ITAR-TASS,
MOSCOW: The first cruise missile-armed Iskander launchers will enter duty in 2009, the chief of the Russian Armed Forces’ rocket and artillery troops, Colonel-General Vladimir Zaritsky, said on Wednesday at a meeting with mass media on the occasion of Rocket and Artillery Troops Day, to be marked on November 19.
“Cruise missiles are being tested, I am satisfied with the progress and I am certain that the task of providing enough launchers armed with cruise missiles will be coped with on time,” Zaritsky said. “The military-industrial commission under the Russian government has set 2009 as the deadline.”
He speculated the supplies of Iskander launchers and rockets to Belarus might prove an asymmetric response to the deployment of US missile defense components in Europe.
“Why not? This may be possible, on certain conditions, and if there is a corresponding position taken by Belarus,” Zaritsky said in the wake of a statement by his Belarussian counterpart Mikhail Puzikov to the effect there were plans for re-arming his country’s rocket brigade with the Russian missile launchers Iskander-E.
“For every action there’s a reaction. The same is true of the components of a US missile defense in the Czech Republic and in Poland,” General Zaritsky said.
He recalled that Russian missile forces maintained close cooperation with their Belarussian counterparts.
“There is a common task and we are prepared to work with them,” he added.
About the role the Iskander complex might play in Russia Zaritsky said that once on duty, that military technology would compensate for the losses from compliance with the US-Soviet INF treaty, by which all of the Soviet Union’s intermediate and shorter-range missiles had been blasted out of existence in controlled explosions.
“We had the Oka launcher, unparalleled in the world. It was eliminated and for a long time we have had no weapon with a range of 300-500 kilometers,” Zaritsky recalled. “The Iskander rocket launchers are beginning to plug this hole.”
Zaritsky said that under the state program for armaments the new missile launcher Iskander will be used to re-arm five missile brigades of the Russian armed forces by 2016.
“This year the Iskander launchers went operational at the missile brigade of the North Caucasus military district. One battalion has been fully re-equipped. In 2008 the complex will be provided for another brigade,” General Zaritsky said.
The Russian Defense Ministry will be building up the Iskander complex’ s combat capabilities, he promised.
“Currently Iskander matches all clauses of the INF treaty that eliminated intermediate and shorter range missiles, but if a political decision is made to walk out of that treaty, we shall be building up the combat capabilities of that complex, including its range of fire,” Zaritsky said.
He recalled statements by the Russian leadership to the effect that if the INF treaty failed to acquire the universal dimension, and if no countries agreed to join in, Russia would find it hard to keep complying with its terms further on.
Zaritsky said the Iskander launcher had a vast upgrade potential, including the possibility of increasing the range of fire beyond 500 kilometers.
“Who knows what the nation may need some day,” Zaritsky said, when asked by Itar-Tass, if it was possible to increase the range of fire beyond the 500-kilometer limit set by the INF treaty.
On May 29, 2007 Russia test-fired an R-500 cruise missile with a range of 500 kilometers designed especially for the Iskander launcher. The launch was carried out at the Kapustin Yar test site in the Astrakhan Region, in the lower reaches of the Volga River. First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov then reported to President Vladimir Putin “a second phase of creating an upgraded version of Iskander is underway.”
The Iskander-M launcher is manufactured at the Kolomna-based Design Bureau of Machine-Building. Its mission is to attack small-size and spotlike targets. It is capable of acting in combination with space-based reconnaissance means and unmanned reconnaissance aircraft and attacking targets in real-time mode. The range of fire is 50 to 280 kilometers. Each launcher carries two rockets, capable of taking a 480-kilogram cluster warhead towards the target with a high degree of accuracy.
The unique homing and control system guarantees exceptional accuracy along the rocket’s entire path of flight. The range of fire allows for using the launcher from areas away from the frontline, and the extremely short time-span the complex spends at the launching position and the powerful set of means of penetrating the enemy’s anti-missile defense make Iskander practically invulnerable to ordinary counter-weapons.
The rocket is capable of carrying to the target a variety of warheads, including cluster, piercing, high-explosive and fragmentation-type warheads.
The launcher consists of the rocket proper, a self-propelled launcher, a rocket transportation and loading vehicle, the command and control vehicle, a mobile information processing center, mobile logistic and support units and sets of arsenal and training equipment.
The single-stage single-nozzle rocket is controlled in flight by air- and gas-dynamic stabilizers.
The ability to carry two rockets is the launcher’s key feature.
The export variety of the launcher complex is codenamed Iskander-E.
First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said on May 29 Russia would be exporting the Iskander rocket launchers having a range of no more than 300 kilometers. For itself it will build those with a greater range.
“Under its international liabilities Russia will certainly not violate it is permissible to sell rockets with a range under 300 kilometers. As for what is to be made for its own armed forces is a totally different matter,” he said.
