MOSCOW. Oct 19 (Interfax-AVN) - The Russian Defense Ministry has approved a preliminary design for a new heavy liquid-propellant intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which has been developed for the country's Strategic Rocket Forces, a Russian defense industry source told Interfax-AVN on Friday.
"At the beginning of October, the Defense Ministry tentatively approved a preliminary design for a new heavy ICBM. The developers have already started to put the finishing touches to the design, bearing in mind a whole range of observations and ideas," he said.
The developers will not inform the Defense Ministry of the results of their further work because "the preliminary design has already been confirmed," the source said.
"Everything will depend on the way further development efforts are funded. This money was included in the plans, but, so far, funds have been provided only for the preliminary design," he said.
According to earlier reports, Russia is developing a new heavy liquid-fuel silo-based ICBM to replace RS-20V Voevoda (Satan by Western classification) missiles, which are used by the country's Strategic Rocket Forces today.
A tactical-technical plan for the development of a new heavy intercontinental ballistic missile was confirmed last year. The Makeyev State Center was appointed as the head developer of the new missile. The Reutov NPO Mashinostroyenia machine-building company is involved in this work, too. These two companies make up the first-tier cooperation pattern. The Krasnoyarsk machine-building plant will be the manufacturer.
For his part, NPO Mashinostroyenia deputy general director for strategic missile systems, Andrei Goryayev, said earlier that the development of this new ICBM could take up to ten years.
"According to our statistics, we will need ten years or so. No exact timeframe can be given," he told journalists.
The timeframe for developing this missile will depend, among other factors, "on the requirements set for its characteristics and the system's composition," Goryayev said.
Other factors influencing this process include "the use of previous developments, and the extent to which it will be new," he said.
"If the country has not done anything like this for over 30 years, naturally, different stages of the process could encounter difficulties, which cannot be predicted at the beginning," he said.