MOSCOW, Oct 18 - RIA Novosti, Sergey Safronov. The service life of the UR-100N UTTH Stiletto intercontinental missiles (under the START - RS-18B treaty, according to the NATO classification - SS-19 mod.2 Stiletto) has been extended until at least 2023, Alexey Leonov, Director General and designer of the NPO Mashinostroeniya Military Industrial Complex, member of the regional council of the Moscow regional branch of the Union of Machine Builders of Russia, said in an interview with RIA Novosti.
The UR-100N UTTH missiles entered service in 1979. The last carriers of this type were delivered to the Russian military in 1985. Initially, the guaranteed service life of the missiles was set at 10 years, that is, the missiles had to be decommissioned back in 1995. Nevertheless, the Ministry of Defense regularly orders work to extend the service life of strategic carriers.
He stressed that the task of ensuring such a long-term operation of the complex while maintaining combat and technical characteristics has been solved for the first time in the world. To do this, it was necessary to implement a lot of scientific research and development work, combined into a single comprehensive program.
"In particular, the strength reserves of power structures are regularly determined, the condition of fuel tanks is carefully checked, the condition of rocket fuel components is analyzed, accelerated tests are carried out in climatic chambers that provide equivalent effects of environmental parameters on the structures of components and assemblies of the complex," said the head of NPO Mashinostroeniya.
In April, Leonov told reporters that the planned replacement of the UR-100N UTTH ICBM with Yars missile systems is currently underway. At that time, 50 out of 150 missiles remained. These ICBMs are carriers of the Avangard hypersonic units, in the future their carriers will be the new Sarmat ICBMs.
