The ''Burya'' ("Storm" in Russian; russian: Буря) was a supersonic, intercontinental

cruise missile A cruise missile is a guided missile used against terrestrial or naval targets that remains in the atmosphere and flies the major portion of its flight path at approximately constant speed. Cruise missiles are designed to deliver a large warhe ...

, developed by the

Lavochkin NPO Lavochkin (russian: НПО Лавочкина, OKB-301, also called Lavochkin Research and Production Association or shortly Lavochkin Association, LA) is a Russian aerospace company. It is a major player in the Russian space program, being th ...

design bureau (chief designer Naum Semyonovich Chernyakov) under designation La-350 from 1954 until the program cancellation in February 1960. The request for proposal issued by the

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

government in 1954, called for a cruise missile capable of delivering a nuclear payload to the United States. Analogous developments in the United States were the

SM-62 Snark The Northrop SM-62 Snark is an early-model intercontinental range ground-launched cruise missile that could carry a W39 thermonuclear warhead. The Snark was deployed by the United States Air Force's Strategic Air Command from 1958 through 1961 ...

and

SM-64 Navaho The North American SM-64 Navaho was a supersonic intercontinental cruise missile project built by North American Aviation (NAA). The final design was capable of delivering a nuclear weapon to the USSR from bases within the US, while cruising at ...

cruise missiles, particularly the latter, which used parallel technology and had similar performance goals.

Development

The first steps towards development of Burya was the idea of

Mstislav Vsevolodovich Keldysh Mstislav Vsevolodovich Keldysh (russian: Мстисла́в Все́володович Ке́лдыш; – 24 June 1978) was a Soviet mathematician who worked as an engineer in the Soviet space program. He was the academician of the Academy o ...

Keldysh bomber The Keldysh bomber was a Soviet design for a rocket-powered sub-orbital bomber spaceplane, which drew heavily upon work carried out by Eugen Sänger and Irene Bredt for the German Silbervogel project. Development During the closing weeks of W ...

. The Burya was planned as a Mach 3 intercontinental nuclear

ramjet A ramjet, or athodyd (aero thermodynamic duct), is a form of airbreathing jet engine that uses the forward motion of the engine to produce thrust. Since it produces no thrust when stationary (no ram air) ramjet-powered vehicles require an ass ...

cruise missile. The Burya was remarkably advanced for its time, and despite setbacks and several crashes, the vehicle demonstrated a range in excess of 6,000 km with a

thermonuclear Thermonuclear fusion is the process of atomic nuclei combining or “fusing” using high temperatures to drive them close enough together for this to become possible. There are two forms of thermonuclear fusion: ''uncontrolled'', in which the re ...

(hydrogen) bomb-sized payload at speeds greater than Mach 3. The Burya had a two-stage design - the daring concept for an intercontinental missile was the second stage, which was powered by a

engine at its operational speed of Mach 3. This varied from the original Trommsdorff concept of World War II in that no mother aircraft launch preceded the rocket boosted phase. The first stage was a ballistic-rocket-derived

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, which accelerated the Burya to altitude and the speed necessary to ignite its ramjet engine: a ramjet does not operate below subsonic speeds, and to use a hybrid jet-ramjet to broaden its operating speed would have been more complex. Successful tests were achieved after official cancellation of the project, when it continued as a technology demonstration. It was a casualty, like the USAF Navaho, of the greater simplicity and relative invulnerability to interception of

intercontinental ballistic missile An intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is a ballistic missile with a range greater than , primarily designed for nuclear weapons delivery (delivering one or more thermonuclear warheads). Conventional, chemical, and biological weapons c ...

s. The Burya was an early precursor to the Zvezda and Buran projects."Burya"
The guidance system was realized using an inertial system and also a star tracking system. The star tracking system located its position relative to the brightest stars through windows located on the top of stage 2. The star tracking system was more accurate for a long range flight compared to the inertial systems available at that time, even if more complex.

Specifications

General characteristics

*Function: Nuclear cruise missile *Launch mass: 96,000 kg *Total length: 19.9 m *Launch platform: Launch pad *First flight test: 1 July 1957 *Last flight test: 16 December 1960 *Number of successful launches: 14 *Number of failed launches: 3 *Status: Canceled

Launch vehicle (stage 1)

*Function: Multi-purpose launch vehicle *Engine: 2× Burya booster with S2.1150 engine *Length: 18.9 m *Diameter: 1.45 m *Thrust: 68.61 t *Oxidizer:

Nitric acid Nitric acid is the inorganic compound with the formula . It is a highly corrosive mineral acid. The compound is colorless, but older samples tend to be yellow cast due to decomposition into oxides of nitrogen. Most commercially available nitri ...

*Combustible:

Amine In chemistry, amines (, ) are compounds and functional groups that contain a basic nitrogen atom with a lone pair. Amines are formally derivatives of ammonia (), wherein one or more hydrogen atoms have been replaced by a substituen ...

Cruise missile (stage 2)

*Engine: 1× RD-012U ramjet *Cruise Speed : Mach 3.1-3.3 *Maximal speed in test: Mach 3.4-3.5 (3 700 km/h) *Range: 8000 - 8,500 km *Maximal range in test: 6,500 km *Flight altitude: 18–25,5 km *Warhead:

, 2190 kg *Length: 18.0 m *Diameter: 2.20 m *Wing span: 7.75 m *Wing area: 60 m²

References

{{Russian and Soviet military designation sequences Cruise missiles of the Cold War Nuclear cruise missiles of the Soviet Union Lavochkin Ramjet engines Abandoned military projects of the Soviet Union