Railway missile complex
The military railway missile system ( Russian Боевой железнодорожный ракетный комплекс ) was one of the Soviet Union asked in the early 1980s into service train , which with intercontinental ballistic missiles of the type RT-23 was armed. Compared to fixed silos, the train units had the advantage that the enemy could not know exactly where they were. From space they could hardly be distinguished from refrigerated trains. The advantages over nuclear submarines were reduced complexity and cost.
From the outside, the trains resembled the usual machine cooling trains at the time. A train unit consisted of three eight-axle cars, one with a single rocket each, a command car, a car for the staff in passenger car design and several diesel locomotives . The railroad rocket complexes could, except on bridges, launch their rockets wherever they were not disturbed by contact line suspension points , tunnels or the like; that was around 145,000 km of route network when they were in operation. Between two masts, the live catenary could be pushed to the side by hydraulic rams that could be swiveled up and to the side. In order to ensure the stability when erecting the start container, the silo wagons were equipped with hydraulically extendable supports.
As early as 1985, the Pentagon published an artist's representation of the railway missile complex in the annual compendium Soviet Military Power . The drawing shows a railway train with green wagons marked with red stars , with a rocket protruding from one of the wagons. It should have been the first pictorial representation of the Soviet railway missile complex in public.
In 1990, six of these trains were still in use, but due to the START II agreement between the USA and Russia that did not come into force , they were scrapped. In 2005 the last train was taken out of service and in 2007 the last associated RT-23 was destroyed.
In the course of the conflicts between Russia and the western world that arose during the crisis in Ukraine , there are considerations of a resurrection of the railway missile complexes with the current RS-24 Jars ICBM . In 2016 it was reported that the development of a modernized version is expected to be delayed until 2020.
Web links
- Documentary; Russia The Rolling Death Russia's most secret weapon on its last trip (youtube, 27:15, extra, WDR)
Individual evidence
- ^ Yury Zaitsev: Nuclear Missile Train At Its Final Destination. 2008. From spacedaily.com, accessed November 8, 2015.
- ^ Sascha Gunold: Railway missile complex RT-23. Nuclear war on the rails. (PDF) In: Military History. Historical Education Journal. Issue 4/2018. Center for Military History and Social Sciences of the Bundeswehr, 2018, p. 31 , accessed on December 17, 2018 .
- ^ Department of Defense, United States of America (Ed.): Soviet Military Power 1985 . Washington DC 1985, p. 24-25 .
- ^ RIA Novosti : Russia is considering reactivating nuclear missile trains , accessed on November 8, 2015.
- ↑ https://web.de/magazine/wissen/bargusin-neuauflage-russischen-atomraketen-zugs-32069428 This train is supposed to deter. "Barguzin": remake of the Russian nuclear missile train, accessed December 19, 2016.