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Updated April 2009
Missile Overview
This section of the Russia profile provides comprehensive overviews of Russia's missile enterprises and developments in the design, production, and export of missile technology by Russian enterprises throughout the 1990s and the early 2000s. For current developments related to Russian nuclear weapons, see Russia's Nuclear Weapons Chronology.
Russia inherited most of the Soviet missile complex, although significant portions of this complex are located in Ukraine. Russia has the capability to produce highly sophisticated liquid- and solid-fueled missiles of all ranges. The RS-12M2 Topol-M (NATO designation SS-27) intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) has been developed for silo basing and mobile basing model is under development. Although the possibility of deploying a MIRVed variant of the SS-27 has also been discussed in the past, no steps in that direction appear to have been taken yet. In the meantime, Russia continues to extend service lives of existing types of MIRVed ICBMs. While no sea-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) is currently in production, Russia is developing a new SLBM called the Bulava, which is to be deployed in the existing Typhoon class submarines and in the future in a new class of ballistic missile submarines currently under construction. It is planned that in the future a modification of Bulava will also be deployed in silos as a MIRVed ICBM. There are also plans to start production of an upgraded SS-N-23 variant, designated Sineva, and the Air Force reportedly began to receive a new type of strategic cruise missile.
Reports of exports and leakage of Russian missile technology to countries such as Iran, China, and North Korea have led to concerns in the 1990s that Russia was contravening its obligations as a member of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR).
This
material is produced independently for NTI by the James Martin Center for
Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies and
does not necessarily reflect the opinions of and has not been independently
verified by NTI or its directors, officers, employees, agents. Copyright © 2008
by MIIS.
