Harkins - Orbital/Fractional Orbit Bombardment System

Orbital/Fractional Orbit Bombardment System

The Soviet Globalnaya Raketa

HUGH HARKINS

Copyright 2017 Hugh Harkins

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 1541197925

ISBN-13: 978-1541197923

Orbital/Fractional Orbit Bombardment System

The Soviet Globalnaya Raketa

Hugh Harkins 2017

Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

United States

ISBN 10: 1541197925

ISBN 13: 978-1541197923

This volume first published in 2017

The Author is identified as the copyright holder of this work under sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988

Cover design Createspace Independent Publishing Platform & Centurion Publishing

Page layout, concept and design Createspace Independent Publishing Platform & Centurion Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopied, recorded or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher

The publisher and author would like to thank all organisations and services for their assistance and contributions in the preparation of this volume: Yuzhnoye State Design Office; S.P. Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation Energia; JSC MIC Mashinostryenia (Joint Stock Company Military Industrial Corporation Scientific and Production Machine Building Association); JSC NPO Energomash; OSC KBKhA (Konstruktorskoe Buro Khimavtomatiky, Krunichev State Research and Production Space Centre), National Space Agency of Ukraine, State Space Corporation ROSCOSMOS, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA, United States Department of Defence, Central Intelligence Agency, and the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation

CONTENTS

introduction

This volume sets out to detail, from the historical and technological perspectives, the fully developed and deployed - 1969-1983 - Soviet 8K69 fractional orbit bombardment system/depressed trajectory intercontinental ballistic missile which will entail a survey of the 8K67 family of intercontinental ballistic missiles from which the 8K69 was developed. The volume also details the rival UR-200, UR-500 and GR-1 orbital missiles complex developments that preceded the 8K69 orbital weapon.

The road, factual and propaganda, that led to the development of the 8K69 orbital weapon complex is detailed as is the missile complex itself, along with the flight test and development program leading to actual deployment of the system. The volume also briefly covers the non-realized concept of the multiple orbital bombardment system and the byproduct of the 8K69 orbital weapon complex that was the Cyclone-2 and Cyclone-3 space launch vehicles.

It should be noted that at varying times throughout the text the weapon systems will be referred to under their Soviet service and or manufacturer designations as well as, at appropriate times, under their NATO designations, the latter of course being accepted by the Soviet Union for use in arms limitations and other treaties.

All technical data concerning the respective weapon systems and their components have been provided by the respective design bureau/offices, as has much of the imagery and graphics with additional impute from United States intelligence agencies and defense department, the space agencies of the Ukraine and the Russian Federation, United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.

THE BIRTH OF THE ICBM TO THE ORBITAL bombardment system MOBS & FOBS

The Soviet 8K67 ICBM (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile) and the 8K69 FOBS (Fractional Orbit Bombardment System), together with the later 8K67P ICBM, constituted the R-36 missile complex family. This family of Soviet strategic missiles was developed in response to the development of the Titan II silo based ICBM in the United States in the early 1960s, there being no immediately available Soviet equivalent to this super-heavy American missile that was capable of firing a heavy nuclear payload over vast distances. An added impetus, in regards to the 8K69, was provided by the inordinate advantage NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) had in deployment of IRBM (Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles) near to the borders of the USSR, something the Soviets, by virtue of geography, were not able to do in regards to the CONUS (Continental United States). This put the Soviet Union at the disadvantage of having to counter ballistic missile attack from not only the traditional northerly, over the pole, direction of CONUS based ICBMs, but also, in regards to attack from Eurasian NATO territory, westerly and southerly directions.

Growing up in the late 1970s and early 1980s, endowed with the naivety of a young boy who viewed the prospect of global nuclear conflict as something exciting rather than being the holocaust it would be perceived as with the onset of manhood, it is easy to look back on those late period Cold War years with a certain nostalgia. Discussions with ones friends, the fantasy finger on the nuclear button and the two minute warning, neither of which had any real basis in fact, now seem a rather ludicrous waste of time. In much the same way, government pamphlets, delivered to every residence, explaining how to survive a nuclear attack, were, on looking back, a waste of good paper. While it would have been logical, with hindsight, to imagine similar conversations and pamphlet reading taking place in the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact, such things did not occur to young minds conditioned to the perceived reality that they (the Soviets) were waiting for that opportune moment to embark upon a decades old plan (no such plan existed, the Soviet policy being defensive against NATO) to destroy what was then, perhaps, spuriously termed the free world.

The dawn of the age of space travel came with the launch of Sputnik 1 (left inset) on a converted R-7 ICBM on 4 October 1957. This would lead to a plethora of Earth orbit, interplanetary and Moon craft, as well as the fractional orbit/orbital weapon system of the late 1960s. Energia

The seeds of the climate of fear prevalent in those late Cold War years were sown two decades before when the Soviet Union and its NATO rivals were vying for ballistic missile supremacy with the added prize of access to space. This atmosphere of mutual mistrust and suspicion was prevalent within the populations of the Eastern and Western blocks aware that war between the respective power blocks (the Soviet dominated Warsaw Pact and United States dominated NATO) could lead to Armageddon such as human kind had never before witnessed.

While this volume is not intended to serve as a history of Soviet rocket development leading to the 8K69 FOBS, an overview of such development milestones would be pertinent. It is an indisputable historical fact that the post war rocket programs in the Soviet Union and the United States that would lead to the dawn of the ICBM and space launch vehicles were born out of the ashes of World War II Germany and in particular the A-4 (V-2) rocket, which was tested and further adapted by the Soviets and Americans. In the Soviet Union this lead to a 14 April 1948 Soviet Government Decree authorizing development of what would become the R-1, the first Soviet ballistic missile derived from the A-4 (FAU-2).