Fractional Orbital Bombardment System
[1] Like a kinetic bombardment system but with nuclear weapons, FOBS has several attractive qualities: it has no range limit, its flight path would not reveal the target location, and warheads could be directed to North America over the South Pole, evading detection by NORAD's north-facing early warning systems.
[2] By the early 1960s, the Soviet Union felt that pursuing a system like the FOBS would be a natural next step given its belief that the US was already planning to use space to mount nuclear attacks.
[2] The success of the Soviet Vostok program which saw a rocket send a human into orbit and then land at a predesignated location made this kind of weapon seem more feasible.
[4] Soon after, Khrushchev announced that the Soviet Union was capable of utilizing "global missiles" that could fly over both the North and South Poles on their way to a target, continuing on to say that this type of weapon would render early warning radar systems practically obsolete and leave the enemy with no time to retaliate before the weapon's impact.
[8][4] This engine would prove to be instrumental to the progress of Russian rocketry, specifically for its importance in the development of the Blok-D upper stage of rockets like the N1, Proton, and Zenit.
[7][10] Chelomey and his engineers received development authorization for the UR-200 ICBM on March 16, 1961, beginning work on the UR-200A variant at some point after.
His proposal was the R-36O (8K69 by GRAU index and SS-9 Mod 3 Scarp by NATO report) which was approved for development by Soviet officials on April 16, 1962.
[11][9] The weapon's third stage was related to the deorbiting process as well as warhead guidance and delivery; the Soviets referred to this system as OGCh.
Other nozzles facilitated the separation of the warhead from the rest of the OGCh, allowing it to fall alone on a ballistic path to the target.
[7][9] Other negative factors include that the GR-1's 8D726 retrorocket was demonstrating a proclivity for failure in its initial tests and, as a cause for yet more worry, the troublesome R-9A, the subject of a different ongoing Korolev ICBM project, was quite similar to the GR-1 in construction.
[10] Having lost the ability to tap into the Soviet Premier's influence, Chelomey ultimately failed to secure the survival of the UR-200A, its development coming to an end in 1965.
[17][18][19] Those built in the same area were placed 10-15 kilometers away from one another to prevent the possibility of a single nuclear strike destroying multiple silos.
[16] The other tests called for the R-36O to be launched from a silo into orbit where it would then execute its third stage deorbit process over the Pacific Ocean; the missile's payload would be retrofired into Soviet territory.
[16] Prior to the first launches, the Soviet Union stated that a "space vehicle landing system" was being tested over the Pacific.
[21] Nitrogen tetroxide spilled over the surface pad during fueling due to a miscommunication and the missile was quickly destroyed by fire.
[21] The first two tests of the silo phase ended in the intentional destruction (via self-destruct functionality) of the R-36O as a result of the second stage engine accidentally being activated for too long, sending the payload into an unplanned orbit.
[21] NATO intelligence suggests that a primary target was the US Grand Forks Air Force Base where an ABM system was set to be established in the late 1960s to early 1970s.
"[28] Senator Henry M. Jackson, chairman of the Joint Atomic Energy Subcommittee on Military Applications, countered that the Soviet FOBS was at least a "good faith violation of the treaty," alluding to the notion that the weapon could go into technical orbit.
[25] This is certainly true: the only thing stopping the Soviet FOBS' payload from completing a full revolution around the Earth (and thereby literally going orbital and violating the treaty) was the firing of the system's retrorocket.
[38][25] So when the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) began in 1962 to suspect that the Soviet Union would develop a FOBS-like system,[39] they concluded that Moscow sought the weapon for "propaganda or political reasons", not any militarily significant capacity.
[25] This was the first time that the FOBS project had been explicitly referred to in public (though Khrushchev alluded to this kind of weapon in the early 1960s).
[25] At a subsequent congressional hearing, John S. Foster Jr., Director of Defense Research and Engineering, said that the U.S. had since 1963 been developing "over-the-horizon" radar networks that could give about 30 minutes' warning of a FOBS strike,[28][25] and that such funding would continue.
[29] U.S. officials may not have been willing to see the treaty break down over a single issue like the FOBS, especially given that they had already evaluated it as a minor threat in the grand scheme of that period's nuclear weapon landscape.
In 2021, United States Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall III said that the People's Liberation Army was developing and testing a FOBS.
[48] The results of these missile developments, particularly the RS-28 Sarmat which is capable of FOBS implementation could be a new form of an arms race setting back both countries in the progress made following the Cold War.
The specifications that present the primary concern is the extreme range with low trajectory flight to prevent detection from the NORAD system in Alaska, US.
[45] In September 2023, the leader of Russia, Vladimir Putin confirmed that the country had deployed missiles that would ensure safety and provide a strong deterrence to any enemy (referring to the Sarmat).
[1] A rocket was launched into orbital flight and re-entered the atmosphere deploying a glide vehicle that traveled at hypersonic speeds.
The development was scrapped in the late 1960s however, because the Soviet government thought they were inadequate due to their decreased payload and easier detection.
