Captured A4 missiles In 1945 the Soviets captured several key
Nazi German A-4 (
V-2) rocket production facilities, and also gained the services of some German
scientists and engineers related to the project. In particular the Soviets gained control of the main
V-2 manufacturing facility at
Nordhausen. Under the supervision of the Special technical Commission (OTK) established by the Soviet Union to oversee rocketry operations in Germany, A-4s were assembled and studied. Eleven A-4s, six of them assembled at
NII-88, the other five at Nordhausen, were launched from the Soviet launch site
Kapustin Yar in 1947. Only five of the rockets reached their target, roughly the same reliability the rocket had under the Germans during the war. The experience derived from assembling and launching A4 rockets was directly applied to the Soviet copy, called the R-1.
R-1 missile The
R-1 rocket (
NATO reporting name SS-1 Scunner, Soviet code name
SA11, was a
tactical ballistic missile, the first manufactured in the
Soviet Union, and closely based on the German A-4. Production was authorized by
Josef Stalin in April 1947 with NII-88 chief designer
Sergei Korolev overseeing the R-1's development. The first tests of the missile began 13 September 1948. This first series revealed a variety of unforeseen issues that affected launch reliability and target accuracy. Six of the ten rockets in this series refused to leave the launch pad at all. Remedial improvements along with experimental design upgrades were made in 1949, with a second series of twenty tests starting in September and October. Launch reliability was 100% and only two missiles failed to reach their targets. The R-1 missile system entered into service in the
Soviet Army on 28 November 1950. Though the R-1 was a close copy of the German A-4, it was ultimately considerably more reliable than its predecessor thanks to improvements made on the original design. The rocket was in length, total weight of 13.5 tons and a dry weight of . 9.2 tons of the R-1's mass was devoted to propellant: 4 tons of
ethyl alcohol and 5 tons of
liquid oxygen, which fed the Soviet-designed RD-100 engine. The R-1 missile could carry a
warhead of conventional
explosive to a maximum range of , with an accuracy of about . a range slightly greater than that of the A-4. The R-1 missile system entered into service in the Soviet Army on 28 November 1950. Deployed largely against
NATO, it was never an effective strategic weapon. Nevertheless, production and launching of the R-1 gave the Soviets valuable experience which later enabled the USSR to construct its own much more capable rockets.
R-2 missile The
R-2 (
NATO reporting name SS-2 Sibling) was a
short-range ballistic missile developed from and having twice the range as the
R-1 missile. By the latter half of 1946, Korolev and rocket engineer
Valentin Glushko had, with extensive input from German engineers, outlined a successor to the R-1 with an extended frame and a new engine designed by Glushko. Korolev proposed commencement of the R-2 project in January 1947, but it was declined by the Soviet government, which favored development of the more technologically conservative R-1. On April 14, 1948, the same decree that authorized the operational production of the R-1 also sanctioned development of the R-2. Test launches of an experimental version of the R-2, designated R-2E, began on 25 September 1949. Five of these slightly shorter () rockets were fired from
Kapustin Yar, three of them successfully. Launches of the full-scale R-2 began on 21 October 1950, the last being fired on 20 December. None of the 12 flights in this series fulfilled their primary objectives due to engine failures, warhead trajectory errors, and malfunctions with the guidance systems. A second series of tests was carried out between 2–27 July. The R-2 had been made more reliable by then, and twelve of the thirteen flights successfully reached their targets. A subsequent series of 18 launches in 1950–51 had 14 successes. Per an order dated 27 November 1951, the R-2 was formally adopted as operational armament for the Soviet Union. As with the R-1, reliability remained suboptimal. In a series of 14 operational R-2s test-launched in 1952, only 12 reached their target. The R-2 entered service in numbers in 1953 and was deployed in mobile units throughout the Soviet Union until 1962. Like its predecessor, the R-1, the R-2 was a single-stage missile using
ethanol as a fuel and
liquid oxygen as an
oxidizer. The R-2 had a range of , twice that of the R-1, while maintaining a similar payload of around . At a length of and a mass of , the R-2 was longer and the dry weight of was about heavier than the R-1. Maximum body diameter remained , the same as the R-1.
