An-22 / Mi-12 Rocket Complex (RK Raketno-Kompleks)

During the early years of the Cold War the Soviet Union fielded the An-22, a fixed wing transport aircraft of unprecedented size, and the companion Mi-12 helicopter, a gigantic contraption that remains unsurpassed. Apart from a traditional Russian obsession with the gigantic, what problem were these aircraft intended to solve? Recent Russian literature is quite explicit in the claim that they were designed to operation in tandem, and that their mission was to transport early Soviet ICBMs to their launch sites.

Other large Soviet helicopters [eg, the Mi-12 Harke] were designed to transport fully fueled, ready to fire, tactical ballistic missiles directly onto the battlefield. The precise concept of operations for the An-22/Mi-12 is not really spelled out in the Russian literature, but upon reflection it is clear that these aircraft had a pre-War, peacetime mission. The An-22/Mi-12 tandem was intended to transport ICBMs to launch sites in the middle of no-where, well away from the rail lines that transported the first generation SS-6 ICBMs, and which were used by American intelligence to track down early Soviet ICBM deployment sites.

The An-22 could transport the missile [unfueled] to a remote airfield, from which the Mi-12 helicopter could transport this bulky cargo several hundred kilometers further into the vastness of the Soviet territory. By the 1970s American reconnaissance satellites might eventually discover such carefully hidden deployent sites, but in the mid-1950s such capabilities were the stuff of science fiction.

In the United States, the Douglas C-133 Cargomaster, a four-engine turboprop transport, was larger and faster than earlier Douglas military cargo airplanes. The Cargomaster went into production without a prototype and had an unusual circular fuselage with top-mounted wings. The C-133 design was frozen by 1955, and the airplane first flew in April 1956. The designs of both the Atlas and Titan ICBMs were not firm until after 1955. It carried fully assembled tanks and transported the Douglas-built Thor intermediate-range ballistic missiles. Later the Minuteman ICBMs were transported by C-133B aircraft. The C-133B rear cargo doors were modified to open to the side (petal doors), making ICBM loading much easier. Transporting the ballistic missiles such as the Atlas, Titan and Minuteman was less expensive, safer and faster than road transport. Several hundred Minuteman and other ICBMs were airlifted to and from their operational bases by C-133s.

Soviet concealment, denial, and deception (CD&D), efforts were intended to delay the discovery of strategically significant activities until well after they had been carried out successfully. Denial is the ability to prevent or impair the collection of intelligence by the enemy and deception is the ability to mislead intelligence gathering by providing a distortion of reality. While the Russian word maskirovka, which is usually translated as camouflage, is used by the Soviets to describe these measures, much more is encompassed in the Soviet system of maskirovka than those measures normally associated with the term camouflage.

In his book Taktika, Reznichenko states that the objective of camouflage "is to conceal from the enemy the true position of our troops and to give him a false idea of it and thereby to lead him into error and force him to a conclusion which does not correspond to the situation. Furthermore, camouflage constitutes the most important means of achiving surprise, which is one of the basic conditions for success in battle."

The Soviet term maskirovka represented a total system of measures designed to deceive and confuse the enemy, and reduce or eliminate the effectiveness of his means of reconnaissance and is a response to the challenge of technology. As in almost all areas of current Soviet military training, considerable emphasis is placed on the successful employment of camouflage in the Great Patriotic War.

The guarantee of safety of sufficient means for retaliation was provided by mobile ground-based strategic missile systems that could constantly change their position. With a poorly developed road network, the USSR had to think about how to move them through the air. To this end, a system of two aircraft was planned: an An-22 heavy Antey transport aircraft that would deliver a missile to a remote airfield and a helicopter capable of transferring it even further to places where there were no roads or only ground runways. There were even plans to turn the helicopter into a mobile launching position (project B-16), but this was already beyond the capabilities of technology.

The AN-22 and Mi-12 had to transport different types of combat materiel with a mass of up to 25 tons, including the newest strategic ballistic missiles, supposedly including the 8K75 [R-9 Desna SS-8 SASIN], 8K67 [R-36 SS-9 SCARP], and 8K82 [UR-500 SL-9 PROTON]. This was reported in Gordon, Yefim; Dimitriy and Sergey Komissarov (2005). Mil's heavylift helicopters : Mi-6, Mi-10, V-12 and Mi-26. Red Star. 22 (2nd ed.). Hinckley: Midland Publishing. ISBN 1-85780-206-3.

