The nuclear train. Nuclear combat railway missile system (BZHRK, train-ghost). RT-23 UTTKh

Among the variety of strategic start-up systems in the arsenal of the world's leading countries, the combat railway missile system (abbreviated as BZRK) is experiencing a second birth today. This is facilitated by a number of reasons, but before touching them, let us consider what this development of the modern defense industry is. In the meantime, we will try to find out what happened to the nuclear trains of past years.

What is BZHRK?

First of all, this is a train, in carriages of which passengers are not hurrying to rest or on business trips, and not cargoes expected at different ends of the country, but deadly missiles, equipped with nuclear warheads for greater effectiveness of their attacks. Their number varies depending on the size of the complex.

However, there are also passengers - this is the technical personnel serving the combat railway missile system, as well as units whose task is to protect it. Part of the wagons is designed to accommodate all sorts of technological and other systems for the successful launch of missiles and the destruction of targets anywhere in the world.

Since such a railroad train stuffed with a deadly cargo is akin to a warship, it is often given a name, which is then used as a proper name. For example, 15P961 "Good". If the first part of the title is not quite comfortable in pronunciation, and it will not be remembered immediately, the second part is quite harmonious and familiar to the ear. She even wants to add the word "kind", but in relation to the complex, capable in a few minutes to destroy the average European state, this adjective is hardly acceptable.

Dozens of "Well done" on guard of the Motherland

Such dashing "Well done" in the period from 1987 to 1994 in our country was twelve. All of them stood on the alert duty of the Strategic Missile Forces and, besides the main name, had one more, which was met only in the technical documentation - RT 23 UTTKh. Over the next few years, they were removed one by one from their weapons, dismantled, so that by 2007 only two of them remained in the museum of the Russian Armed Forces.

By the way, RT 23 UTTK became the only complex in the Soviet Union that was put into serial production. The development of such combat systems was conducted for several decades, but only in the eighties they were brought to the stage that allowed them to be adopted. To maintain the secrecy of this type of train, the symbol "train number zero" was given.

American developments in the same field

It is known that during the Cold War foreign, in particular American designers, also worked on the creation of trains carrying nuclear death in their cars. As a result of the successful activity of Soviet intelligence, as well as the veils of secrecy surrounding all that was associated with the defense industry, in those years the general reader was much more aware of their developments than of the achievements of domestic gunsmiths.

What did our brave "Stirlitzes" report in their reports? Thanks to them, it is known that in the early sixties the first solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile appeared in the United States , called Minuteman. In comparison with its predecessors, working on liquid fuels, it had a number of significant advantages. First of all, there was no need for pre-start fueling, in addition, its resistance to shaking and vibration, inevitably encountered during transportation, increased significantly.

This made it possible to produce missile launches directly from moving railway platforms, and make them virtually invulnerable in the event of war. The only difficulty was that rockets could be launched only in strictly defined, specially prepared places, since their guidance system was tied to pre-calculated coordinates.

America in the rays of the "Big Star"

A major breakthrough that allowed the creation of a train with nuclear missiles in the United States was a large-scale operation, carried out in 1961, under the secret name "Big Star". As part of this event, trains, which were prototypes of the future missile system, moved across the entire network of railways in the country.

The aim of the exercises was to test their mobility and the possibility of maximum dispersal across the United States. Upon completion of the operation, its results were summarized, and on their basis a train was constructed, the nuclear arsenal of which consisted of five Minuteman missiles.

Rejection of an already completed project

However, this development was not destined to adopt. Initially, it was assumed that in 1962, the country's defense industry would produce thirty such trains, armed with a total of one hundred and fifty rockets. But after the completion of the design work, the project cost was considered excessively high, and as a result, it was abandoned.

At that time, the silo launchers of solid fuel minutemen were recognized as more efficient, and they were preferred. Their indisputable advantage was low cost, as well as sufficiently reliable protection against Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles, which in those years did not have the accuracy required to destroy them.

As a result, the project, over which American engineers worked during the whole of 1961, was closed, and already established railroad trains were used to transport the same Minutemen from the shops of the manufacturers' factories to the bases where their mine deployment was carried out.

The latest developments in the US

A new impetus to the creation in America of train trains capable of carrying nuclear weapons was the appearance in 1986 of a heavy intercontinental rocket of the new generation LGM-118A, also known under its shorter name MX.

By that time, the striking ability of Soviet missiles, designed to defeat enemy launchers, had increased significantly. In this regard, special attention was paid to the security of MX deployment.

After a long debate between supporters of the traditional mine deployment and their opponents, a compromise was reached, as a result of which fifty missiles were placed in mines, and as many on platforms of a new specially prepared for this purpose composition.

However, this development did not have a future. In the early nineties, thanks to the democratic changes that took place in our country, the cold war was over, and the program to create railroad nuclear complexes, having lost its relevance, was closed. Currently, such developments are not being conducted and, apparently, for the next few years are not planned.

New development of KB "Yuzhnoye"

However, we will return to our homeland. Now it is no longer a military secret that the first nuclear train of the USSR began to be created in accordance with the order of the Ministry of Defense, signed in January 1969. The development of this unique project was entrusted to the design bureau "Yuzhnoye", in which two remarkable Soviet scientists - academicians, siblings Alexey Fedorovich and Vladimir Fedorovich Utkin, worked at that time . They led the work on a new project.

