Just as their American foes, the Russians have a state-of-the-federation address thingy of their own. And just like in the States, the country’s supreme leader gets up on stage and begins bragging about what was and what will be.
In Russia’s case, the rhetoric is much more militarized, sort of speak, than that of America’s. Vladimir Putin, with his secret service background, is much better than Donald Trump at presenting weapons his generals usually have wet dreams about. And what a field day the Russian president had in front of the Federal Assembly on Thursday!
During an over two-hours long speech, Putin bragged about his armed forces having 300 new models of weaponry, 80 new ICBMs, 102 submarine-based ballistic missiles, three new nuclear submarines, countless fighter jets and, drums please, a nuclear-capable missile with unlimited range.
But the scariest weapon Putin says his country has developed is a so-called heavy ICBM (200 tons payload), based on the Sarmat. This one, he says, could beat the United States’ missile defense system, no matter where it is deployed, thanks to the simple fact that it would be hypersonic.
And to illustrate the achievement, on the screens behind the president’s back a video starting playing.
It starts by showing a mobile ICBM launch system trekking through some unnamed Siberian winter land. It then cuts to another location, with images showing a missile popping its ugly head from an underground launch pad.
After that, we get to see some poorly constructed animation, not unlike video-games scenes the Russian military constantly uses as real footage taken from the front in Syria. But the interesting part comes at the end of the short clip (2 hours, 3 minutes and ten seconds into the video below).
Nine nuclear warheads, or maybe hypersonic rods, heading straight for a portion of land that looks eerily similar to Florida. The video doesn’t explicitly say that stretch of land is Florida, but just pull out a space view of the place and see for yourselves.
As all American voters know, Florida is home to Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
As a side note, Gizmodo reports that Russia Today’s editor-in-chief compared Putin’s new weapon to Elon Musk’s sending a car into space.
Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies. Full profile
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