Beginning OKB-586 in Dnipropetrovsk (The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) formed from a spin-off of portions of
Sergei Korolev's OKB-1 production infrastructure from near Moscow under the direction of
Mikhail Yangel in the early 1950s. Soon after, he started the development of an improved strategic missile that would outperform the
R-5, that Korolev was in the process of bringing into production. Yangel's design was based on combining the basic airframe from the R-5 with an engine developed from the
R-11 Zemlya. The R-11 was a short-range missile that used
nitric acid as an oxidizer and kerosene as a fuel and could be stored for extended periods of time.
Valentin Glushko had long advocated using storable propellants, and proposed developing a new engine for the project. Earlier designs like the R-5 and
R-7 used
liquid oxygen as the oxidizer, and therefore had to be fueled immediately before launch, as the oxygen would "boil off" over time. He developed the
RD-214 for the R-12, which consisted of four combustion chambers sharing a common
turbopump assembly. The pumps were powered by decomposing
hydrogen peroxide, like earlier designs, to generate an exhaust. The new engine was too large to fit in the existing R-5 airframe, so a conical tail section was added to hold the engine.
Nikolay Pilyugin, head of the leading control system bureau, convinced Yangel to introduce a fully autonomous control system in the R-12 instead of the traditional radio control that had been used on earlier missiles. The R-5, for instance, used an
inertial guidance system that had to be "fine tuned" by
commands from ground radio stations that it passed over during its flight. Pilyugin felt that newer inertial systems would have the accuracy needed to hit targets at 2,000 km without the mid-course updates. According to the official
NPO Yuzhnoye history, Yangel's design was approved on 13 February 1953 by the
Council of Ministers of the USSR. However, another source reports that the approval was granted on 13 August 1955. The first test was conducted at
Kapustin Yar in Astrakhan region, Russia, on 22 June 1957. In September 1958,
Nikita Khrushchev personally visited Kapustin Yar to witness the launch of R-12, as well as its competitor, the R-5M. The latter had already been accepted into deployment at the time. The R-12 launch was a success and the next month, mass production of the vehicle started at Yuzhmash (
Pivdenmash) in Dnepropetrovsk. Test launches continued until December and demonstrated a maximum error of 2.3 km. For the work on R-12, on 1 July 1959, OKB-586 received the
Order of Lenin, while the
Hero of Socialist Labor (the highest industrial award) was awarded to Yangel, Smirnov and Budnik.
Deployment , Lithuania. Construction date visible The R-12 missile was introduced into the inventory on 4 March 1959 according to Russian sources, though Western intelligence believed that an initial operational capability was reached in late 1958. The first public display of this system was in November 1960, and they were deployed to
Cuba in October 1962 during the
Cuban Missile Crisis. The first five regiments with surface-based R-12 missiles were put on alert in May 1960, while the first regiment of silo-based missiles was placed on alert in January 1963. Their reaction time was assessed by the West at one to three hours in the normal soft-site readiness condition, and five to fifteen minutes in the normal hard-site readiness condition. The allowable hold time in a highly alert condition (reaction time equals three to five minutes) was long—many hours for soft sites, and days for hard sites. The R-12 and R-12U missiles reached their maximum operational launcher inventory of 608 in 1964–66. Some soft-site phase-out began in 1968, with some hard-site phase-out beginning in 1972. In 1978 their phase out and replacement with mobile ground-launched
RSD-10 Pioneer missiles began.
Further development Efforts to create a railway based version of the R-12 missile were suspended, but work then started on a silo-launched version. An underground launch complex, code-named Mayak-2 (Beacon-2), was constructed in Kapustin Yar. In September 1959 the R-12 took off from the silo complex for the first time. In May 1960 the development of a new R-12 missile designated as R-12U was begun. The R-12U was designed to be used with both surface launchers and silos. The silo-launch complex of the R-12U missile comprised four launchers and was designated as "Dvina" (; )". The testing phase of the missile and the launch complex lasted from December 1961 until December 1963. The R-12 was also used during the development of the V-1000
anti-ballistic missile, serving as a target. During a series of tests two R-12s detonated their warheads in the upper atmosphere in order to test radar systems. A follow-on test planned to launch an R-12 from Kapustin Yar while two
R-9s from
Tyuratam would fly into the area, but only the R-12 launched successfully.
Elimination The
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was signed in December 1987 and entered into force in June 1988. The fundamental purpose of the INF Treaty was to eliminate and ban US and Soviet ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles, as well as associated support equipment, with ranges between 500 and 5500 kilometers. Elimination of R-12 and
R-14 Chusovaya missiles and components took place at the Lesnaya Missile Elimination Facility. The last of the 149 Soviet R-12 missiles was eliminated at Lesnaya in May 1990. == Space launcher variants ==