As of 2014[update], Russia planned to replace all RT-2PM ICBMs with versions of Topol-M.[5] In December 2023, the last Topol regiment was taken off combat duty.

[6] The three stage solid propellant RT-2PM Topol is an improved mobile ICBM which replaced earlier outdated missile complexes.

The United States considered developing their own road-mobile ICBM called the Midgetman, but the program was canceled with the end of the Cold War.

Development of the RT-2PM was approved on 19 July 1977 and carried out by the Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology headed by Alexander Nadiradze.

The first regiment of "Topol" missiles employing a modernized mobile command center (in the area of Irkutsk) were put on alert on 27 May 1988.

A total area of approximately 190,000 square kilometers could be required to deploy a force consisting of 500 road-mobile Topol ICBMs.

The missile is deployed in a Transporter Erector Launcher (TEL) canister mounted on cross-country 7-axle chassis on a mobile launch vehicle.

The TEL is accompanied by a Mobile command post, carrying support facilities mounted on cross-country 4-axle chassis with unified vans.

The complex is equipped with an onboard inertial navigation system which gives the TEL group the capability to conduct the launch independently from its field deployment sites.

This topo-geodesic support and navigation subsystem, created by the "Signal" Research Institute, provides a quick and highly precise tie-in of the launcher in a field position and enables its crew to carry out missile launches from any combat patrol route point.

A resolution was reached after the Soviet Union agreed to allow inspection parties to use radiation detection systems to measure fast neutron intensity flux emanating from the launch canister.

Provisions of the SALT II agreement prohibited the deployment of more than one new missile (which became RT-23UTTh), it was officially declared by the Soviet Union that the RT-2PM Topol was developed to upgrade the silo based RT-2.

Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, Soviet Chief of General Staff cancelled the September 1, 1983 test flight of the RT-2PM Topol which was to be launched from Plesetsk (the launch site in northwest Russia used for test firing of solid fuel propellant ICBMs)- 24 minutes later to land in the Klyuchi target area on the Kamchatka Peninsula.

Under the START II Treaty, which is a non-binding agreement, Russia would be able to place 90 single-warhead solid fuel missiles in reequipped R-36 silos.

In order to guard against a break-out scenario involving the rapid reconversion of R-36 silos on-site inspection became a very important aspect of START II verification.

According to the ministry, the missile, launched from the Plesetsk space center in northwestern Russia has hit a designated target on the Kamchatka peninsula "with high precision."