Healthy competition among the leading design bureaus and enterprises of our "defense industry" has survived and, contrary to the forecasts of skeptics, is yielding real results. This was confirmed by the fact that the strategic submarine forces of Russia have adopted a fundamentally improved system with the Liner missile
This essentially sensational event went unnoticed, and it was only on the website of the Makeyev State Missile Center that a laconic message appeared that "the D-9RMU2.1 missile system with the R-29RMU2.1 Liner missile was put into service." The President of Russia, according to the message, has already signed a corresponding order.
We have been following the development of this topic, which, like the rocket itself, received the intriguing name "Liner", for at least the last three years. The first mention took place in "RG" in May 2011, when they made a test launch of the rocket. Then my interlocutors in the Urals (in the Makeev SRC in Miass and in the nuclear center in Snezhinsk), who were directly related to this development, asked not to dive into details and answered questions evasively, only in the most general words. On the one hand, they were afraid to jinx their own child, on the other, they did not want to stir up suspicions that this work was started in opposition to the unpredictable "Bulava" …
The conversation that took place shortly thereafter "for understanding" with the general director - general designer of the missile center in Miass, Vladimir Grigorievich Degtyar, also lay "under the cloth" for a long time. And only now, when the official website of the SRC says about the "Liner" as a completed development, the time has come to call everything done by its proper names.
According to Vladimir Degtyar, development work on the Liner theme was carried out on the basis of the Sineva carrier rocket, which the SRC commissioned the Navy in 2007. Designed in the Urals and manufactured at the Krasnoyarsk machine-building plant, the Sineva ICBM runs on liquid fuel, unlike the solid-fuel Bulava of the Moscow Institute of Heat Engineering and the Votkinsk Machine-Building Plant (Republic of Udmurtia).
Solid propellant is a priori considered the most suitable for use in the navy. And for a long time, the Americans were superior to us in this. However, in the Urals, where in the early 80s of the last century they managed to create a 90-ton solid-propellant rocket for the world's largest submarines of Project 941 Typhoon, they did not stop improving the design and production technology of marine ballistic missiles using liquid components. fuel.
Designed to arm strategic submarines such as Bryansk, Yekateringburg, Karelia (project 667 BDRM Dolphin), the Ural Sineva with a Krasnoyarsk passport turned out to be a very promising brainchild. Its indisputable advantage was the fact that the rocket was manufactured at the plant in Krasnoyarsk in a finished - encapsulated - form and did not require manipulation with fuel before loading into the submarine's missile silo. The time for prelaunch preparation was also reduced directly on the ship.
At the same time, as noted by both our and foreign experts, the 40-ton "Sineva" on liquid fuel in terms of its energy and mass characteristics (and this is primarily the ratio of the launch mass to the weight and range of the thrown payload) surpasses all modern solid-fuel strategic missiles of Great Britain, China, Russia, the United States and France.
It is known from open sources that Sineva carries four medium-power nuclear units in its warhead. For the development work of the Liner, the first and second stages of the rocket were taken from the serial - from the Sineva. But the combat equipment (combat stage) is new, made specifically for the "Liner" and allows you to install up to ten warheads of medium and small power classes, as well as means of overcoming missile defense. Moreover, such funds are significantly different from those that are on the "Sinev". The control system was improved, various types of trajectories were implemented.
As noted in the message on the SRC website, "Liner" has a number of new qualities: increased dimensions of the circular and arbitrary zones for the separation of warheads, the use of flat trajectories in the entire range of firing ranges in astroinertial and astroradioinertial (when corrected by GLONASS satellites) operating modes of the system management …
In other words, the officially adopted new rocket has not only the highest energy and mass perfection among domestic and foreign sea and land strategic missiles. Endowed with the possibility of a mixed configuration of warheads of various power classes, it is not inferior in combat equipment (under the terms of the START-3 treaty) to the Trident-2 missile system on American submarines. And in comparison with our own "Bulava" it allows you to install not six, but ten or even 12 warheads.
The versatility of the combat equipment of the Liner missile, its creators assure, will make it possible to adequately respond to changes in the foreign policy situation associated with the deployment of an anti-missile system or treaty restrictions on the number of warheads.
- "Liner", - summed up, avoiding details, academician Vladimir Degtyar, - these are completely new capabilities that are adapted to the missile defense systems - existing and those that may appear in the future.
A detailed interview with the General Director - General Designer of the SRC Makeeva V. G. We plan to publish the tar in the near future.
Dossier "RG"
JSC "GRTs Makeeva" is the leading developer of liquid and solid-propellant marine strategic missile systems for the Navy. Since the beginning of such work, 8 base missiles and 18 of their modifications have been created, which formed and form the basis of the naval strategic nuclear forces of the USSR and Russia. In total, about 4,000 modern serial sea missiles have been manufactured, more than 1,200 have been shot. Currently in operation are missile systems with SLBMs R-29RKU2 ("Station-2), R-29RMU2 (" Sineva ") - they are equipped with strategic nuclear submarines in the Northern and Pacific fleets. In 2008, the Sineva ICBM installed world record for firing range for sea missiles - over 11, 5 thousand kilometers.
According to unofficial information, the cost of modernizing the Sineva missiles already in service under the Liner project can range from 40 to 60 million rubles. What additional funds will be required to improve the missile system and missile fire control systems on the submarine itself is not reported.
