RS

Russian intermediate range cruise missile. Soviet Mach 3 manned air-launched ramjet aircraft, developed in 1954-1961, but cancelled before the first full-scale test article could be flown.

The Tsybin RS was originally a high-speed ground-launched manned aircraft. The March 1954 draft project specified a twin ramjet vehicle that would cruise at 3,000 km/hr at 30 km altitude, over a 14,400 km range, with a takeoff mass of only 22 metric tons. To achieve this performance would require that 75% of the takeoff mass would be fuel, and 3% payload, leaving only 22% for the vehicle.

This was not achievable, and the final design had an empty weight 43% of the takeoff weight, cutting the range in half. By August 1956 the design had been modified to the more modest RSR configuration, which was air launched, cruised at 2800 km/hour at 26,700 m with a 1700 km radius of action. A subsonic aerodynamic test vehicle, the NM-1 was built and first flown on 7 April 1959 by test pilot Amert-Khan Sultan. Construction of prototypes was started the same year, but then stopped in the spring of 1961, with three airframes nearly finished. Tsybin went to work for Korolev at OKB-1.