R-12 Dvina

Common card · No. 277952

The R-12 Dvina was a theatre ballistic missile developed and deployed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Its GRAU designation was 8K63 (8K63U or 8K63У in Cyrillic for silo-launched version), and it was given the NATO reporting name of SS-4 Sandal. The R-12 rocket provided the Soviet Union with the capability to attack targets at medium ranges with a megaton-class thermonuclear warhead and constituted the bulk of the Soviet offensive missile threat to Western Europe. Deployments of the R-12 missile in Cuba caused the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. A total of 2335 missiles were produced; all were destroyed in 1993 under the START II treaty. As well as the single-stage ballistic technology, the R-12 Dvina had a two-stage capability that allowed payloads to be placed into low Earth orbit. According to Janes, the Iranian Shahab-4 project was possibly an offshoot of the R-12 Dvina, or an enlarged Shahab-3 missile incorporating some technologies from the R-12 to improve performance.

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