RT-23 Molodets

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RT-23 in the Saint Petersburg railway museum.

SS-24 Scalpel (NATO reporting name) or RT-23 is a Russian ICBM, developed and produced by the Soviet Union before 1991. It is cold launched, and comes in silo and railway car based variants. It is a three stage missile that uses solid fuel and thrust vectoring for two stages, with 10 MIRV warheads, each with 550 kT yield.

The missile was the culmination of a major Soviet effort to develop a medium solid-fueled missile with multiple basing modes: silo-based and rail-based versions were deployed, and a road-mobile version was considered but rejected. This made for a much more survivable ICBM, as the rail-based missiles could move around the rail network and thus be difficult to detect and track. The new missile was to replace the older liquid-fueled SS-19 missiles which were entirely silo-based. Its US counterpart was the MX missile.

The missile was tested through the 1980s and began to be deployed in 1987. Its production facilities were mostly located in Ukraine. After the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, Ukraine had no interest in producing ICBMs and so the production of the missile came to an end.

Just before the breakup of the USSR, 92 missiles were operational, 56 based in stationary silos and 36 rail-based. The 46 silo-based missiles located in Ukraine were deactivated by mid 1996 and returned to Russia, but the 46 missiles in Russia remained in service. The missile was to be banned under the provisions of START II, but that treaty was never ratified. The 10 silo-based missiles in Russia were deactivated around 2000. After 2000 the rail-based missiles were also gradually withdrawn from service, with the remaining 15 scheduled to be decommissioned in August, 2005.

DIA	SS-24
	PL-04	SS-24	SS-24V	SS-24
NATO	Scalpel	Scalpel	Scalpel	Scalpel
Bilateral		RS-22B	RS-22A	RS-22V
Service	RT-23	RT-23	RT-23 UTTKh	RT-23 UTTKh
GRAU	15Zh44	15Zh52	15Zh60	15Zh61
Design Bureau	SKB-586, NPO Yuzhynoy Acad. V. F. Utkin	SKB-586, NPO Yuzhnoye Acad. V. F. Utkin	SKB-586, NPO Yuzhnoye Acad. V. F. Utkin	SKB-586, NPO Yuzhnoye Acad. V. F. Utkin
Approved	23 July 1976	1 June 1979	9 August 1983	9 August 1983
Years of R&D	January 1969 - March 1977	November 1982 - 1987	1983 - 1989	1983 - 1989
Engineering and Testing	1985-87
First Flight Test	26 October 1982 Failure, 12/1982 Success	April 1984	31 July 1986	27 February 1985
IOC	canceled	20 October 1987	19 August 1988	12/1987
Deployment Date	Canceled	November 1987	28 November 1989	28 November 1989
Type of Warhead	MIRV	MIRV	MIRV	MIRV
Warheads	10	10	10	10
Yield (Mt)	0.55	0.35 -0.55	0.35 -0.55	0.3 -0.55
Payload (t)	4.05	4.05	4.05	4.05
Total length (m)	23.3	23.4 - 23.8	18.8 - 23.4	23.3
Total length w/o warhead (m)	18.8, 19	19	19	19
Missile Diameter (m)	2.4	2.4	2.4	2.4
Launch Weight (t)	104.5	104.5	104.5	104.5
Range (km)	10,000	10,000 - 11,000	10,100 -11,000	10,100 - 10,450
CEP (m) (Russian Sources)	500	500	500	500
CEP (m) (Western Sources)	150-250	150-250	150-250	150-250
Basing Mode		Silo	Silo	Railroad

[edit] Operator

Soviet Union and Russia: The Strategic Rocket Forces were the only operator of the Molodets until the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Ukraine: The Armed Forces of Ukraine inherited 60 RT-23 missiles upon independence from the Soviet Union, all were sent to Russia by 1994.