Revival of Russian nuclear armored trains: Why NATO is nervous
The world community is in shock: oh-oh, this and that Russia for some reason is restoring its combat railway missile systems (BZHRK). Hopeless totalitarianism and the clampdown on freedom.
Just think, NATO has only advanced a little to the East - this is only for the benefit of democracy. Just think, the United States has withdrawn from the ABM Treaty and is building “defensive sites” for anti-missiles in Poland and Romania - they are exclusively against the missiles of the North Koreans and Iranians, which pose a threat to the “Free World”. Hello, Russia, no one and nothing threatens you, stop arming yourself!
It’s interesting that in Western social networks and on military forums, as if on cue, armchair experts started muttering and fidgeting:
– Why is Russia arming itself when everything in the world is so good and beautiful? Isn't it better to work together with Western countries to build a brave new world where there is no place for weapons of mass destruction?
– Russia has many nuclear submarines. Why does she also need some kind of “nuclear train”? These Russians have a desire to arm themselves to the teeth in their genes. They want war. Everything is bad for them, and that’s why they want to drag the entire West with them to the grave!
- “Atomic train”? This is inhumane! Russia does not think about its railway passengers! This means that any Russian passenger train now becomes a legal target. The Russians would have attached atomic bombs to passenger air and sea liners...
- It's a bluff. The Russian economy is in ruins. The Russians will now build “nuclear trains” with their last money, and then what will they eat? Raw uranium? Poor bastards...
– Russia is sending a signal: don’t interfere with it and its allies. Why did the West begin to destroy Ukraine? Do you want a new war like in Korea? I hope our military and politicians will understand everything correctly.
What bothered the inhabitants of the well-fed democratic pigsty so much?
There is not so much a legend, but unconfirmed information from authoritative sources that the topic of the BZHRK was brought up to the Soviet Union by the United States. Once upon a time in America, a railway complex was developed for the hidden transportation and launch of ballistic missiles, but the luminous Jedi did not pull off the project, wasting billions of money on it. In any case, there is not a single BZHRK in the US armed forces and is not expected.
However, according to weapons historians, the Americans are not pioneers in this matter. For the first time, the gloomy Teutonic geniuses of the Third Reich unsuccessfully tried to hoist and launch a V-2 ballistic missile onto a railway platform.
In the 50s in the USSR, the theme of railway launch pads for ballistic missiles was developed by such famous designers as Lavochkin, Korolev, Yangel, but their work at that time was not crowned with success.
So the “American partners” decided to give the Soviet comrades a pretty pig in a beautiful package: “America is building a “nuclear train,” but are you weak, Reds?”
Whether this is true or not, only the scientific and design thought of the USSR coped with the task thanks to the design team under the leadership of Academician Alexei Utkin. The problem was solved thanks to the advent of solid fuel rockets. R&D on the Molodets project began in the mid-60s, but the Molodets BZHRK was born and went on combat duty only in 1987. And immediately turned into a headache, a pain in the ass, a “terror that flies on the wings of the night” for the Pentagon.
Judge for yourself. Each “Molodets” received a cache of three Scalpel RT-23 UTTH ballistic missiles. Each missile had a range of 10 thousand km and carried a “gift” of 10 individually targetable multiple warheads with a nuclear charge of 430 kilotons of TNT. As many as 900 Hiroshima for the adversary. In total, by the beginning of the 90s, 12 BZHRKs and an unknown number of fake “well done” ones were built.
Externally, the composition of the “nuclear train” was no different from thousands of other trains traveling up and down the developed railway network of the USSR. A typical set of “Molodets” cars looked like a cargo and passenger train: mail cars, passenger cars and refrigerators. True, the cars carrying rockets had eight instead of four wheel pairs, and the train itself was pulled by three mainline diesel locomotives, but the number of wheels cannot be seen from the satellite, and heavy-duty trains in the USSR were hauled by three-section locomotives - go and figure out which train is where passed.
And if we add here numerous rock tunnels and shelters created specifically for the BZHRK, in which no devil will find them, and an unknown number of “dummy” trains created to distract the attention of those who are too curious...
In the terms of Soviet railway workers, the BZHRK was called “train number zero.”
As the Americans themselves admitted, tracking Soviet BZHRKs was an impossible task for them and NATO military intelligence. Even despite the fact that just for the sake of detecting and monitoring the “well done”, the Pentagon launched an entire satellite constellation into orbit.
