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Russian Designations

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Capsules in Storage
Capsules in Storage at Korolev. Picture taken on the second floor of the NPO Energia museum around 1990. Years later they had disappeared. Where are they now?
Credit: Jakob Terweij

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The designations of Soviet missiles, launch vehicles, and spacecraft were considered state secrets. Therefore as long as that state existed very few of the designations were made public. During the Cold War the missiles were referred to by a sequential code assigned by the US Central Inteligence Agency or by a code name assigned by the NATO ASCC Reporting Committee. The CIA codes consisted of letters indicating the role of the missile followed by a number assigned in the sequence in which the missile was detected (usually by telemetry intercepted during missile tests). See Aleksey Martinov's Designations Of Soviet and Russian Military Aircraft and Missiles at Andreas Parsch's designation-systems.net for a complete listing.

Whatever true designations became known to the western intelligence agencies were not made public in order to conceal intelligence 'sources and methods'. This suited the Soviets. In order to preserve their state secrets they went so far as to use the CIA designations for their missiles in the 1972 SALT-1 Treaty. During the SALT-2 and INF treaty negotiations the US side pressed for true Soviet designations to be used. The Soviets eventually obliged by creating a bogus series of 'RS' designations. These were perversely assigned similar to an existing real designation system but in a slightly different sequence.

The actual system used within the Soviet Union consisted of two designations: 'secret' and 'public' (although both were considered state secrets!)

The 'secret' designation for large ballistic missiles and space launchers consisted of the letter R followed by a sequential number, followed by letters indicating a modification to the basic design (e.g. R-1, R-2, R-3, R-5; R-5M for modernised or maritime version, R-14U for universal version, etc.). This number sequence originated in the late 1940's and was shared between a Russian team under Chief Designer Korolev and a 'guest' German team under Groettrup. The German team knew their own designs only under a 'public' system of 'G' (for Groettrup) numbers. Unknown to them, the designs had a parallel secret 'R-' designation. The first two designs, the R-1 and R-2, were joint efforts. Korolev made sure he had the 'lucky' odd numbers (R-3, R-5, R-7, R-9, R-11, but not R-13!), while the Germans were assigned numbers beginning with 10 (R-10, R-12 through R-15). By the mid-1950's the German group was disbanded and additional Russian design bureaux were set up for rocket design (Glushko, Makeyev, Yangel). The lower even 'R-' numbers were reassigned to German designs and the unused designations from R-8 and up were re-used for the designs of the new bureaux . A second sequence was begun for solid propellant missiles with the 'RT-' prefix in the late 1950's when development of these began (raketa toplivniy, solid fuel rocket). A series for orbital weapons launchers (GR-, 'global rocket') was begun but the only missile deployed in this system retained its R- designation (R-36-O, 'O' for 'orbital').

In the 1960's consistent use of the sequence began to break down after 39 numbers had been allocated. The Chief Designers wanted to 'trademark' their designs with unique designation series. First, Chelomei introduced his own sequence of 'UR-' (universal rocket) designations. Korolev introduced his 'N' sequence for future space launchers (N=nositel = carrier rocket). Yangel, taking a leaf from Boeing, decided to 'trademark' his rockets by using the series R-16, R-26, R-36, R-46, R-56 for major projects. Thus he skipped ahead, leaving whole blocks of numbers unused. Nadiradze began his own series of solid propellant rockets with the 'Temp-' designation. The assignment of new numbers within this system ended with the reorganisation of the Soviet missile industry in 1966. Thereafter missiles replacing earlier designs given suffix letters indicating modification of an existing design, even if the missile was completely new.

There were hints of this system in the West from the late 1960's when histories of Soviet rocketry would refer to older designs by these numbers. The most notable example was the term 'semyorka' or 'good ol' number seven' used for the R-7 rocket that launched Sputnik. Furthermore designations announced for scientific sounding rockets (V =vertikal) derived from military designs retained their sequence (e.g. V1 = R-1, V2 = R-2, V5 = R-5).

The 'secret' rocket designations are given below.

The 'public' designation may be considered the 'real' designation of the rocket. An example of such a number was first explicitly revealed in the book Inside the Soviet Army by the defector "Suvorov" in 1983. On page 127 he reveals both the secret and public designations for the UR-100 / 8K84 ICBM (known to the west as the SS-11 Sego). 8K84 was the number actually used for configuration control and to assign part number sequences for sub-components of the system. This was the reason it was known as the 'public' designation - because the number itself would be known to hundreds of thousands of workers across the Soviet Union. They wouldn't necessarily know what the part they were working on would go into, but they would know that it was for 'article' 8K84.

Of course a missile can be considered at many levels of integration. At the top level there is the entire system - not just the missile itself but its launcher or silo, and associated control or guidance facilities. There is the missile itself, which in later Soviet practice was integrated with a sealed container, ready to be fired at short notice over a guaranteed lifetime measured in decades. Next was the missile as it actually flew through the air. Then there were the modular sub-components of the rocket - such as its warhead, guidance system, separate stages, and engines. A final level below this would be the components - structural elements, engine and electronic system components, and so on.

