RT-23 Molodets

RT-23
RT-23 at the Varshavsky Rail Terminal, St.Petersburg, Home of the Oktyabrskaya Railway Museum, Russia
Type	ICBM
Place of origin	USSR
Service history
In service	1987-2004
Production history
Manufacturer	Yuzhnoye Design Bureau
Specifications
Weight	104,500 kg (230,400 lb)
Length	23.40 m (76.8 ft)
Diameter	2.41 m (7 ft 11 in)
Warhead	10 MIRV nuclear warheads of 350-550 kt
Operational range	11,000 km (6,800 mi)
Launch platform	Silo or railway

The RT-23 (NATO reporting name SS-24 Scalpel) РТ-23 УТТХ «Мо́лодец» was a Soviet ICBM developed and produced before 1991 by the Yuzhnoye Design Bureau In Dnepropetrovsk, Soviet Ukraine. It is cold-launched, and comes in silo– and railway-car–based variants. It is a three-stage missile that uses solid fuel and thrust vectoring for the first stage, with 10 MIRV warheads, each with a 550–kt yield.

The missile was the culmination of a major Soviet effort to develop a medium solid-fueled missile with multiple basing modes: silo-based and rail-based versions were deployed, and a road-mobile version was considered but rejected. This made for a much more survivable ICBM, as the rail-based missiles could move around the rail network and thus be difficult to detect and track. The new missile was to replace the older liquid-fueled SS-19 missiles which were entirely silo-based. Its US counterpart was the MX missile.

The missile was tested through the 1980s and began to be deployed in 1987. Its production facilities were located in Ukraine. After the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, Ukraine had no interest in producing ICBMs, so the production of the missile came to an end. A typical missile launch train was composed of three M62-class locomotives (a standard diesel electric locomotive of the period), followed by generating power car, command car, support car, and three missile launch vehicles, forming a nine-car set. The lead locomotive was driven by three officers, and the two immediately following engines were driven by two enlisted personnel each. The missile launcher has the shape of a refrigerator car, and the service cars are converted passenger carriages.