Soviet military scientist who designed the world's first operational anti-ballistic missile defense system
A few hours before his death, he told his wife: "I need to call the guys. I solved the problem — the one they gave me."
Soviet radiophysicist and pioneer of missile defense. After contributing to the S-25 Berkut and S-75 surface-to-air missile systems, he became Chief Designer of System A in 1956, the world's first operational anti-ballistic missile defense, and on March 4, 1961, achieved history's first successful intercept of a ballistic missile in flight. As General Designer of the A-35 and A-35M systems defending Moscow, he established the Soviet Union's strategic defensive edge, earning the Lenin Prize and the title Hero of Socialist Labor. In 1975, however, he was removed from his post amid conflicts with the leadership of the Ministry of Radio Industry, never seeing his system's final modernization through; in retirement he wrote his memoir Secret Zone, testifying to a body of work that history had nearly buried.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1942337th Separate Radio Battalion, Moscow PVO Army — assistant platoon leader, platoon leader, company engineer
- 1944–1950Budyonny Military Communications Academy — radar theory instructor, deputy department head
- 1950KB-1 — head of SHF sector, deputy technical head of tests for S-25 Berkut guidance radar
- 1953SKB-30 / KB-1 — head of special design bureau, began ABM work
- 1956Chief Designer of System A — world's first experimental ABM system
- 1958General Designer of the A-35 ABM system
- 1961OKB-30 (later OKB Vympel) — founding director and General Designer
- 1970TsNPO Vympel — deputy general director for science
- 1975TsNIIRES — first deputy director for science (removed from ABM work)
- 1979–198745th Central Research Institute, Ministry of Defense — scientific consultant
- 1987USSR Academy of Sciences, Department of Theoretical Problems — laboratory head
Related historical events
The Sary-Shagan proving ground and the first intercept
In August 1953 the Soviet high command's so-called "letter of the seven marshals" reached the party Central Committee and put missile defense back on the agenda. When the Scientific-Technical Council of the Third Main Directorate took up the matter that September, established scientists were dismissive: corresponding member A. L. Mints and S-25 chief designer A. A. Raspletin both pronounced the idea absurd. Against them, the 34-year-old Colonel Grigory Kisunko, head of radio-technical department No. 31 at KB-1, argued from his own calculations that radars capable of detecting and tracking ballistic missiles were feasible. The outcome was a decision to begin exploratory work at KB-1 and at the Radio-Technical Institute of the Academy of Sciences.
A party and government decision of 17 August 1956 established an experimental anti-ballistic missile system and a proving ground for it, designated System A and Polygon A, with Kisunko appointed Chief Designer. The site was fixed in the Betpak-Dala desert of Kazakhstan west of Lake Balkhash, later called Sary-Shagan after the nearest settlement. Construction began from tents and dugouts; by early 1957 it involved 75 construction battalions, some 40,000 people and 5,000 vehicles. By mid-1957 military builders and industry personnel numbered 150,000, and 332 permanent buildings stood on 18 sites. Overcrowding and an acute shortage of clean water caused a dysentery outbreak that peaked in 1957-1958 and only subsided by 1960, once pumping stations with filtration, chlorination and sewers were built.
In the autumn of 1959 all seven functional elements were connected to the data-transmission system and the M-40 control computer came on line, opening the test phase. The first combat run on 5 November 1960 was aborted when the R-5 target missile failed, and about twenty further unsuccessful runs followed. On the night of 24-25 November 1960 the first integrated run with interception of an R-5 was carried out, but although the target passed within the calculated kill radius of the V-1000, no intercept occurred: the warhead designed by A. V. Voronov proved insufficiently effective. Before the new year Kisunko chose a continuous week-long run of the whole system in combat mode to expose unreliable elements, yet the decisive launch on 31 December failed again.
On 4 March 1961 System A destroyed a ballistic target outright for the first time. The intercept took place 60 km from the interceptor's launch site; recording equipment put the miss at 31.8 m to the left and 2.2 m in altitude against a calculated kill radius of 75 m. The R-12 warhead, with a weight equivalent to a nuclear charge, broke up and partly burned in flight. During the run a vacuum tube in the M-40 computer exploded and halted the combat program, but the duty crew replaced it and restarted the machine; the system re-entered its combat cycle and completed the engagement successfully in 145 seconds. For the first time in world practice, the feasibility of intercepting and effectively destroying ballistic missile warheads had been demonstrated.