The 'Reactive Scientific Research Institute' (RNII) was officially established on 21 September 1933 by combining the Group for the Study of Reactive Motion (GIRD) with the Gas Dynamics Laboratory (GDL).

However in 1934, following a disagreement over the direction of RNII, Korolev was demoted to section chief of winged missiles and was replaced by Georgy Langemak.

[6][note 2] Langemak was also the chairman of the initial technical advisory board, which provided the sanctioned scientific direction of RNII.

[11] After September 1933 development was continued by RNII, including designing several variations for ground-to-air, ground-to-ground, air-to-ground and air-to-air combat.

[10] The earliest known use by the Soviet Air Force of aircraft-launched unguided anti-aircraft rockets in combat against heavier-than-air aircraft took place in August 1939, during the Battle of Khalkhin Gol.

[13] Gvay led a team of designers and engineers to build multiple prototype launchers firing the modified 132 mm M-132 rockets over the sides of ZIS-5 trucks.

In 1938, when both Korolev and Glushko were arrested in suspicion of Anti-Soviet activity, development of the RP-318-1 was continued by Alexei Scherbakov (Щербаков, Алексей Яковлевич) and Arvid Pallo (Палло, Арвид Владимирович), culminating in the first powered flight on Feb. 28, 1940.

Test pilot V. P. Fedorov (Владимир Павлович Фёдоров) was towed to 2,600 m and cast off at 80 km/h before firing the rocket engine and accelerating the aircraft to 140 km/h and an altitude of 2,900 m. In all, the RP-318 flew nine times before World War II ended its development.

[22] In February 1944, the institute merged with Design Bureau OKB-293, led by Soviet engineer Viktor Bolkhovitinov, which had developed the short-range rocket powered interceptor called Bereznyak-Isayev BI-1.

[5] In 1965, NII-1 was re-named the Scientific-Research Institute for Thermal Processes (NII TP) and became part of the newly created Ministry of General Machine Building,[5] which was responsible for all issues related to strategic ballistic missiles and space technology in the USSR.

Apart from the purely technological advancements and the mastery of important practical processes, the years at RNII also gave the young engineers their first active involvement in issues of organization and management.and Chertok:[26] All of our rocket-space technology historians consider it obligatory to mention the founding role of RNII, the Reactive Scientific-Research Institute, in the origin of domestic cosmonautics.