And what technical means are involved in them
The Yars intercontinental missile, Sineva submarine ammunition, and cruise missiles from the Tu-95MS strategic missile carriers hit all targets during the exercises of the country's strategic nuclear deterrent forces. They were held on October 25 under the leadership of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Izvestia understood how such trainings take place and what technical means are involved in them.
Start-up algorithm
Most of these exercises remain behind the scenes of the media. All launches of strategic forces, and even more so group launches, are carried out under the control of the combat control system, whose commands are given directly by the President of Russia. The first element of this modern information system is the nuclear suitcase. It is in it that the head of state is authorized and presses the appropriate button. And then the repeatedly redundant system of bringing the orders of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief directly to the missile regiments and launchers is included in the work, bypassing intermediate links, including in conditions of nuclear exposure and electronic suppression. The combat control system is made on a modern element base and has such properties as compactness, low power consumption, secrecy of information transmission, resistance to external influences and reliability of operation.
Combat training launch of the Topol-M ballistic missile from the Plesetsk cosmodrome
Image source: Photo: RIA Novosti/Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation
The launchers receive an order to perform the launch and enter a flight task into the missiles, which is either prepared in advance or received from the higher headquarters of the strategic nuclear forces. Each launcher, each missile submarine and each strategic missile carrier aircraft are equipped with receivers of the combat control system and special equipment that decodes the order and unlocks the nuclear warheads of deadly missiles. Next is a matter of technique.
Plesetsk
The Plesetsk cosmodrome, from where intercontinental ballistic missiles are launched, is the first state test cosmodrome of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. This is the largest rocket center in our country, where there are sites for launching space launch vehicles, and building complexes for assembling and testing rocket technology on earth, and sites for launching military missiles. It was Plesetsk that gave a start to the life of most domestic strategic missiles. It was here in the 1970s that the first experimental regiment of the first mobile intercontinental missiles Temp-2S was deployed, with which work on the creation of Pioneer, Topol, Topol-M and Yars missiles was started at the Moscow Institute of Thermal Engineering. By the way, today Plesetsk is the only operating cosmodrome in Europe. The Plesetsk landfill occupies a huge area — more than 1.7 thousand square kilometers — in the central part of the Arkhangelsk region. Of course, many missile launches from Plesetsk can be observed by residents of Severodvinsk and Arkhangelsk. To date, more than 2 thousand spacecraft of various purposes have been launched into near-Earth orbits from the cosmodrome, more than 1.6 thousand launch vehicles and more than 500 ICBM launches have been carried out.
Kura and the Pacific Ocean
To assess the quality of readiness and accuracy of strategic forces missiles, there are ranges of the Russian Armed Forces with fields where the corresponding warheads arrive. In peacetime, "strategists" shoot without nuclear explosions — fissile materials are removed from the warheads of missiles. Everything else works as in combat use — all components of the automation of a nuclear warhead and, in fact, a missile. The accuracy of the arrival of warheads at the landfills is monitored using special measuring and recording equipment. This includes video shooting, special radars, and subsequent examination of the formed craters.
Launch of the Bulava ballistic missile from the Yuri Dolgoruky strategic missile submarine of the Northern Fleet from the designated area in the Barents Sea at the Kura test site in Kamchatka
Image source: Photo: RIA Novosti/Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation
The most famous landfill of this kind is the Kura in Kamchatka. It is located north of the village of Klyuchi, 500 km north of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. The main purpose of the test site since the late 1950s has been to receive the warheads of intercontinental ballistic missiles on its target fields. The training ground was formed on April 29, 1955, and all strategic missiles of the Soviet Union and modern Russia passed through Kura. In 2010, the Kura test site was removed from the structure of the Strategic Missile Forces and became a division of the Plesetsk cosmodrome.
To receive launches of cruise missiles of strategic aviation, as well as to assess the accuracy of launches from missile submarines of our Pacific Fleet, the Chizha landfill in the Arkhangelsk region on the White Sea coast is operating. It was at the sites of this test site that cruise missiles were launched from Tu-95MS carrier aircraft, and it is at this test site that the Borey and Borey-A submarines based in Vilyuchinsk in Kamchatka launch Bulava missiles. The test site, as well as the Kura, is equipped with a measuring complex, and for each arrival of missiles, the military and developers receive all the necessary information.
Strategic bombers-missile carriers Tu-95MS
Image source: Photo: RIA Novosti/Maxim Bogodvid
There are about 6 thousand km between the Plesetsk and Kura ranges, but sometimes missiles need to be tested for maximum flight range. And it is not less than 10 thousand km . And in this case, the missiles are launched from the Plesetsk test site in the "Aquatoria" area in the neutral waters of the Pacific Ocean. It is on such a route that you can get the maximum flight range. In this case, the ships of the measuring complex work at the place of arrival. The Pacific Fleet includes the ship "Marshal Krylov" project 1914, which provided launches of missiles "Topol-M" and "Bulava" at maximum range. The Aquatoria area was not involved in the current exercises, but we will certainly see launches into the Pacific Ocean when creating new missile systems.
Kapustin Yar
Another well—deserved training ground, the Kapustin Yar interspecific missile range of the Ministry of Defense, did not take part in the current strategic exercises. Tests and training launches of various missile weapons - ground forces, air defense, experimental launches in the interests of testing new combat equipment of strategic missiles and in the interests of the development of missile defense systems take place here. Kapustin Yar occupies about 650 sq. km south of Volgograd.
The newest S-500 anti-aircraft missile system at the Kapustin Yar training ground has performed test live firing on a high-speed ballistic target
Image source: Photo: RIA Novosti/Press Service of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation
And in order to complete a short list of the main strategically important missile ranges, it should also be noted the main Sary-Shagan anti-missile range, which is located near Lake Balkhash in neighboring Kazakhstan and is used by the Russian Armed Forces under an interstate agreement. It is here that there is a target field for receiving the "payload" launched by special rockets from Kapustin Yar. The route between these polygons is considered "internal", that is, objects on the Kapustin Yar — Sary-Shagan route cannot be tracked. And along this route, conventional and guided ballistic missile warheads are being tested, which will make up the combat equipment of those missiles that are launched from Plesetsk.
The creation of new rocket technology and its improvement is impossible without test launches and without polygons. And thanks to all the missile ranges and the test complex, a high level of combat readiness of Russia's strategic nuclear forces is maintained.
Dmitry Kornev