact nuclear reactor. Three other individuals were injured by the explosion at Russia's Nyonoksa test range.
"The best thing for their memory will be our further work on the new weapons," Likhachev stated at Monday's funeral. "We are fulfilling the task of the motherland. Its security will be reliably ensured."
US intelligence officials, The New York Times reports, believe that last week's explosion involved a prototype of the 9M730 Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile, a kind of doomsday missile that NATO refers to as SSC-X-9 Skyfall. Several experts have arrived at the same conclusion.
In March 2018, Russian President Vladimir Putin boasted that the missile was "invincible," asserting that the weapon has "an unlimited range, unpredictable trajectory and ability to bypass interception." But, so far, Russia has struggled to get the weapon to fly.
No country has ever fielded a nuclear-powered cruise missile, although the US briefly flirted with the idea decades ago.
"Was this stupid missile worth getting these young men killed?" Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program for the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, rhetorically asked Monday in a Foreign Policy article on the incident.

In the article, he concludes that the weapon tested last week was likely the Burevestnik and argues that an escalating arms race between the US and Russia could lead to more nuclear accidents.
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