RSD-10 Pioneer - Development

Development

It was intended to replace, or augment, the R-12 Dvina (SS-4 Sandal) and R-14 Chusovaya (SS-5 Skean) missiles deployed from 1958 and 1961 respectively in the USSR and Warsaw Pact states. It entered the development stage in 1966 and a design concept was approved in 1968 and the task given to the Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology and Alexander Nadiradze. Flight testing began in 1974 and deployment commenced on March 11, 1976, with the first supplied units becoming operational in August of that year. Up to 1986 a total of 48 launch sites, including a site at Pavschino, were equipped with 405 RSD-10 missiles under control of the Strategic Rocket Forces.

There were several theories as to why the Soviet Union developed the SS-20:

• Some in the United States such as Richard Perle saw the SS-20 as a part of a bid for global power on the part of the Soviet Union.
• Another popular theory held that the SALT treaties, by placing quantitative limits on long-range missiles, had encouraged the Soviets to place more emphasis on medium-range missiles, which were not covered by SALT.
• Another theory held that the SS-20 was the "son" of the failed SS-16 ICBM project. Following the failure of the SS-16, the Soviets simply used the technology and parts that been developed for the SS-16 for the SS-20.
• Others argued that the SS-20 was part of an attempt on the part of the Soviet military to develop a more sophisticated nuclear strategy that did not call for an all out nuclear first strike as soon as World War III began by giving the Soviets a second strike capability that they had previously lacked.

During the 1960s, Soviet missile procurement was dominated by the ideas of Defence Minister, Marshal Andrei Grechko who was opposed to the idea of nuclear weapons as a weapon of last resort, and planned that if World War III began to begin that conflict with an immediate nuclear strike on the NATO nations. By the early 1970s, Grechko's views had caused opposition within the military and the political leadership, who wanted the Soviet Union to have a second strike capacity in order to prevent a war with the United States from going nuclear immediately as Grechko preferred. More importantly, the increasing influence of Marshal Dmitriy Ustinov heralded a shift in Soviet thinking about nuclear weapons. Ustinov was a man closely connected with the various Soviet design bureaus, and who generally sided with demands of the design bureaus against the military regarding weapons procurement. The decision to order and introduce the Pioneer in the mid-1970s was in large part due to Ustoinov's wishes to shift military procurement out of the hands of the military into the design bureaus, who in turn pressed for more and varied weapons as a way of increasing orders. The British historian James Cant wrote that it was the triumph of the Soviet version of the military-industrial complex over the military as regarding weapons procurement that was the most important reason for the Pioneer.