On the eve of the Day of Missile Forces and Artillery, which our country has already celebrated 70 times, at the Kapustin Yar training ground, which is located at the junction of the Volgograd, Astrakhan and Orenburg regions, the Kolomenskoe Machine Building Design Bureau solemnly handed over to the 92nd separate missile brigade of the 2nd Guards Combined Arms Army of the Central Military district, stationed in the Orenburg region, another brigade set of the operational-tactical missile system 9K720 "Iskander-M", or SS-26 Stone (Stone) according to NATO classification. The ceremony was attended by the commander of the district, Colonel-General Vladimir Zarudnitsky, General Director - General Designer of the Kolomna KBM Valery Kashin, Chief of the Missile Forces and Artillery of the Ground Forces, Major General Mikhail Matveyevsky.
At the same time, the new set of Iskander missiles handed over to the 92nd brigade became the second in 2014, the fourth in the last two years and the fifth in the Russian army. On July 8 this year, these complexes were received by the 112th Guards Missile Brigade, stationed in Shuya (Ivanovo region). Earlier, in 2013, they also entered service with the 107th Separate Guards Missile Brigade in Birobidzhan (Jewish Autonomous Region) and the 1st Separate Guards Missile Brigade near Krasnodar. And the very first, back in 2010-2011, Iskander-M was received by the 26th separate missile brigade, stationed in Luga (Leningrad region).
The Chief of the Rocket Forces and Artillery of the Ground Forces, Major General Mikhail Matveyevsky, told the author of these lines that by 2018 there will be at least ten such brigades in the Russian army, two or three in each military district. The Iskander-M operational-tactical complexes will replace the obsolete 9K79 Tochka and 9K79-1 Tochka-U tactical complexes in the troops, which are incomparable in combat effectiveness with the Iskander OTRK in many tactical and technical characteristics. We will talk about them later. In the meantime, we will give only one fact. Although the weight of the missile warheads for Tochka and Iskander is approximately equal - about 480 kg, Tochka and Tochka-U fire at a maximum range of 70 and 120 km, Iskander-M - almost 500.
REBORNING FROM THE ASH
But there is no point in comparing Iskander and Tochka. It is clear that the operational-tactical complex in many respects is more effective than the tactical complex. Another comparison is much more interesting. "Iskander" and its predecessor, more precisely, the progenitor - the Oka OTRK or OTR-23 according to the index of the Main Missile and Artillery Directorate 9K714, and according to NATO classification SS-23 Spider (Spider), destroyed in 1989 under the Soviet-American Treaty on elimination of medium and shorter-range missiles.
The Oka, which fired at a maximum range of 480 km, did not in any way fall under this treaty. The INF Treaty extended to missiles flying at ranges from 500 to 5500 km. But the Americans demanded that she be included in the list of those to be liquidated, although she had not even entered the troops yet. They were worried about the unique properties of this complex: it was housed in one car that swam, overcame any off-road. She could easily be loaded into a military transport plane, on a merchant ship or a railway platform and transferred to the part of the planet where the command required."Oka" was controlled by only three people, and the missile's warhead could be both high-explosive fragmentation and cluster and even special (nuclear). She overcame any missile defense system, and in the final section of the trajectory developed a supersonic speed of Mach 4. It was impossible to knock her down with anything. Of course, the Pentagon did not want to leave such a system in service with the Soviet army.
General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Mikhail Gorbachev and USSR Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze succumbed to pressure from US President Ronald Reagan and Secretary of State George Shultz. And the then Minister of Defense of the USSR and Chief of the General Staff Marshals of the Soviet Union Dmitry Yazov and Sergei Akhromeev did not dare to object to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU. And all 239 Oka missiles were destroyed. Together with them, 106 launchers of these missiles were blown up and all the equipment on which they were produced was burned and the design documentation …
It so happened that the author of these lines, who at that time worked in the editorial office of the Izvestia newspaper, became an unwitting witness to these dramatic events. The general designer of the Oka and 18 other types of unique weapons, the winner of the Lenin and State Prizes of the USSR Sergei Pavlovich Invincible, his deputy chief designer of OTR-23, Oleg Ivanovich Mamalyga, came to my office. We prepared and published materials on the process of eliminating intermediate and shorter-range missiles. In a veiled form (the signature on nondisclosure of state secrets did not allow directly and frankly to say), the designers said that not everything was going well with the preparation of the treaty, not everything was well thought out, appealed for support to the public in order to stop the destruction of weapons that ensured the country's security. They also knocked at the Central Committee of the CPSU. Nothing helped.
I happened to see at the Sary-Ozek firing range, where the Oki missiles were blown up, how, not hiding their tears, in the presence of American inspectors, gray-haired honored Russian gunsmiths were crying at those minutes - a sight not for the faint of heart.
