RSD-10 Pioneer

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“SS-20” redirects here. For other uses, see SS-20 (disambiguation).

**Pioneer-3**

Type	medium-range ballistic missile
Range	5,500km
Warheads	3
Yield	each 150 Kt
Propulsion	two-stage solid fuel
Guidance system	inertial
CEP	450 metres
Length	16.5 metres
Diameter	1.8 m
Weight	37 tonnes
Payload	1600 kg
Manufacturer	Votkinsk Machine Building Plant
In service	1976
Decommissioned	1988
States	Soviet Union

The RSD-10 Pioneer (Russian: ракета средней дальности (РСД, tr.:RSD) «Пионер»; English: Medium-Range Missile "Pioneer") was a medium-range ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead deployed by the Soviet Union from 1976 to 1988. It carried GRAU designation 15Zh45. And its NATO reporting name was SS-20 Saber. It was withdrawn from service under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

The missile was 16.5 m high, 1.79 m in diameter and weighed 37.1 tons. It was based on two solid-fuel fibre-glass clad stages of the RT-21 Temp 2S (SS-16 Sinner). The missile's range was from 600 to 5,000 km initially; the final model had a maximum range of possibly 7,500 km. Initially the missile was fitted with a single 1 MT, 1.6 ton warhead, later models could take one warhead or two and from 1980 three MIRV'd 150 KT devices (Pioneer UTTH). The CEP was also reduced from 550 metres to 450.

It was intended to replace, or augment, the R-12 Dvina (SS-4 Sandal) and R-14 Usovaya (SS-5 Skean) missiles deployed from 1958 and 1961 respectively in the USSR and Warsaw Pact states. It entered the development stage in 1966 (source) and a design concept was approved in 1968 and the task given to the Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology and Alexander Nadiradze. Flight testing began in 1974 and deployment commenced on March 11, 1976, with the first supplied units becoming operational in August of that year. Up to 1986 a total of 48 launch sites were equipped with 405 RSD-10 missiles.

The Warsaw Pact enjoyed in Central Europe a massive conventional superiority over NATO (at least in quantitative terms - 3:1). Warsaw Pact forces assumed that NATO would use Theater Nuclear Forces to stop a massive conventional Soviet offensive[1]. The RSD-10 provided the Soviet Union with an in-theater "selective" targeting capability that it previously had lacked. The RSD-10 had the capacity to destroy virtually every NATO base, weapons storage site with negligible warning. Thus, the Soviet Union acquired the capability to neutralise NATO tactical nuclear forces with surgical nuclear strikes.

The United States deployed Pershing II and Tomahawk missiles in Western Europe to counter the RSD-10.

654 missiles were built in total. These and the 499 associated mobile launchers were destroyed by May 1991 in accordance with the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Fifteen SS-20 and Pershing II are preserved to commemorate this agreement. One RSD-10 can be seen in the grounds of the Museum of the Great Patriotic War, Kiev, Ukraine, and another is inside the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum at Washington, D.C..