But the 8K82/UR-500 had a diameter of 7.4 meters (24 ft), whereas the AN-22 cargo compartment had a diameter of only 4.4 meters. But the UR-500 core tank had a diameter of 4.1 meters, and might fit into the AN-22, with the strap-on tanks transported seperately and assembled on site. The UR-500 core stage was a bit over 21 meters long, well within the confines of the 33 meter long cargo bay.

The diameters of the 8K75/SS-8 - 2.68 meters, and 8K67/SS-9 SCARP - 3 meters - are more plausible. Both of these later missiles had fully fueled launch weights - 82 tons and 180 tons, respectively - that exceeded the 72 ton cargo capacity of the AN-22. So a caravan of propellant loading trucks would be required. While the SS-9 propellants were storable hypergolic fuels, the SS-8 used cryogenic oxygen as an oxidizer, further complicating matters.

The first U-2 overflights of the Soviet Union took place on 4 July 1956. In mid-May 1957 American listening posts detected Soviet missile testing in Russia’s south-central region. As of yet the United States had been unable to locate the Soviet’s ICBM program. Eisenhower immediately authorized a series of U-2 missions to investigate. In early June 1957 the pilot of one of these missions altered his planned course to follow a lone set of railroad tracks that in the distance appeared to lead to a construction site. Analysis of the mission’s subsequent photographs showed the site to be the Soviet Union’s SS-6 ICBM test facility. Knowing now what to look for, further U-2 flights throughout the summer began to fill in Eisenhower’s picture of the Soviet ICBM program. No other sites were detected.

The early U-2 flights provided the US Government with considerable information on Soviet strategic missiles. U-2 photography also showed that most combat positions for Soviet missiles were located along the Trans-Siberian Railroad; US experts concluded that the early Soviet ICBMs were so heavy and cumbersome that they could be moved only by rail. U-2s also collected intelligence indicating another major shortcoming of first-generation Soviet ICBMs: the liquid propellant they used was extremely unstable and had to be changed frequently, making it impossible to maintain the missiles in constant combat readiness. Soviet military intelligence was fully aware of U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance flights from their very beginning.

The AN-22 and Mi-12 had the most important state task. It was necessary to provide the potential for a retaliatory nuclear strike in any scenario of conflict with the United States. But in the late 1950s, rocket missile complexes were only being created, and the hope for submarines and strategic bombers in the conditions of total dominance of the potential enemy in the oceans and the surrounding airspace was rather illusive. Calculations showed that a sudden nuclear strike across the USSR would become disarming.

The Ministry of Defense of the USSR set the task of creating a complex for the air transportation of intercontinental ballistic missiles to the aviation industry. In the mid-1950s, there was a need for a transport aircraft capable of transporting land-based equipment, including a T-54 tank with ammunition and crew. In June 1958 GSOKB-473 under the direction of OK Antonov, a draft design of the An-20 aircraft with two NKD-12Ms was developed, capable of carrying a cargo of 40 tons. But soon the work on the An-20 was collapsed, task was received to develop an even heavier aircraft.

In early 1960 the Soviet Government announced that the USSR had established a new branch of the military -- the Strategic Missile Forces. This development raised some new questions for high-altitude reconnaissance operations by US intelligence. Where were the USSR's strategic missiles being deployed? What models had been placed in service? What were their combat capabilities and numbers? And -- to what extent were Soviet air defenses capable of opposing modern US strategic aviation? These questions had to be answered by new U-2 incursions into Soviet airspace. Hours before the beginning of the annual May Day parade in 1960, Soviet Air Defense forces detected a high-altitude target flying over the Tajik SSR in Central Asia. Its altitude was more than 19 kilometers (around 62,000 feet). It was a U-2, piloted by Francis Gary Powers.