But the truth is, the ideas behind the creation of the Oka OTRK were not lost in vain. Oleg Mamalyga, together with his colleagues (Invincible, after everything that happened, resigned from KBM) tried to develop a multipurpose missile for geophysical research "Sphere" on the basis of the OTR-23 rocket. There were a lot of these "Spheres" - "Sphere-M", "Sphere-M1", "Sphere-M2". They were made in Kolomna, as they say, on naked enthusiasm and absolute financial disinterestedness - the state in those years did not allocate even a penny of budget funds to them. If it were not for the sale abroad of the Strela and Igla portable anti-aircraft missile systems, the Malyutka-2 and Shturm anti-tank guided missiles, which, by the way, were also created under the leadership of Invincible, there would be nothing to pay even a salary to people.
Mamalyga and his comrades even tried to push Sphere to the international market. The complex provided unique opportunities for conducting biological, technological, metallurgical, astronomical, and any other research and experiments in near-earth space, in the atmosphere, ionosphere and magnetosphere of the Earth at altitudes from 300 to 600 km. This was much cheaper than spending satellites on such work, since it allowed accumulating large statistical material and comparing research results by loading the returned scientific equipment with various model objects. But nothing worked either. It turned out that the international market for launching geophysical rockets has long been divided between the leading countries of the world. And no one is waiting there for the Kolomna Machine Building Design Bureau.
At the international aerospace exhibition in Zhukovsky MAKS-1999, the Sfera-M2 rocket was demonstrated. Mamalyga took me to her and asked conspiratorially:
- Does it look like anything?
I was surprised:
- No.
- And if you look closely?
Looking closely, I realized that it is very much like the missile of the destroyed "Oka". The weight of the warhead at the Oka is 450 kg, the scientific compartment at the Sphere is about 500. The missiles are 7, 52 and 7, 7 m, respectively. The diameter is 0, 97 and 0, 92 m. … Only now the mass of the launcher was sharply different: by more than one and a half tons. But even that was clear why. In one case, you need a self-propelled platform on an armored vehicle chassis. In the other, a towed cart with a launch pad.
TRANSLATION FROM ARABIC
But it was even more surprising when it became known that KBM, Oleg Mamalyga and his colleagues were working on the creation of the Iskander-E operational-tactical complex. The letter "E" meant that the product would be intended for export. Where, too, is not difficult to guess. Iskander is the Arabic name for Alexander the Great. Due to export restrictions and a relatively short launch range - 280 km, such complexes are not subject to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Missiles and Missile Technologies - the treaty prohibits the export of missile systems with a range of more than 300 km. And the head of the rocket is also not very heavy - only 480 kg. Just for high-explosive fragmentation, cluster and penetrating warheads - the "smallest" nuclear warhead, created in third countries, does not fit into these dimensions. But everything else, like the Oka, is accuracy and efficiency. But the truth is, "Iskander" did not go abroad.
Then one of the television channels at the end of August 2004 showed a meeting in the Kremlin between Russian President Vladimir Putin, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov and Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, Colonel-General Yuri Baluyevsky. The heads of the military department reported to the Supreme Commander-in-Chief on the progress of work on the military budget for 2005 and on the completion of state tests of the Iskander-M operational-tactical complex, which will be put into serial production next year and will begin to enter the troops.
“By the end of 2005,” the chief of the General Staff promised the president, “we will have a whole brigade armed with this complex.
But the first brigade, armed with the 9K720 Iskander-M operational-tactical complex, as we have already mentioned, for various reasons entered service with the Russian army only in 2010. The 26th Separate Missile Brigade of the Western Military District, stationed in the city of Luga, Leningrad Region, became its owner. In the brigade, as reported in the open press, a total of 51 vehicles: 12 launchers, 12 transport-loading vehicles, 11 command and staff vehicles, 14 life support vehicles, 1 control and maintenance vehicle, 1 information preparation point, and kits high-precision guided missiles, an arsenal kit and training equipment. Now we have, if you count 60 Iskander-M launchers, and soon there will be 120.
How does Iskander, which has absorbed all the unique advantages of its predecessor, still differ from its own "grandmother" - "Oka"? Of course, in appearance. In one case, it is a four-wheeled armored personnel carrier, in the other - a car. True, also on four axes. And the platform has practically remained the same. But there is a peculiarity: if the OTR-23 carried one missile, then the Iskander already had two. Moreover, each of them can have its own purpose. And fly to her, one after another, in a matter of seconds.
