Bulava Launch (photo: RIA Novosti / Avrora)
Cheap post with a pretty picture thanks to RIA Novosti. This was a maximum range test, from the White Sea to a target area in the Pacific Ocean. It was the 16th test overall, and the second this year. It makes nine announced successes out of 16. And that’s four in a row.
If, as it appears, the designers and manufacturers have finally slicked the Bulava’s earlier problems, now Moscow will have to crank up the Bulava SLBM and Borey-class SSBN production lines.
That is a different kind of problem, a problem of the GOZ and the OPK.
Russian Defense Policy 
Could anyone indicate what were the nature of problems faced by Bulava earlier that it took so many years? some say it was manufacturing quality, others say it is electronic control problems. What did the designers find out was wrong which has now been rectified?