The original La-17 was only marginally effective, and air launch was expensive and logistically clumsy, making simulations of "mass attacks" with drones difficult at best.

The ramjet engine was thirsty, resulting in such short endurance that if a fighter pilot missed the drone on his first pass, it would have run out of fuel before he could come around again.

To address these problems, Lavochkin engineers came up with a ground-launched variant, the La-17M, which performed its initial flights in 1959 and went into service in 1960.

The La-17M was launched using a RATO booster under each wing root, from a four-wheel towed launcher derived from the carriage of a standard 100 millimeter antiaircraft gun.

The La-17M was powered by a Mikulin RD-9BK turbojet with 1,950 kgf (4,300 lbf) thrust; the RD-9BK was a derated, non-afterburning, and simplified version of the RD-9B engine used on the MiG-19 fighter.

Later production featured the RD-9BKR engine, with the same performance as the RD-9BK but with some minor changes to permit low-level operation, and a service life improved from 15 to 30 hours.

Early on, development work was initiated to use the ramjet-powered La-17 as the basis for an air-launched reconnaissance drone, but because of the model's deficiencies, it did not happen.

The evolution of the target and reconnaissance variants of the La-17 progressed along two paths, with the result that commonality between the two branches of the family diverged.

The Lavochkin OKB became more and more involved in the development of space systems and the production of La-17s proceeded on "autopilot" into the late 1970s, until availability of RD-9BK engines was exhausted, so that it was no longer possible to build the La-17 as it was.

A group of Soviet aerospace organizations then came up with the R11K, an expendable non-afterburning version of the Tumanskiy R11F-300 turbojet, used on first-generation Mikoyan MiG-21 fighters, and the La-17 was redesigned to be fitted with this engine.

When stocks began running low in the later half of the 1960s, when relations with the USSR were generally poor, an effort was begun to reverse engineer the La-17 and build it in China.