During development, a massive failure occurred on October 24, 1960, when a prototype rocket exploded on the pad killing an estimated 54–300 personnel.

[5] A fatal accident with the R-9 missile occurred exactly three years later, causing October 24 to be referred to as Baikonur's "Black Day."

On normal duty the missiles were stored in hangars, and it took one to three hours to roll them out, fuel them, and reach launch readiness.

Even when fueled and in an alert posture, the Soviet missiles still needed to wait up to twenty minutes to spin up the gyroscopes in their guidance systems before launch was possible.

Each launch complex consisted of three silos clustered together for economic reasons to allow them to use a common refueling system, making them vulnerable to a single U.S. missile.