KOSTROMA. June 15 (Interfax-AVN) - The next train carrying a railway-based missile launcher of the Kostroma missile division has been sent to a storage base, Colonel Alexander Vovk, press service chief of the Russian Strategic Missile Forces (SMF), told Interfax-Military News Agency.
"The next train carrying a railway-based missile launcher, whose service life had expired, was sent to a storage base in the Perm region from the Kostroma missile division overnight to Wednesday," Vovk said.
Train scrapping procedures will start at the base, he said. "Missiles will be dismantled from the train and subsequently disposed of. The train will be scrapped as well," he noted.
Railway-based missile launchers are being removed from the SMF inventory because their service lives have expired, Vovk said. "The plant producing railway-based missile launchers is located in Ukraine's Pavlograd. Extension of their service lives is problematic, that is why the decision was made to remove from the inventory the systems whose service lives have expired," he noted.
Railway-based systems will soon be replaced in the SMF inventory with ground-based Topol-M missile systems, whose production involves only Russian companies, Vovk stressed.
SMF Commander Nikolai Solovtsov said earlier that railway-based missile launchers will be written off from the SMF before 2006.
"The Strategic Missile Forces will be reduced by a number of regiments, while two divisions, namely the Kartaly division (in the Chelyabinsk region -Interfax-AVN) and the Kostroma division of railroad-based missile systems are to be disbanded entirely in 2005," he said.
The division may comprise up to five railway-based missile systems. According to open media outlets, a missile system of this kind comprises three launchers of RT-23UTTKh Molodets missiles (NATO designation SS-24 Scalpel), a command post and cars with systems necessary for maintaining the missiles' combat readiness and supporting launches. The roof of the launcher car is removable. The car is fitted with a contact system draining device. Missiles can be launched from pre-arranged stationing areas or from any point on the route.
Tests of the RT-23UTTKh railroad-based missile started in February 1985 and ended in 1987. The asset was commissioned in 1989.