The end of last week was marked by unprecedented launches of four Russian strategic missiles at once. First, the RS-12M Topol missile, or SS-25 Sickle (Sickle) according to the western classification, was launched from the Arkhangelsk Plesetsk test site towards the Kamchatka Peninsula, which had been on alert for more than twenty years.
After it, another R-29R naval strategic missile (RSM-50), or SS-N-18 Stingray ("Electric Stingray"), with multiple individual guidance warheads. And soon another strategic missile, R-29RMU2 Sineva, or SS-N-23 Skiff, was launched from under the water of the White Sea to the Kura training ground on the Kamchatka Peninsula towards the Skat. split warheads of individual guidance. And this “rocket fireworks” ended with a Friday test launch from the submarine Dmitry Donskoy, also from the White Sea and also to the Kamchatka Peninsula, the 14th Bulava, R-30 or SS-N-30.
All launches were recognized as successful. And if no one expected a different result from the first three missiles, then the hit of the warheads of the long-suffering Bulava on the target, the second success this year with seven failures in past tests, can be considered a landmark. And although even two swallows do not make spring, if the popular saying is altered, and there is another launch this year from the board of the Yuri Dolgoruky cruiser "native" for the P-30, and next year, according to Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, 5-6 more launches before it is put into service, the latest test results of the Bulava still require certain reflections and conclusions.
The first one. It lies in the fact that the design of the Bulava, whoever and whatever may say about it, turned out to be quite acceptable. And the team of the Moscow Institute of Thermal Engineering (MIT), together with its general designer Yuri Solomonov, who at the end of the last century was instructed by the government to develop it, coped with the task. 50% of more or less successful launches out of fourteen carried out prove this. If half of the missiles have reached the target, then everything is in order with the structure. If the other half did not fly, and each time for different reasons, then the design has nothing to do with it. MIT still managed to solve all its problems, in spite of everything - for the technologies lost over the years of the collapse of the domestic defense industry, the lack of necessary materials (including bleached pulp, which it produced, and then stopped producing the Baikal PPM, graphite fiber, which produced Tver Chemical Plant and other composites) and a sharp decline in the quality of work at enterprises supplying components of the third, fourth and fifth levels …
And the second, which is important. The Bulava story demonstrated the complete failure of the reform of the military representatives' service initiated by the Ministry of Defense two years ago. Attempts to cut it almost to zero. It turned out that even our domestic highly qualified specialists - assemblers, assemblers and customizers of such high-tech products,as strategic missiles, they cannot work without the meticulous, corrosive and principled control on the part of military acceptance. Moreover, at all stages, at the entrance and exit of products. And only after control over the actions of the rocket assemblers at each stage of work became total (they say, even video cameras were hung over each workplace, which step by step filmed the entire assembly process, and then the military representatives carefully analyzed it), the marriage and hack began to recede slightly.
True, a reservation must be made here. They, as we can see, retreated in the production process of the last two or three missiles, which received increased attention. How the series will go, and for each submarine of the project 955 / 955A and 955B of the Borei class, 12, 16, 20 missiles will be required, it will be possible to judge only after several years and a certain number of not test, but combat training launches.
Nevertheless, already today, after the 14th launch, a cautious preliminary conclusion can be drawn - the Bulava has taken place. Of course, we will still hear a lot of criticism in her address. Those people and their "fans" who lost the competition to equip a new generation of nuclear submarine cruisers with a new strategic missile and who are a little discouraged after the last two successful launches of the R-30 will not cease to be jealous of it, envy MIT and its team in their own way and try to achieve revenge, at least in the creation of a new heavy liquid-propellant rocket for ground launch. God help them. It should be understood that such intense competition between the two directions of the development of strategic nuclear forces (liquid and solid fuel), which does not happen without mutual grievances and claims, only plays into the hands of our country. It is a guarantee that, despite all the post-Soviet difficulties, everything will be all right with Russia’s nuclear shield.
And the story with the Bulava shows that, despite the difficulties experienced and the incredible difficulties of the transition period, the domestic defense-industrial complex is rather alive than dead. And this is the main conclusion that can be drawn from the past rocket weekend.
