A-35 anti-ballistic missile system
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The A-35 anti-ballistic missile system was a
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, ...
military
anti-ballistic missile An anti-ballistic missile (ABM) is a surface-to-air missile designed to counter ballistic missiles (missile defense). Ballistic missiles are used to deliver nuclear weapon, nuclear, Chemical weapon, chemical, Bioagent, biological, or conventiona ...
(ABM) system deployed around
Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...
to intercept enemy
ballistic missile A ballistic missile is a type of missile that uses projectile motion to deliver warheads on a target. These weapons are guided only during relatively brief periods—most of the flight is unpowered. Short-range ballistic missiles stay within the ...
s targeting the city or its surrounding areas. The A-35 was the only Soviet ABM system allowed under the 1972
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty or ABMT) (1972–2002) was an arms control treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union on the limitation of the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems used in defending areas against ballis ...
. In development as of the 1960s and in operation from June 1972 until the 1990s, it featured the nuclear-armed
A350 The Airbus A350 is a long-range, wide-body twin-engine jet airliner developed and produced by Airbus. The first A350 design proposed by Airbus in 2004, in response to the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, would have been a development of the A330 w ...
exoatmospheric The exosphere ( grc, ἔξω "outside, external, beyond", grc, σφαῖρα "sphere") is a thin, atmosphere-like volume surrounding a planet or natural satellite where molecules are gravitationally bound to that body, but where the densit ...
interceptor missile. The A-35 was supported by two
Dunay radar Dunay radar ( rus, Дунай, Dunay literally Danube; NATO: Cat House, Dog House) was a system of two Soviet radars used to detect American ballistic missiles fired at Moscow. They were part of the A-35 anti-ballistic missile system. One sector ...
s (
NATO reporting names NATO reporting names are code names for military equipment from Russia, China, and historically, the Eastern Bloc (Soviet Union and other nations of the Warsaw Pact). They provide unambiguous and easily understood English words in a uniform ma ...
: Cat House and Dog House) and the Soviet early warning system. It was followed by the A-135 in the early 1990s.


System A

The first Soviet anti-ballistic missile system was System A, which began development at Sary Shagan's Test Range A in July 1956, followed by testing starting in 1959. System A used the V-1000 missile to intercept enemy missiles. First launch of the V-1000 took place on 11 October 1957; its first successful intercept occurred on 4 March 1961, when it intercepted an R-12 missile launched from the
Kapustin Yar Kapustin Yar (russian: Капустин Яр) is a Russian rocket launch complex in Astrakhan Oblast, about 100 km east of Volgograd. It was established by the Soviet Union on 13 May 1946. In the beginning, Kapustin Yar used technology, material ...
site. System A used the Dunay-2 radar designed by V Sosulnikov at NII-37 (which later became
NIIDAR The NIIDAR company, the ''Scientific and Research Institute for Long-Distance Radio Communications'' (russian: Научно-исследовательский институт дальней радиосвязи) is a Russian manufacturer of radar ...
), in addition to three homing radars and an RSV-PR ABM radar (NATO: Hen Nest). The three homing radars (called RTN; NATO name Hen Egg)) were situated in an equilateral triangle with a length of . The system could track missiles from a distance of about . The V-1000 launcher and the ABM radar were located together. The system used an M-40 computer which could perform 40,000 operations per second.


A-35

Work on the A-35 system first started in 1959 with a test model called Aldan. The system's designer was Gregory Kisunko of Soviet Experimental Design Bureau
OKB-30 Bratukhin, or OKB-3, was a Soviet aircraft design bureau created in 1940 from within TsAGI to develop helicopters. Headed by Ivan Pavlovich Bratukhin, the bureau built several experimental helicopters over the next decade. Each model had the same ba ...
. A new missile, called the A-350, was to be designed by P. Grushin of OKB-2. Unlike the V-1000, the missile was to have a nuclear warhead. The design of the system called for it to be able to intercept several hostile incoming missiles simultaneously with a single warhead. It was also to intercept them outside the atmosphere. The A-35 was to have a main command centre, eight early warning radars with overlapping sectors, and 32 battle stations. Installation work on the A-35 began in 1965, but by 1967 only the test version at Sary Shagan was ready. Awareness of the system's flaws, including its inability to handle
MIRV A multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) is an exoatmospheric ballistic missile payload containing several warheads, each capable of being aimed to hit a different target. The concept is almost invariably associated with in ...
s, was part of the reason a 1967 Ministry of Defence commission decided against fully implementing the A-35. Its eight radars were reduced to the two on which construction had already started: Dunay-3 at Akulovo (Kubinka), also known by the NATO reporting name Dog House, and Dunay-3U at Chekhov (NATO name Cat House). In 1971, a version of the A-35 was tested with the main command centre, one radar and three battle stations. The command centre was located at the same site as the Dunay-3 radar. In 1974, a version was tested with the main command (equipped with a 5E92 computer) and four of the eight battle stations. Each battle station had two tracking radars, two battle management radars and sixteen A-350 missiles. Only four of the eight battle stations were ever completed. Each battle station had two areas with eight missiles each. Each area had three radars, which were called TRY ADD by NATO.


A-35M

Testing of the A35-M system began in 1977. It was a slightly modified version, using A-350R instead of A-350Zh missiles. In 1971, work started on the next generation of ABM systems: the A135. Building of the
Don-2N The Don-2N radar (, NATO: Pill Box) is a large missile defense and early warning active electronically scanned array radar outside Moscow, and a key part of the Russian A-135 anti-ballistic missile system designed for the defense of the capital ...
radar started in 1978, and the replacement system was placed on combat duty in 1995. A 1985 note from the archives of Vitalii Leonidovich Kataev states that the A-35M system was capable of intercepting "a single ballistic missile from some directions and up to 6
Pershing II The Pershing II Weapon System was a solid-fuel rocket, solid-fueled multistage rocket, two-stage medium-range ballistic missile designed and built by Martin Marietta to replace the Pershing 1a Field Artillery Missile System as the United States ...
-type missiles from the
FRG FRG may refer to: * Family Readiness Group in the United States Army * Federal Republic of Germany ** West Germany * FMN reductase (NAD(P)H) * Friendship Radiosport Games * Functional renormalization group * Guatemalan Republican Front The Insti ...
".


References


Further reading

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External links


Globalsecurity.org on the A-35 anti-ballistic missile system

Photo of a launch of an A-350 missile
{{DEFAULTSORT:A-35 Anti-Ballistic Missile System Anti-ballistic missiles of the Soviet Union Cold War surface-to-air missiles of the Soviet Union Cold War military equipment of the Soviet Union Missile defense Surface-to-air missiles of Russia Surface-to-air missiles of the Soviet Union Science and technology in the Soviet Union Military equipment introduced in the 1970s it:ABM-1 Galosh