R-5 Pobeda The
R-5 Pobeda (Побе́да, "Victory") was a
medium range ballistic missile. The upgraded
R-5M version, the first Soviet missile capable of carrying a nuclear weapon, was assigned the
NATO reporting name SS-3 Shyster. The R-5 was able to carry the same payload as the R-1 and R-2 but over a distance of . In the spring of 1951 Korolev revised his A-3 plans to use the RD-103 engine, an evolution of the RD-101 used in the R-2 missile, and reduce the weight of the rocket through use of integrated tankage (while at the same time increasing propellant load by 60% over the R-2). Other innovations over the R-1/R-2 included small aerodynamic rudders run by servomotors to replace the big fins of the R-1/R-2, and longitudinal acceleration integrators to improve the precision of engine cutoff and thus accuracy. The R-5 missile used combined autonomous inertial control with lateral radio-correction for guidance and control. with a yield of less than 3 kiloton. The R-5 was a single-stage missile with a detachable warhead reentry vehicle with a range of . Using 92%
ethanol for fuel and
liquid oxygen as an
oxidizer, the rocket had a dry weight of (fueled, ) and carried a detachable reentry vehicle with a payload capacity of . Quickly upgraded to the nuclear-capable R-5M, this missile was just under long and in diameter, had a dry weight of (fueled, ), and carried a payload. The R-5M was the Soviet Union's first real strategic missile, carrying a nuclear warhead yielding at least 80
kilotons (kt). Later, the R-5M received a 1 megaton (mt)
thermonuclear warhead. The R-5M entered service in March 1956, was deployed along the western and eastern Russian borders, and in 1959 was installed in
East Germany, the first Soviet nuclear missile bases outside the USSR. The missile was retired in 1967, superseded by the
R-12.
R-7 Rocket The
R-7 Rocket was a
Soviet missile developed during the
Cold War as the
R-7 Semyorka (). It was the world's first
intercontinental ballistic missile, launched
Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, into orbit, and became the basis for the
R-7 family which includes
Sputnik,
Luna,
Molniya,
Vostok, and
Voskhod space launchers, as well as later
Soyuz variants. Several versions are still in use. Design work began in 1953 at
OKB-1 with the requirement for a missile with a launch mass of 170 to 200 tons, range of 8,500 km and carrying a nuclear warhead, powerful enough to launch a nuclear warhead against the United States. In late 1953 the warhead's mass was increased to 5.5 to 6 tons to accommodate the then planned
theromonuclear bomb. The four strap on propulsion engines were powered by the
RD-107 engine, each with two
Vernier engines to assist with steering. The central core's
RD-108 engine included four Vernier engines utilized for steering. Instead of a free-standing missile which was launched from a horizontal pad, it turned out that assembling a cluster of a central core and four boosters on the pad is almost impossible without it falling apart. The solution was to eliminate the pad and to suspend the entire rocket in the
trusses that bear both vertical weight load as well as horizontal wind forces. The first successful long flight, of , was made on 21 August 1957 with the missile reaching the target at
Kamchatka. Five days later, TASS announced that the Soviet Union had successfully tested the worlds's first intercontinental ballistic missile. The R-7 was initially long, in diameter and weighed ; it had a single stage with four strap on boosters powered by
rocket engines using
liquid oxygen (LOX) and
kerosene. The military version carried a single
thermonuclear warhead with a nominal yield of 3
megatons of TNT. The limitations of the R-7 pushed the Soviet Union into rapidly developing second-generation missiles and R-7 was phased out of military service by mid 1968. While the R-7 turned out to be impractical as a weapon, it became the basis for a series of Soviet
expendable space launch vehicles, including
Vostok family of launchers,
Molniya and
Soyuz family of launchers. As of 2018, in modified versions (
Soyuz-U,
Soyuz-FG, and the
Soyuz-2 (including the boosterless
2.1v variant), the vehicle is still in service, having launched over 1,840 times. The R-7 is also a record holder in terms of longevity, with more than 50 years of service with its various modifications and it has become the world's most reliable space launcher. == Advances in military systems ==