UNRIVALED POWER
It is easy to understand that such an ability is given to a machine by a high-performance computer installed on board. It can receive commands in real time from the KShM (command and staff vehicle), the crew of which, in turn, receives information from undercover or military intelligence, from various technical means, including from a satellite, the domestic AWACS aircraft A- 50, and from unmanned aerial vehicles. Although it is true that a UAV with such a range - 500 km - is not yet in service with the Russian army. But even so far and without the UAV, almost instantaneous processing of intelligence information coming from any reliable sources, turning it into command installations for striking, controlling the missile on its trajectory, its indifference to the effects of the enemy's electronic warfare (electronic warfare) systems. All this turns the Iskander into a high-precision reconnaissance and strike complex of the Ground Forces.
And the main advantage of the reincarnated "Oka" is not only in the on-board computer. The missile homing head (GOS) also gives it its unique qualities. Created at the Central Research Institute of Automation and Hydraulics, a leading Russian institute - the developer of guidance and control systems for domestic tactical and operational-tactical missiles, it has the ability to recognize a target by its appearance, in other words, by photography.
At first glance, the principle of operation of this system is simple (scientifically it is called "correlation-extremal"). Optical equipment forms an image of the terrain in the target area (digital map), which is constantly compared in the on-board computer with a standard, that is, with a given photograph, after which corrective commands are issued to the rocket controls - its rudders and nozzles. It is enough for the rocket to bring the homing head to the specified area, and then the automatic will do everything. Flying to the target at supersonic speed and maneuvering warhead, no one and nothing is able to knock off the trajectory.
True, any optician, experts know, has minor drawbacks. It is badly affected by cloudiness and fog. But, so that these natural and meteorological conditions do not become an obstacle for the Iskander, the warhead of its missile is also integrated with a radar guidance system, which is not an obstacle to any bad weather. And now any target can be hit even on a moonless night.
During the last Vostok-2014 exercises, the Iskander-M complex was airlifted near Vorkuta, where, at the Pemboy training ground, it launched a rocket at one of the buildings of the abandoned village of Khalmer-Yu (translated from Nenets as “River in the Valley of Death”). Those who watched its launch claim that the head of the rocket entered the window of the house, like a thread through a needle's eye. It was just a fantastic sight.
POLITICAL WEAPON
The unique combat properties of the Iskander-M, and no other country in the world has such a missile system, is very worrisome to the NATO countries and the United States. They claim that the Russian operational-tactical complex threatens the Baltic states and Poland, they say that it has been transferred to the Kaliningrad region and Crimea and can use nuclear weapons against Russia's neighbors. There were also statements by American congressmen that the R-500 cruise missiles, which can also be armed with complexes, violate the INF Treaty, as they fly at a range of over 500 km.
The Chief of the Rocket Forces and Artillery of the Ground Forces, Major General Mikhail Matveevsky, told the author of these lines that "R-500 missiles do not fly at a range of more than 500 km." “We strictly adhere to the requirements of the INF Treaty,” he stressed. Although, as the rocket scientists say, the laws of physics cannot be canceled. And if necessary, if Russia, following the example of the United States, which withdrew from the 1972 ABM Treaty, withdraws from the INF Treaty, it is not a problem to increase the flight range of Iskander missiles. Let NATO, which is stationing its bases near our borders, think carefully about this.
The Land Forces missile officers, with whom we spoke on the eve of their professional holiday, also informed me that there are no Iskander-M complexes in the Kaliningrad region. But they recalled that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, back in November 2008, and then in November 2011, twice warned the United States that if they begin to deploy their missile defense system in Poland, then the Iskander OTRK complexes will appear in the Kaliningrad region. The range of its missiles will make it possible to neutralize the threats posed to our country by the American missile defense system.
By the way, the brigade kits of the Iskander-M operational-tactical complex, at the request of Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, are handed over to the Ground Forces only when all the necessary infrastructure has been created in their places of deployment. Including warm boxes for storing military equipment. According to General Matveyevsky, humidity is constantly maintained at 70%, and the temperature is at least plus five. “This makes it possible to operate the complex for more than 15 years without serious factory maintenance,” stressed the head of the RVA. "In the open air, in the field, in the rain and frost, this period could be reduced to three years."
In addition to taking care of the equipment, the general said, the soldiers serving on the Iskander complexes are also surrounded by the same care. First, 70% of them are contractors. Secondly, all the necessary conditions for normal life and service have been created for all officers, their families, contract soldiers and conscripts in military camps. In Birobidzhan, perhaps the most remote garrison of the Missile Forces and Artillery, even a gym and a swimming pool are being built for them.
I remember that such residential towns with gyms and swimming pools, officers' houses and television studios were previously built only for the garrisons of the Strategic Missile Forces. And if they are now being created for Iskander-M brigades, this means that in ensuring the country's security, these missile systems are on a par with the Strategic Missile Forces divisions.