By August 1960, a draft of a VT-22 aircraft with a payload of 50 tons with 4 TVD NK-12MV was developed. Because parameters VT-22 in many respects corresponded to the task in view, development of such an aircraft was commissioned by OKB Antonov (October 13, 1960 the joint resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR No. 1117-465 came out).

The Corona spy satellites, which the American Intelligence Community operated from August 1960 to May 1972, had been designed primarily as a “search system” to detect, locate, and identify intelligence targets. Despite the lack of control from earth, the Corona system brought back 1,700,000 square miles of photo coverage of Soviet territory—more film on the first shot than all of the manned and serviced U-2 missions combined. That was from a one-day mission with eight passes over the Soviet Union. Corona’s first, and probably most notable, success was to effectively settle the “missile gap” controversy that had preoccupied U.S. intelligence since the Soviets tested the first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in 1957 by providing a high-confidence count of SS-6 launch pads.

The V-12, also known as the Mi-12, although the aircraft has never been officially renamed (Homer according to NATO's codification), is the heaviest and heaviest helicopter ever built in the world. The helicopter was planned to be used for transportation of ICBM components in the interests of the Strategic Missile Forces, as well as the creation of positional areas, in places where there were no paved roads.

The V-12 was not created for the sake of records. The assignment for the design of the helicopter "for the transport of non-load cargoes of 25 tons" was issued in 1962, but not with the aim of hitting the world or wiping the nose of the Americans.

Despite the outstanding characteristics, only 2 helicopters were assembled. Part of this was due to the fact that in the course of time lighter rocket complexes appeared in the country, and all the needs of the national economy and the military were satisfied with the mass-produced Mi-6 and Mi-10 helicopters.

At the time of its first flight in 1968, the V-12 outperformed the largest foreign "turntables" in size and four times in mass. This helicopter was the last creation of the famous designer Mikhail Leontievich Mil. The V-12 was his greatest triumph and the greatest failure. The letter "V" denoted the experimental machines before the launch in the series, but the V-12 never began to be called Mi.

There were several reasons for this. Other types of military cargoes did not need so much in such an expensive means of delivery as a helicopter. In addition, the Saratov plant, which was preparing for the production of the V-12, by the time the decision was made to launch the giant into the series was a heavily loaded production of another type of product. And on top of all, in the circumstances, the OKB was not interested in implementing the V-12, as this could prevent the development of the new prospective heavy-duty helicopter of the third generation of the Mi-26, slightly inferior to the two-screw giant by its carrying capacity, economic indicators.

The American's Hexagon spy satellite, first launched in June 1971 and continuing in operation through October 1984, provided significantly greater coverage than Corona. Hexagon was designed to image 80-90 percent of the built-up areas of the Soviet Union twice a year. Just as important, a single Hexagon swath — about twice that of Corona — could cover an area 300 by 7,000 nautical miles (nm), so analysts could scan a very large area for a suspected target. Hexagon’s most significant contribution was probably its capability to assure U.S. officials that there were few “blind spots” in which they were likely to miss a Soviet deployment.

The value of Corona and Hexagon depended directly on whether the Soviets understood the capabilities of the two systems well enough to evade them or take countermeasures. Soviet "maskirovka" was a contentious issue within the Intelligence Community throughout the lifetimes of Corona and Hexagon, and it was unclear at the time exactly how much the Soviets knew. General references to U.S. imagery satellites appeared in the media even in the 1960s, but the first account that offered generally accurate descriptions of Hexagon appears to have been a 1978 issue of Spaceflight though the magazine did not use the name.

In 1962–63, certain ICBM and ballistic missile submarine programs came to an end [the SS-7, SS-8, and Hotel-class ballistic missile submarines], and a pause ensued in the growth of these forces. The customer changed the concept of missile basing. The USSR later resumed ICBM deployment in a new improved configuration [with to silos replacing above-ground launch pads]. And in 1969 the Soviets began to develop the new SS-16, the first successful mobile ICBM, which was tested in 1972. Some types of missile systems for which the V-12 was designed were unsuccessful and were disarmed. By the end of the sixties, the task for which the V-12 was created - to ensure the survivable basing of strategic ballistic missiles - had lost its relevance (for the same reason, the large series of An-22s planned for production was drastically reduced).