Towards the end of the Soviet Union, the USSR put intercontinental ballistic missiles on trains. Their Soviet name was RT-23 but the U.S. referred to them as the SS-23 Scalpel. Each missile was seventy-seven feet long and carried ten five-hundred and fifty kiloton multiple-reentry warheads. The trains were referred to as Moldets. The first became operational in 1987. The Soviets ultimately deployed twelve of these trains. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Russians entered into the START II treaty with the U.S. and all of the Moldets were decommissioned.
In 2013, the Russian military announced that they were going to create a new generation of rail-mobile ICBMs. These trains would carry the more sophisticated RS-24 Yars missiles. The RS-24 has about the same range as the older RS-23 but is ten feet shorter and half the weight as the RS-23. The RS-24 can also be mounted on a truck and driven around. The intent is to have these mobile missiles constantly roaming around Russia, ready to stop and launch their missiles on demand. The new project was referred to as “Barguzin” and Russia said that the new trains would be ready for testing by 2019.
The benefit of these mobile launchers is that they can travel around Russia and blend in with the regular rail and truck traffic. This makes them much harder to locate and target that missiles that in silos. More U.S. missiles would be required to destroy them which means the there would be fewer missiles for fixed targets.
In 2012, a Russian general had said that they were developing the Barguzin because the U.S. Prompt Global Strike (PGS) program. Part of that program involves the development of hypersonic weapons that can quickly reach any part of the globe. The PGS program still exists and one hundred and eighty million dollars was spent on it in 2017.
In 2015, according to the Rossiyskaya Gazeta, there were tests of part of the Barguzin program. In December of 2017, the Russian government stated that it was going to suspend the Barguzin project because the project was too expensive. Some analysts said that the Russians were never really serious about the Barguzin program and that it was just part of their misinformation and propaganda.
Whether the Russians were serious about Barguzin or not, it is true that mobile missiles are much more expensive that missiles in silos. During periods of peace, the Barguzin program would have required an expensive network of bases where the missiles and launchers could be stored and maintained. The missiles would have to remain in storage under the terms of international arms treaties, so any enemy would know exactly where they were.
In the event of a war, there would have to be major security detachments of troops to guard the mobile launchers as they moved around Russia. And, in the end, the launchers would still be somewhere on the rail system of Russia which would make them easier to locate. Hypersonic missiles travel so rapidly that it is questionable whether or not the missile trains would be able to even make it out of their storage locations before the hypersonic missiles reached them.
While Russia may have cancelled the Barguzin program, they have said that if circumstances require it, the trains and missiles could be quickly reactivated and deployed. Let us hope that circumstances never require it.
RS-24 Yars missile mounted on mobile carrier:
