The Mars (;

NATO reporting name NATO uses a system of code names, called reporting names, to denote military aircraft and other equipment used by post-Soviet states, former Warsaw Pact countries, China, and other countries. The system assists military communications by providi ...

FROG-2,

GRAU The Main Missile and Artillery Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation (), commonly referred to by its transliterated acronym GRAU (), is a department of the Russian Ministry of Defense. It is subordinate to the Chief of ...

index 2K1, 2К1) was a

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

solid-fuel tactical missile system with a range of 7 to 18 km. The chief designer was N. P. Mazur. * Weight of launcher: 15 tons, based on

PT-76 The PT-76 is a Soviet Union, Soviet amphibious vehicle, amphibious light tank that was introduced in the early 1950s and soon became the standard reconnaissance tank of the Soviet Army and the other Warsaw Pact armed forces. It was widely exporte ...

tank * rocket engine: 3R1 * missile diameter: 1.75 m * guidance: by launcher * maximum speed of launcher: 35 km/h

History

Background

At 3 meters long, between 0.7 and 1.5 meters in diameter, and weighing 4-5 tons, the earliest

nuclear weapons A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either nuclear fission, fission (fission or atomic bomb) or a combination of fission and nuclear fusion, fusion reactions (thermonuclear weap ...

were so large and heavy that they could only be carried by

strategic bombers A strategic bomber is a medium- to long-range Penetrator (aircraft), penetration bomber aircraft designed to drop large amounts of air-to-ground weaponry onto a distant target for the purposes of debilitating the enemy's capacity to wage war. Unl ...

such as the United States

Boeing B-29 Superfortress The Boeing B-29 Superfortress is a retired American four-engined propeller-driven heavy bomber, designed by Boeing and flown primarily by the United States during World War II and the Korean War. Named in allusion to its predecessor, the Bo ...

Convair B-36 Peacemaker The Convair B-36 "Peacemaker" is a strategic bomber built by Convair and operated by the United States Air Force (USAF) from 1949 to 1959. The B-36 is the largest mass-produced piston-engined aircraft ever built, although it was exceeded in spa ...

and the Soviet Tupolev Tu-4. However, use of these aircraft in the 1950s for nuclear strikes on forward positions of enemy troops in a theatre of military operations was impractical. By the mid-1950s, nuclear weapons development led to increases in their power and technical characteristics while reducing their diameters and masses, and therefore creating the possibility of using them in a variety of delivery vehicles. In particular, tactical strike aircraft became suitable carriers, but their application depended on factors including time of day, weather conditions, and the intensity of enemy air defenses. Additionally, the response time of tactical strike aircraft was very large. Under these circumstances, it became desirable to provide army units with their own means of delivering nuclear warheads. In the 1950s, these means included traditional artillery pieces, recoil-less rifles, and unguided tactical missiles. Work was carried out on all three of these options in the United States, and, after some delay, in the Soviet Union too. The available nuclear weapons technology did not allow the creation of sufficiently compact ammunition, so artillery solutions, including the American 280-mm T131 gun and Soviet 406-mm SM-54 (2A3) rifled gun and 420-mm SM-58 (2B1) smoothbore mortar, became too heavy and clumsy — the 2A3 weighed 55 tonnes, the T131 weighed 75.5 tonnes. These pieces could not be towed over bridges, could not navigate urban and rural streets, and required a lot of time to prepare for firing. In both the US and the USSR, the alternative to these too-heavy artillery shells was unguided tactical rockets as carriers of nuclear weapons. The main advantages were: * Inertial guidance systems of the 1950s and 60s at ranges of around 30 km could achieve accuracies of only around 500–1000 m ( CEP), comparable with the accuracy of unguided rockets. * The use of radio guidance was undesirable because it made the rocket vulnerable to interference. Additionally, it required the establishment of a guidance post on the ground or in the air. * Active homing systems for marine and air targets had not yet been developed in the early 1950s, let alone systems designed for ground targets.

References

{{Russian and Soviet military designation sequences Rocket artillery Cold War weapons of the Soviet Union Unguided nuclear rockets of the Soviet Union Military vehicles introduced in the 1950s