The R-29RM (, NATO reporting name SS-N-23 Skiff) was a liquid propellant,

submarine-launched ballistic missile A submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) is a ballistic missile capable of being launched from Ballistic missile submarine, submarines. Modern variants usually deliver multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs), each of which ...

in use by the

Russian Navy The Russian Navy is the Navy, naval arm of the Russian Armed Forces. It has existed in various forms since 1696. Its present iteration was formed in January 1992 when it succeeded the Navy of the Commonwealth of Independent States (which had i ...

. It had the alternate Russian designations RSM-54 and

GRAU index 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 ...

3M27. It was designed to be launched from the

Delta IV Delta IV was a group of five expendable launch systems in the Delta rocket family. It flew 45 missions from 2002 to 2024. Originally designed by Boeing's Defense, Space and Security division for the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) p ...

submarine, each of which is capable of carrying 16 missiles. The R-29RM could carry four 100 kiloton warheads and had a range of about . They were replaced with the newer R-29RMU2 Sineva and later with the enhanced variant R-29RMU2.1 Layner.

History

Development

Development of the R-29RM started in 1979 at the

Makeyev Rocket Design Bureau The JSC Makeyev Design Bureau (; also known as Makeyev OKB) is a Russian missile design company located in Miass, Russia. Established in December 1947 as SKB-385 in Zlatoust (see Zlatoust Machine-Building Plant), the company was the main designe ...

. The navy accepted the armament in 1986 and subsequently installed the D-9RM launch system consisting of a cluster of 16 R-29RM on board the nuclear-propelled Project 667BDRM submarines.

Operation Behemoth

On 6 August 1991 at 21:09, K-407 , under the command of Captain Second Rank Sergey Yegorov, became the world's only submarine to successfully launch an all-missile

salvo A salvo is the simultaneous discharge of artillery or firearms including the firing of guns either to hit a target or to perform a salute. As a tactic in warfare, the intent is to cripple an enemy in many blows at once and prevent them from f ...

, launching 16 R-29RM (RSM-54) ballistic missiles of the total weight of almost 700 tons in 244 seconds (operation code name "Behemoth-2"). All the missile hit their designated targets at the

Kura Missile Test Range Kura Missile Test Range (), originally known as ''Kama'', is a Russian intercontinental ballistic missile impact area located in northern Kamchatka Krai in the Russian Far East. It is the destination for ballistic missiles which are test fired f ...

Kamchatka The Kamchatka Peninsula (, ) is a peninsula in the Russian Far East, with an area of about . The Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Okhotsk make up the peninsula's eastern and western coastlines, respectively. Immediately offshore along the Pacific ...

Space launch vehicle

Several R-29RM were retrofitted as Shtil' carrier rockets to be launched by Delta-class submarines, the submarines being mobile can send a payload directly into a

heliosynchronous orbit A Sun-synchronous orbit (SSO), also called a heliosynchronous orbit, is a nearly polar orbit around a planet, in which the satellite passes over any given point of the planet's surface at the same local mean solar time. More technically, it is ...

, notably used by imaging satellites. Outside the confines of the Russian military, this capability has been used commercially to place three out of four

microsatellites A microsatellite is a tract of repetitive DNA in which certain DNA motifs (ranging in length from one to six or more base pairs) are repeated, typically 5–50 times. Microsatellites occur at thousands of locations within an organism's genome. T ...

into a

low Earth orbit A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an geocentric orbit, orbit around Earth with a orbital period, period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an orbital eccentricity, eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial object ...

with one cancellation assigned to the

Baikonur Cosmodrome The Baikonur Cosmodrome is a spaceport operated by Russia within Kazakhstan. Located in the Kazakh city of Baikonur, it is the largest operational space launch facility in terms of area. All Russian Human spaceflight, crewed spaceflights are l ...

for better financial terms.

End of service

The last boat carrying R-29RM, K-51 , went into refit to be rearmed with the newer

R-29RMU Sineva The R-29RMU2 Sineva (, lit. " blueness"), code RSM-54, is a Russian liquid-fueled submarine-launched ballistic missile with GRAU index 3M27, designation SS-N-23A Skiff. It can carry four warheads and is designed to be launched from Delta IV-cla ...

on 23 August 2010.

Operators

Former operators

; *

(1992-2010) ; *

Soviet Navy The Soviet Navy was the naval warfare Military, uniform service branch of the Soviet Armed Forces. Often referred to as the Red Fleet, the Soviet Navy made up a large part of the Soviet Union's strategic planning in the event of a conflict with t ...

(1986-1991)

References

External links

CSIS Missile Threat SS-N-23IDB RSM-54 (R-29RM) 3M37, SS-N-23 "Skiff" (Russian)

at the

Center for Defense Information The Center for Defense Information (CDI) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization based in Washington, D.C. It specialized in analyzing and advising on military matters. History The Center for Defense Information was founded in 1971 by an indepen ...

Cold War submarine-launched ballistic missiles of the Soviet Union Makeyev Rocket Design Bureau Military equipment introduced in the 1980s {{Missile-stub de:R-29#R-29RM