According to the general plan, they created 15P961 "Good for BZHRK" (combat railway missile system) intended to deliver a retaliatory strike to the enemy, as his mobility and increased vitality allowed to hope that he could survive in the event of a sudden nuclear attack by the enemy. The only place where the missiles required for his rigging were made was the Mechanical Plant in Pavlograd. This most important strategic object was hidden in those years under the faceless signboard of Yuzhmash.

Difficulties encountered in the way of developers

In his memoirs, V. F. Utkin wrote that the task posed to them was fraught with enormous difficulties. They consisted mainly in the fact that the complex had to move along ordinary railroad tracks, along with other trains, and in fact the weight of even one missile, together with its launcher, was one hundred and fifty tons.

Before the creators of the project there was a lot of unsolvable problems at first sight. For example, how to place a rocket in a railway car and how to give it a vertical position at the right moment? How to ensure safety during transportation, when it comes to nuclear charges? Will the enormous load created during the passage of the train, stand the standard rails, railway embankments and bridges? Finally, will the train stand at the moment of launching the missile? For all these and many other questions designers had to find exhaustive and unambiguous answers.

Trains-ghosts and those who controlled them

The next year the train, whose nuclear arsenal consisted of rockets of the type 15Ж61, was tested in various climatic regions of the country - from the deserts of Central Asia to the polar latitudes. Eighteen times he went to the railways of the country, having done a total of half a million kilometers and making at the Plesetsk cosmodrome battle launches of his missiles.

Following the first composition, designated in the motion chart under the number zero, his twins also appeared. As the tests went on, each such ghost train got on combat duty in one of the country's missile regiments. Serving his staff consisted of seventy soldiers.

Civilians were not allowed. Even the places of the drivers and their assistants were occupied by ensigns and officers specially trained to drive the train. The nuclear charge of the missiles was under the vigilant supervision of specialists. By the beginning of 1991 in the USSR there were already three missile divisions, which were armed with railway missile systems.

They constituted a powerful nuclear fist, capable, if necessary, of crushing any enemy. Suffice it to say that each such division possessed twelve railway convoys carrying nuclear missiles. In those years, the Ministry of Defense of the USSR did a great job. Within a radius of 1,500 kilometers from the locations of the regiments, standard railroad tracks were replaced by heavier ones capable of withstanding a missile train, whose nuclear cargo required additional precautions.

Temporary suspension of BZHRK programs

Significant changes in the patrolling routes of the BZHRK were made after the meeting of Mikhail Gorbachev and Margaret Thatcher, held in 1991. Since that time, according to the reached agreement, not a single ghost train has left the place of its permanent deployment, remaining, nevertheless, in the ranks as a stationary combat unit. As a result of a number of agreements signed in subsequent years, Russia was obliged to remove all missiles based on railway trains, thereby abandoning this type of strategic weapons.

Barguzin (BZHRK)

However, it is at least premature to speak of Russia's complete refusal from missile systems installed on railway trains. At the end of 2013, the media reported that in response to a number of American weapons programs in our country, work on the creation of missile-carrying trains is resuming.

In particular, it was a question of a new development, carried out on an advanced technological basis, called "Barguzin" (BZHRK). For all its parameters and purpose, it does not fall under the list of limitations set by the international START III treaty, and therefore its production does not conflict with the norms of international law.

According to available data, a missile carrying a nuclear charge and equipped with a separating head is planned to be placed in a car disguised as a standard rail refrigerator having a length of twenty-four meters.

The Barguzin complex is supposed to be equipped with missiles of the Yars type, formerly based on tractors. The advantage of the railway deployment in this case is quite obvious. If ground installations are easily detected from space, then this BZHRK system is indistinguishable from a conventional freight train, even on closer inspection. In addition, the movement of the railway missile system is several times cheaper than the ground one, based on tractors of various types.

Advantages and disadvantages of BZHRK

Concluding the conversation about the railway missile systems, it is appropriate to dwell on the generally recognized advantages and disadvantages of this type of weapons. Among its undeniable advantages, experts note the high mobility of the rolling stock, capable of changing the dislocation, to overcome a day to thousands of kilometers, which many times exceeds the similar indicators of tractors. In addition, it should take into account the high load capacity of the train, capable of carrying hundreds of tons at the same time.

But we can not discount the inherent disadvantages. Among them, it is necessary to highlight the complexity with the camouflage of the train, caused by the peculiarities of its configuration, which simplifies the detection of the composition with the help of modern satellite reconnaissance means. In addition, compared to the starting mines, the train is less protected from the impact of the blast wave. In the case of a nuclear explosion, produced somewhere in the vicinity, it can be damaged or overturned.

And, finally, the essential disadvantage of using the rolling stock as a carrier of missile systems is the inevitable wear of the railroad in such cases, which prevents further exploitation of both the BZHRK and conventional trains. However, modern technologies make it possible to successfully solve most of the above problems, and thereby open the prospect of further development and modernization of missile-carrying trains.