After the end of World War II, the world showed a polarized pattern, the United States and the Soviet Union represented the capitalist and socialist camps tit-for-tat, the two superpowers entered the Cold War state, and the whole world followed suit. During the Cold War, the most direct confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union was in the military field, during which many epoch-making military equipment and genius designs appeared, which are not outdated today.
In the early 1950s, the atomic bomb was developed by the world's major military powers, how to effectively use this powerful weapon became the most urgent problem to be solved, at that time the most important means of delivery was still a long-range bomber, but with the improvement of air defense capabilities, slow flight speed and poor self-protection ability of bombers more and more difficult to complete the task, the emergence of ballistic missiles seems to solve the problem of delivery tools, making it possible to accurately hit enemy targets without harming themselves. But the rise of ballistic missiles has not fully combat capabilities, so in a short period of time can not be used as a reliable means of delivery, experts have proposed a variety of brain-opening solutions, such as the use of artillery to launch small nuclear bombs, the use of unmanned ships to carry nuclear bombs for blasting, and even the use of nuclear mines to ambush the opponent, after a comparison found that it is not as reliable as aircraft, so another solution has received widespread attention, using cruise missiles as nuclear weapon carriers.
As soon as the plan was proposed, the United States and the Soviet Union soon began related research and development work, in 1954 the Soviet military open tender to obtain a long-range cruise missile that can carry a nuclear warhead Benxi in the United States, and at the same time the United States is also carrying out the development of SM-62 and SM-64 super long-range cruise missiles, of which the SM-62 has a range of 8,000 kilometers (the dividing line of intercontinental missiles is also 5,000 kilometers), the speed is close to Mach 1, can carry 900 kilograms of warheads, the Soviet side felt threatened, Determined to develop a super cruise missile with its technical performance. The famous rocket designer Mitrav Coldesh conceived the idea of using a cruise missile with a nuclear power speed of Mach 3, a technical requirement that is difficult to achieve today, so it was quickly dismantled into two parallel plans, Storm and Blizzard.
The total length of the storm is 18 meters, the diameter is 2.2 meters, and the takeoff weight reaches 96 tons, compared with the blizzard, which is the larger one, its total length is 23 meters, the diameter is 2.4 meters, the take-off weight reaches a staggering 125 tons, and the range of both can reach 8500 kilometers The take-off weight of the Us missile of the same class is only 66 tons and the range is 5400 kilometers, and the Soviet Union basically makes up for the disadvantage of overseas military bases compared with the United States.
The smaller Storm missile, carrying a 2.21-ton warhead. The Tempest missile can carry a large warhead of 3.50 tons. Considering that the development of the hydrogen bomb was on the agenda, there was no problem in equipping this weapon with thermonuclear warheads, and from July 1, 1957 until December 16, 1960, the storm made a total of 14 flights, of which only three failed, which was much more successful than the Launch Rate of the Snake Shark, and the Soviet military even prepared a dedicated railway launch platform for this type of cruise missile; the Blizzard project was approved on May 20, 1954, parallel to the development of the storm. In April 1953, the Myasishev Design Bureau developed a rocket aircraft system, the internal name M-40, in a sense is the predecessor of the Blizzard, its booster rocket M-41 and cruise missile projectile M-42 were also developed later, but the project was cancelled in November 1957, when the two prototypes that the Blizzard had just made were preparing for the first flight test, and the final Blizzard project, which had never flown once, was cancelled. By 1960, after successful flight test experiments, the project hosted by the Lavochkin Design Bureau was asked to be shelved, and the Storm cruise missile was eventually lost.
Ultra-long-range cruise missiles did not exist for long, the development of long-range ballistic missiles, with the smooth progress of the R-7 project, the Soviet military has no need to invest military expenses and energy on high-risk, technically difficult cruise missiles, the 1960 Storm project was shelved after the successful flight test, the Blizzard project did not even get the opportunity to test.
The replacement of strategic cruise missile projects such as "Storm" and "Blizzard" heralds the beginning of a new era, and now when countries begin to develop hypersonic vehicles again, we may be able to feel the status of high-altitude high-speed vehicles once again, when these high-altitude high-speed cruise missiles were replaced by the times or a mistake, we do not know, but when we see the elegant Korolev Cross of the R-7 carrier rocket on TV again, You can always appreciate the power of technology in that crazy era!!