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R-46 8K68

The R-46 was a very large ICBM designed by the Yangel (Yuzhnoy) of today's Ukraine design bureau, that was not committed to development, relating the competitive launch vehicles for the Soviet manned lunar programs.

In August of 1961, Premier Nikita Khrushchev openly threatened the West with a new and terrifying weapon, the orbital H-bomb. "You do not have 50- or 100-megaton bombs, we have bombs more powerful than 100 megatons. We placed Gagarin and Titov in space, and we can replace them with other loads that can be directed to any place on Earth." Although the US had hypothesized orbital bombs, this was the first public indication that the Soviets were actively pursuing this course of action. Shortly after the Khrushchev statement, US analysis greatly qualified and diminished the threat of these systems posed to the US.

Among other developments, in the design bureau "Yuzhnoye" at that time, the design of missile systems of dual purpose, both capable of bringing large-sized cargo into orbit, and delivering a super-powerful nuclear charge to another continent, began. Such work was then carried out in all design bureaus.

The Yuzhnoye SDO, led by Mikhail Yangel, began developing its projects after the government decree of 16 April 1962 was issued. These were the projects of the R-46 intercontinental rocket and the R-56 space vehicle. By calculation, the firing range of the combat rocket was to exceed 16,000 km. At this distance the ICBM was to deliver a cargo weighing 35 tons. It could be either a super-powerful thermonuclear warhead in a monoblock version or a separating warhead with several less powerful combat blocks. This system, because of its features, was considered exclusively as a first-strike weapon, since both the huge dimensions and the ground unprotected launcher. At the same time, it could represent both a so-called global missile and an orbital bomber system that leads combat units into orbit,

The missile was to be equipped with engines developed at Energomash Design Bureau under the guidance of Valentin Glushko. The system had exceptionally high payload data, if not for one feature: the starting weight in various versions ranged from 1165 to 1421 tons, the length of the rocket from 51.5 to 67.8 meters and the diameter of the blocks from 3 to 7.6 meters. In development there were about two dozen variants of layout schemes. But if the space carrier with such mass-size dimensions could well satisfy the customer (especially in the light of lunar programs), then as a combat system it had practically no chance. Its designer Yangel understood this and in the future began to design heavy ICBMs in the classical scheme.

The development of the P-46 / R-56 systems was terminated by a government decree of June 19, 1964.