Russian TV accidentally broadcasts top secret plans for the Kremlin’s new

The document revealed that the submarine-fired nuclear torpedoes will be capable of destroying their targets, creating “zones of extensive radioactive contamination making them unsuitable for military or economic activity for a long period”.

Secret plans for a Russian long-range nuclear torpedo came to light after a state television cameraman filmed over a senior officer’s shoulder with a diagram on show.

The two TV stations, NTV and the main state network Channel 1, removed the images from their pieces, but a few websites published screenshots.

“It’s true a few secret data got in front of the camera lenses, therefore, it was subsequently deleted”, Putin’s spokesman, Dmitrii Peskov, said in a briefing. “We are hopeful”, he added, “it will not happen again”.

In response, the Russian military enterprises created and tested successfully weapon systems capable of defeating the U.S. missile defense, he said.

But Pavel Felgenhauer, a Russian military analyst, told the Washington Free Beacon newspaper that the “disclosure could have been deliberate”.

Based on information on the slide, the new weapon could be equipped with a thermonuclear warhead with a layer of cobalt-59, “which on detonation would be transmuted into highly radioactive cobalt-60 with a half-life longer than five years”, the BBC reports. When the camera shifted angles it showed a Russian general looking over a technical diagram of a devastating new, submarine-launchable, nuclear torpedo.

“References to the Iranian and North Korean nuclear missile threats are a cover-up”, Putin said.

A report by the U.S. Congressional Research Service in 2014 said Russian Federation “seems to have increased its reliance on nuclear weapons in its national security concept”. Ostensibly, the Status-6 torpedo is part of a larger effort by Russian Federation to beef up their nuclear capabilities, which I’m nearly positive they agreed not to do as part of the “New START” agreement. “Their real goal is to neutralize the strategic nuclear potential of other nuclear states… above all, of course, Russia”, Putin said.

“And at the first stage we are also going to develop strike weapons that can penetrate any missile defence shield.”

Russia’s been pretty cagey lately, what with the whole Ukraine thing, so any development like this is sure to ratchet up the tension even further.

Russian defence officials have been particularly critical of an American missile defence system in Europe, which generals in Moscow worry eats into the creditability of Russia’s ICBM-borne nuclear deterrent.