MOSCOW, Dec. 2 (UPI) -- Another contingent of Russia's top notch nuclear missiles will be put on duty in December, a military official said Saturday.

The country's defense systems will be strengthened by one of the world's most powerful weapons -- Topol-M intercontinental ballistic rockets that Moscow has started deploying in 2000 after several years of research.

The chief of Russia's Strategic Missile Forces, Army Gen. Vladimir Yakovlev, told the official Itar-Tass news agency Saturday that the December deployment would be done "in a cut version."

"Instead of the usual 10 missiles that make up one system, this one will be made up of six rockets," said Yakovlev.

Yakovlev did not specify the reasons for reducing the number of missiles within a system.

Two full systems, with 10 missiles each, have already been deployed at the Tatischevo garrison in the central Russian region of Saratov.

Summing up the results achieved by his forces over the past 11 months, Yakovlev said that the year was coming to a successful close.

"In the current year, we have made six training launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles, more than 30 launches of space rockets and have put into orbit 43 spacecraft," said Yakovlev. "We have not recorded any cases of computer systems operation failure nor did we have any malfunction while our strategic forces were on duty."

The Russian military prides itself on sophisticated Topol-M's and at the same time considers them as one of the chief guarantors of the world's strategic stability.

In 1994, a group of Russian military designing bureaus headed by the Moscow Institute for Thermal Technology began research to design a new rocket.

Efforts in developing Topol-M were mostly focused on modernizing already existing RS-12M missile.

With its launching weight of 47.1 tons, Topol-M can hit targets as far away as 10,000 kilometers (6,200 miles). It can be launched from both stationary shafts and mobile pads mounted on special trains.

Last December, then Prime Minister Vladimir Putin took part in a Topol-M launch from the northern Russian cosmodrome of Plesetsk, subsequently hitting the target in the Far East Kamchatka peninsula.

Following a number of successful training launches, Moscow decided to start deploying the rockets at their designated locations in Tatischevo where they are currently part of the Russian defense system.