Bunker reduced to smoking hole from 200km: Russia shows Iskander missile launch (VIDEO)

The Russian Defense Ministry has released a video of the Iskander-M tactical missile launcher test-firing a cruise rocket.

The footage was shot during an exercise at the Kapustin Yar rocket test range in the Astrakhan region on Friday last week, the ministry said in a statement.

“The site of a simulated underground enemy command point, located some 200km from the launch position, was turned into a smoking hole,” the ministry said, describing the result of the strike shown on the video.

The exercise of an artillery brigade based in the Orenburg region in central Russia involved 400 troops and 70 pieces of military hardware, the statement said.

Iskander-M is a variant of the Russian tactical missile system designated SS-26 Stone by NATO. It can fire two types of missiles, the quasi-ballistic 9M723 and the cruise 9M728. Both types can maneuver quickly on their flight path to make interception by enemy anti-missile weapons more challenging.

Earlier, an Iskander-M launcher was shown in footage from the Russian Khmeimim airbase in Syria. The Defense Ministry didn’t comment on the apparent deployment.