The designation system at the top few levels used a consistent format and consisted of three parts:

• A one or two digit number indicating the directorate responsible for development and production of the system. These shifted in the great reorganisation of the Soviet defence industry in 1966 and again in the late 1980's:
  • 2 = Ground forces (Red Army)
  • 3 = Navy (VMF) after 1966
  • 4 = Navy (VMF) before 1966
  • 5 = Air Defence and Anti-Ballistic Missile Forces (PVO, PKO) until the late 1980's
  • 6 = Air Defence and Anti-Ballistic Missile Forces (PVO, PKO) after the late 1980's
  • 8 = Army missile forces in the 1950's and thereafter the Strategic Rocket Forces (RVSN) until 1966).
  • 11 = Launch vehicles for the Space Forces (after 1966)
  • 14 = Space Forces (from late 1980's)
  • 15 = Strategic Rocket Forces (from 1966)
  • 17 = Naval Space Forces
• A letter indicating the type of system or subsystem:
  • K - used for missiles until 1966, probably indicating 'kompleks'
  • A - prior to 1966 possibly standing for an unfuelled agregat, assembly. After 1966 meaning ampulozirovanniy, for sealed unit.
  • M - used for smaller and naval missiles. The M may stand for maritime or modular (not missile, which has no cognate word in Russian!). Often Army and Navy missiles have a 'K' number for a level of assembly of the missile above the actual flyaway unit, and a similar or different 'M' number for the missile itself. Or this may only indicate that during its life various models of the missile may have received designations in two different series as the bureaucracy shifted.
  • Zh - used for solid propellant missiles. The Zh may be keyed to zharko, hot.
  • Ya - used for strategic aurface-to-air or anti-ballistc missiles. Possibly standing for a yaderniy, or nuclear, indicating the missile can be tipped with a nuclear warhead or is to be used against incoming nuclear warheads.
  • V - equivalent to A, but used for surface-to-air missiles. Possibly standing for a vertikal, or vertically-ascending missile.
  • F - the warhead or payload. Possibly standing for a funktsionalniy gruz, or functional payload (15F842 in the case of the 8K84).
  • S - a stage (stuplen) of the rocket (8S816 and 8S817 for the first and second stages of the 8K84),.
  • D - an engine (dvigatel). For the 8K84, 15D2 in the first stage and 8D419 in the second stage
  • P - the launcher or silo unit (puskovaya ustanovka). For the 8K84, the silo-launcher had the designation 15P784 .
  • Kh - used for early warning satellites.

• A two digit sequential number. These were allocated within a single product group (for example, there is one sequence for 8K/11K rockets, one for 15A/15Zh rockets, one for 11F/14F/17F spacecraft). For subsystems an attempt was made to relate this to the top level number. Numbers divisible by 10 were originally not used to prevent confusion with numerical suffixes. This changed after 1966.
• A numerical suffix - A digit could be added to the two-digit sequence number. This was used to indicate succeeding models (for example 9K11 followed by 9K112, 9K113, etc.)
• An alphabetical suffix - This was used to differentiate submodels. Typical suffixes were 'M' (modernised or maritime), U (universal model for use in several different launchers), F (forced, e.g. uprated).

The two digit sequences seem to have originally been assigned in blocks of ten to the leading design bureaux. These allocations for large ballistic missiles were:

• 8K/11K series to 1966:
  • 50's, 70's, 90's: Korolev's OKB-1
  • 60's: Yangel's KB Yuzhnoye
  • 80's: Chelomei's OKB-52

• 15A/15Zh series after 1966:
  • 10's: KB Yuzhnoye liquid propellant missiles.
  • 20's, 30's: Missiles of Chelomei's NPO Mashinostroyenia
  • 40's, 50's, 60's: Solid propellant missiles of Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology and KB Yuzhnoye

Deviations.

Article numbers for some early Soviet ballistic missiles indicate a different system in the early 1950's. Designations reported for the Energia booster and the Zenit launch vehicle also do not fit into the system. These deviant designations include:

• 8K11 R-1 Korolev SS-1A Scunner Soviet production copy of the German V-2. There was evidently a series of numbers ranging from 8K11 to at least 8K14 for the earliest missile designs.
• 8K14 R-11 Makeyev SS-1C Scud B Early production version of the Scud. Later models used Army numbers in the 9K range.
• 8Zh38 R-2 Korolev SS-2 Sibling The R-2 doubled the range of the R-1 and was equipped with a deadly radiological warhead. The 'Zh' letter code only appears this once, then is not used for rockets again until applied to solid propellant missiles in the late 1960's.
• 8A63 R-3A Korolev So much new technology was involved for the R-3 that it was deemed necessary to build an R-3A intermediate experimental rocket. This was never completed. The 8K63 designation was reused for Yangel's R-12, which went into service and fulfilled much the same requirement. Again the designation is curious for use of the 'A' letter code, which was not used again until the late 1960's. It seems there may have been a '60' sequence applied to some Korolev designs that was later reassigned to Yangel's bureau.
• 8A67 R-3 Korolev Development of the long-range R-3 missile was authorised in April 1947. But the long-range technology was beyond the Soviets at that time. The project was eventually cancelled and they leap-frogged to the R-7 ICBM. The 8K67 designation was reused for Yangel's R-36 ICBM in the 1960's.
• 11K25 Energia Korolev SL-17 The Energia-Buran Reusable Space System (MKS) was developed from 1976 as a system that would duplicate the capabilities of the US shuttle system. The sequence number seems not to fit into either the pre-1966 or post-1966 series..
• 11K77 Zenit-2 Yuzhnoye SL-16 Zenit was to be a modular new generation medium Soviet launch vehicle, replacing the various ICBM-derived launch vehicles in use since the 1960's. The first stage served as the liquid-fuel booster for the Energia. The sequence number seems not to fit into either the pre-1966 or post-1966 series..

Designations for Soviet ballistic missiles and satellites were as follows: