9K720 Iskander - History

History

In 1996, the first launch of the Iskander was depicted on Russian television. The road-mobile Iskander was the second attempt to replace the Scud missile since the first attempt, the Oka, was eliminated under the INF Treaty. The Iskander appeared to have several different conventional warheads, including a cluster munitions warhead, a fuel-air explosive enhanced-blast warhead, an earth penetrator for bunker busting and an electro-magnetic pulse device for anti-radar missions.

In September 2004, at a meeting with senior defense officials reporting to then-President Vladimir Putin on the drafting of a defense budget for 2005, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov spoke about the completion of static tests of a new tactical missile system called the Iskander. He said that in 2005, the system would go into quantity production and toward the end of that year, Russia would have a brigade armed with it.

In March 2005, a source in the Russian defence industry told Interfax-AVN the development of new missiles with a range of 500–600 km, based on existing Iskander-E tactical missile systems, was a possibility. He said, however, that it "may take up to five or six years".

In 2006, serial production of the Iskander-M Tactical Ballistic Missile System launched, and the system was adopted by the Russian army.