OK, I know we're talking nuclear weapons here but what kind of idiot names them after the Prince of Darkness? I mean really, it kind of broadcasts your frame of mind right off the bat. And what happened to the Satan 1 Missile? What? It wasn't EVIL enough for them or something? Man! You just can't make this stuff up.
Satan is a western nickname. "Sarmat" was probably taken from the Sarmatians who occupied the Ural Mountains around the 5th century.
“Satan” is NATO’s name for the missile. NATO’s names for Soviet and Russian surface-to-surface missiles begin with “s.”
The Satan I was the SS-18, the largest Soviet ICBM, which was deployed beginning in 1974 and figured prominently in debates in the US over the proposed SALT II arms control treaty. The SS-18 was the follow-on to the SS-9, dubbed “Scarp” by NATO, a huge missile that sparked vigorous debates over arms control and missile defense in the US during Richard Nixon’s first term as president.