Deployment of RS-24 Yars ICBMs seems to be going according to the plan. Back in November 2013 the Rocket Forces expected that in 2014 they will add 22 missiles to the 33 that they appeared to have in 2013.
Russian press reports quote the official representative of the ministry of defense as saying that RS-24 deployment is underway in five missile regiments. One of them is the regiment of silo-based missiles in Kozelsk. According to the report, all the supporting equipment has been deployed and two missiles have been already installed in silos.
A silo regiment will eventually include 10 missiles, while four road-mobile regiments are likely to get one battalion (consisting of three missiles) each, adding up to 22 missiles total. There is a small chance that the deployment rate has been dramatically accelerated and the four regiments are getting more than three missiles each, but it's somewhat unlikely. In fact, the deployment is already behind the schedule - the first Kozelsk regiment was originally expected to enter service in 2013.
UPDATE: As it turns out, the silo-based RS-24 is even further behind the schedule than I thought - only four silo-based missiles will be deployed by the end of the year, not a full regiment of ten missiles. The total may still stand at 22 if the Rocket Forces are planning to deploy 18 road-mobile RS-24 this year.
Comments
Interesting, what such the 15A28 from Makeyev firm? :-)
http://www.ckbtm.ru/documents/TheOne_48_Protocol.pdf
Construction works in Dombarovskiy (Yasny):
http://swalker.org/voennie/2499-13-ya-krasnoznamennaya-raketnaya-diviziya.html
Thank you. Most of these photos (but not all) are on Panoramio. I wish we had photos of other silos - Google Earth doesn't seem to have anything more recent than 2009 for Dombarovskiy.
The Russian MoD official TV channel 'Zvezda' claims that the 'Yars' ICBM can be equipped with six warheads:
http://tvzvezda.ru/news/forces/content/201409041009-4c19.htm
I'm not sure we could trust these reports, "MoD official" or not. I would much rather see New START data.
Yoshkar-Ola will receive mobile Yars too:
http://function.mil.ru/news_page/country/more.htm?id=11985422@egNews
By the way, in the context of this post:
http://russianforces.org/blog/2014/07/first_rs-26_to_be_deployed_in.shtml
We can really see that the Irkutsk MD for some reason ceased to be mentioned in official statements as the recipient of the new Yars (see the last Russian MoD report above).
Earlier Irkutsk was constantly mentioned along with Novosibirsk and Kozelsk:
http://function.mil.ru/news_page/country/more.htm?id=11233787@egNews
...but later it as though was taken aside and began to be mentioned already together with Yasny without concrete name of the Yars:
http://function.mil.ru/news_page/country/more.htm?id=11746702@egNews