Servicemen from a Western Military District missile large unit based in the Kursk Region in southwest Russia have test-fired a new Iskander-M (NATO reporting name: SS-26 Stone) tactical ballistic missile system, the Defense Ministry’s press office said.

Iskander-M missile system (Picture source: Youtube)

"The crews hit the target at a distance of about 60 kilometers [37 miles] at the Kapustin Yar testing range in the Astrakhan Region [in south Russia]. The target simulated a fortified command post of an illegal armed group. Recording equipment registered that the target was hit without any deviations. After the test-launch, the crews practiced displacing to a new positioning area as quickly as possible," the press office said.

The 9K720 Iskander-M (NATO reporting name SS-26 Stone) is a mobile short-range ballistic missile system produced and deployed by the Russian Federation. The missile systems are replacing the obsolete OTR-21 Tochka systems, still in use by the Russian armed forces, by 2020. The Iskander-M has several different conventional warheads, including a cluster munitions warhead, a fuel-air explosive enhanced-blast warhead, a high explosive-fragmentation warhead, an earth penetrator for bunker-busting and an electromagnetic pulse device for anti-radar missions. The missile can also carry nuclear warheads. In September 2017, the KB Mashinostroyeniya (KBM) general designer Valery M. Kashin said that there were at least seven types of missiles (and "perhaps more") for Iskander-M, including one cruise missile.