In the late 80s, when the “well done” were scurrying around the wide expanses of our country, American intelligence launched an operation to technically detect our BZHRKs. Under the guise of commercial cargo, a standard cargo container stuffed with spy equipment was delivered to Vladivostok, en route to Sweden. The cunning container was recognized in time by Soviet counterintelligence and, according to some reports, safely reached its destination. But the Pentagon didn’t get anything interesting from this “big walk.” Because it doesn't matter.
The reliability of the “Molodets” is evidenced by the “Shine” tests carried out in 1991 (an experiment on resistance to EMP) and “Shift” - an imitation of a nearby kiloton-power explosion. At the training ground in Plesetsk, 650 meters from the BZHRK, a 100-meter pyramid of 20 thousand anti-tank mines taken from the GDR was laid out and exploded. The monstrous explosion tore out a crater 80 meters in diameter in the ground, the sound pressure level in the residential compartments of the BZHRK reached the pain threshold of 150 dB. One of the three launchers showed a cancellation of readiness, but after rebooting the on-board computer, it launched the rocket in normal mode.
In 1993, under the START-2 treaty, all BZHRKs were subject to destruction. Moreover, the destruction of the “well done” and the ban on the development of similar complexes was an indispensable condition of the American side when signing the agreement. Until 2007, 10 trains were destroyed, and 2 became museum exhibits. It must be said that “our American partners” did not even hide their joy about this.
It is interesting that in the summer of 1993, at the dead end of the Kievsky railway station in Moscow, there was a train, in the coupling of which there was one “cunning” BZHRK car (possibly decommissioned), filled with Polish-made soft drinks, which an enterprising guard sold to everyone wholesale and retail.
With the rise of neocons to power in the United States, America, after the September 11 terrorist attacks, was overwhelmed by paranoia, which turned into a new expansion and arms race.
In response to the deployment by the Americans of a global missile defense system, the Russian leadership in 2013 decided to recreate the BZHRK, taking into account modern scientific and technical achievements. “Molodets” should be replaced by “Barguzin” in 2020. The restriction was lifted by the signing of the START-3 treaty with Obama, who naively believed that Russia would be unable to resurrect “Molodets.” After all, Scalpel missiles were made by Ukraine.
As the commander of the Strategic Missile Forces, Colonel General Sergei Karakaev, clarifies, the Barguzin was initially planned to be put into operation in 2019, but due to the deterioration of the financial situation, the schedule was shifted by a year. At the moment, the new BZHRK is at the technical documentation stage. In 2017, Vladimir Putin will hear a report on the topic and consider the production schedule of Barguzins by the military industry.
According to the organizational structure, each “rocket train” will be equivalent to a regiment, five trains will form a division.
If the railway part of Barguzin is at the project stage, then everything with the missile part has long been in perfect order. In all respects, “Barguzin” will surpass its older brother “Molodets”. The new BZHRK will receive not three, but six of the latest RS-24 Yars (Yars-M) ICBMs with a mortar launch and a flight range of 11 thousand km. True, the Yars warhead contains only four warheads of 250 kilotons each, but this is enough to incinerate some Rhode Island if necessary.
Judging by incoming information, Barguzin, in addition to larger missile weapons, will be equipped with the latest camouflage equipment and an electronic warfare system. Considering that Yars missiles are two times lighter than scalpels, cars with missile launchers inside will no longer need eight wheel pairs. Moreover, instead of coupling three mainline diesel locomotives, Barguzin will only need one. This is what new technologies mean. We can also add here that the Barguzin can travel 0 km from the departure station per day, so look for winds in the field. The autonomy of the complex is 2500 days, the reaction time to the General Staff command to launch missiles is 30 minutes.
Why did Russia need BZHRKs, another inquisitive reader may ask. After all, there are silo-based ICBMs, Topol-M mobile systems, nuclear submarines, and finally. The problem is that the location of the missile silos is well known to the enemy, as are the routes of the mobile missile systems. Detection of Russian missile submarines poses a serious problem for them, even despite the much-touted ocean-going acoustic detection system SOSUS, but Russia has few nuclear submarines. Much less than there were in the USSR. Therefore, BZHRKs, with their volatility and elusiveness, introduce a serious factor of unpredictability into NATO plans. And although information about the Barguzin has been coming for quite some time, the “partners” became seriously concerned after the report of a successful test of the Barguzin rocket launched from the Plesetsk cosmodrome.
And this is good. Because the factor of unpredictability makes you doubt your own abilities and, as a result, leads to sobering up and a desire to negotiate.
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