October is the time the Russian forces conduct their large annual exercises that almost always involve multiple launches of ballistic missiles. Last year the exercise took place on October 30. This year there was no formal announcement of an exercise, though.

The first launch of the day was that of a R-29R/SS-N-18 missile from the Svyatoy Georgiy Pobedonosets submarine of the Project 667BDR/Delta III class. The submarine was deployed in the Sea of Okhotsk, so the warheads were delivered to the Chizha test site at the Kanin Peninsula. Svyatoy Georgiy Pobedonosets appears to be quite active these days, despite its age - it still goes on combat patrol and conducted a number of launches over the last few years, the last one - in 2013. The last two years, in 2014 and 2015, it was another Project 667BDR submarine, Podolsk, that was used in exercises.

Another SLBM, the Sineva version of R-29RM, was launched from Novomoskovsk Project 667BDRM submarine. The submarine was deployed in the Barents Sea and the warhead reached its target in Kura test site. Novomoskovsk returned to service after an overhaul in 2012 and did not launched a missile since that.

The ICBM launch conducted today was the Topol/SS-25 launch from Plesetsk. The missile was launched toward the Kura test site. It is the second Topol launch in two months - the previous one took place in September. Officially, the launch was conducted "to confirm the extended lifetime of the missile." If so, this is one of the two lifetime extension launches promised by Karakayev in 2016. In 2014 the lifetime of Topol was extended to 26 years.