Russia boasts of capabilities of weapon that will sit on top of a NUKE

Vladimir Putin has launched a supersonic missile that could reach the UK in 13 minutes, according to Russian missile experts.

The Object 4202 rocket was fired thousands of miles from the Yasny Launch Base in Russia to the far-east peninsula of Kamchatka with Kremlin officials calling the test a ‘success’.

It is all but invisible to US anti-missile systems and moves at such high speeds it is virtually impossible to intercept.

Boasting about their new weapon, Russia’s Tactical Missiles Corporation claimed it would make the Hiroshima nuclear bombs look like ‘popguns’.

The super weapon is being designed to sit atop Russia’s largest ever nuclear missile, dubbed ‘Satan 2’ by NATO.

The RS-28 Sarmat missile – which was unveiled last month – has a top speed of 4.3 miles (7km) per second and has been designed to outfox anti-missile shield systems.

The new Sarmat missile could deliver warheads of 40 megatons – 2,000 times as powerful as the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

The Russian President is reportedly planning to replace the country’s older SS-18 Satan weapons with the new missiles amid a string of recent disagreements with the West.

The pictures were revealed online by chief designers from the Makeyev Rocket Design Bureau.

A message posted alongside the picture said: ‘In accordance with the Decree of the Russian Government ‘On the State Defence Order for 2010 and the planning period 2012-2013’, the Makeyev Rocket Design Bureau was instructed to start design and development work on the Sarmat. ‘

The RS-28 Sarmat missile is said to contain 16 nuclear warheads and is capable of destroying an area the size of France or Texas, according to Russian news network Zvezda, which is owned by Russia’s ministry of defence. The weapon is also able to evade radar.

Dr Sutyagin points out that the SS-18 missiles which the Russians currently rely on were designed in 1988 during the Soviet Union and were built at a factory in Dnipropetrovsk, in what is now the Ukraine.

He said the Russians cannot totally rely on the Ukraine-based maintenance engineers and he said Sarmat were designed and built by Russians at the Khrunichev plant just outside Moscow.

Dr Sutyagin said they would be no match for Nato systems like Aegis Ashore, the controversial missile defence shield which the US is deploying to Romania.

He said: ‘Not only are they too fast but they have got rid of the predictable flight path. ‘It manoeuvres all the way so it is terribly difficult for any missile defence system to shoot it down.’

The Russian Defence Ministry plans to put the Sarmat into service in late 2018 and remove the last SS-18 by 2020.

Tensions between Russian and the West are at breaking point with Theresa May attacking Putin for ‘undermining the West’s efforts’ to tackle the Syria crisis.

Russia has welcomed the election of controversial Donald Trump as president and Putin and ‘The Donald’ are set for talks on crucial issues such as ISIS, the Ukraine issue and the global terror threat.

Trump has spoken of his admiration for Putin and there is concern in Europe the US could pull back from sanctions against the Kremlin aimed at preventing further military action on the country’s borders after the seizure of Crimea.