The new geopolitical situation makes Russian military structures change the strategy and tactics of potential defense, as well as their arms. More than two years ago Washington planned to deploy 14 intercept missiles in Alaska and the second RLS in Japan, to deploy intercept missiles in Romania and Poland.
The Commander of the Strategic Missile Forces advisor, Colonel-General Viktor Yesin, told journalists that the process of upgrading the Strategic Missile Forces, which are now armed with the 'Topol' missile complex, the mobile missile complexes 'Yars' and its modification 'Yars-M' will be completed before the end of 2021.
Speaking about the history of 'Topol', Yesin said: “The ballistic missile 'Topol' was created in the 1980s by Soviet design subcontractors and industrial companies, headed by the Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology, which in those years was headed by renowned academicians Alexander Davidovich Nadiradze and Boris Nikolayevych Lagutin. Testing of this missile system with conduction of the missile tests was carried out at the 53rd scientific test site Plesetsk in the Arkhangelsk region. Today it is the first state spaceport. The first phase of testing was completed in early 1985, the adoption of a missile system in the so-called divisional embodiment, when a part of the division-propelled launchers, speaking loosely, were tied to the mobile command post regiment division. Due to the fact that they were missing their own sets of automated command and control system. The missile regiment was armed with precisely this missile system, which was taken up to combat duty on July 23, 1985.
The second stage of testing of the missile complex ‘Topol’ ended in 1988 with the adoption of its version with autonomous launchers. Each launcher is equipped with its own set of automated system of command control, which allowed it to act on its own, apart from the mobile command post of the division. Thus the opportunities of the regiment of occupation of the dispersed battle order were significantly increased. As a result, the order of magnitude and stealth action and persistence of autonomous launchers increased.
The deployment of the Topol missile complex was carried out in Soviet times on the territories of the Russian Federation, unless someone forgot the name, and the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. But after the collapse in late 1991 of the Soviet Union, all 9 missile regiments, which were on the territory of Belarus, in the areas near the cities of Mozyr, Lida, Postavy, went to Russia. The Topol missile complex reached the peak of its development in 1999. Then, as part of a total of 10 missile divisions there were 360 launchers of this complex,” Yesin said.
Seven missile divisions of 12 are armed with the Topol missile system that are available in the battle division of the Strategic Rocket Forces. It is affected by two factors: the first one is related to the number of contractor groups as part of the Strategic Rocket Forces of Russia's obligations under treaties with the United States on the reduction and limitation of strategic offensive arms. The second factor is not political, but technical. It is due to the expiration of the terms of the operation of strategic offensive arms ‘Topol’ and as a consequence of the re-divisions, which are armed with the complex on the new road-mobile missile complexes ‘Topol-M’ and the ‘Yars’, developed on the basis of design and technological reserve, which has been obtained during the creation of a missile complex ‘Topol’.
The process of upgrading to the Yars mobile missile system now goes in Novosibirsk and Nizhny Tagil at the missile divisions. In these divisions head shelves already are on combat duty, and by the end of this year they will be added to the Novosibirsk division in one regiment, two regiments of the division of Nizhny Tagil. This year we started to conduct preparatory work on upgrading to the mobile missile system in the Yoshkarolinsky and Yakut missile divisions.
“The whole process of re-missile divisions, which are now armed with missile complex ‘Topol’, on the Yars mobile missile system and its modifications Yars-M that is sometimes called ‘Frontier’ with a missile RS-26 is scheduled for completion in 2021. By this time the Topol missile complex will have been permanently withdrawn from service,” Yesin said.
