Iskander: The One Missile America and NATO Fears (And North Korea Loves)

Dave Majumdar

Security,

From Russia with no love. 

The 9K720 Iskander-M—known in NATO parlance as the SS-26 Stone—is a potent short-range ballistic missile. While export versions of the missile have a range of 280 kilometers and payload of 480Kg, the weapons destined for domestic service have a range 500 kilometers, according to Global Security.

(This first appeared in 2016 and is being reposted due to reader interest and breaking news that North Korea's latest missile is very similar to this weapon.)

Other sources such as the Missile Threat Project, estimate that the domestic version of the Iskander has shorter range of about 400 kilometers and payload of about 700Kg. Either way, that means that the nuclear-capable Iskander-M complies with the limitations of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. Nonetheless, the missile effectively replaces the OTR-23 Oka (SS-23 Spider) nuclear-tipped ballistic missile—which was eliminated by the INF treaty.

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Both versions of the Iskander have a single warhead equipped terminal guidance systems, but the missile’s accuracy depends on the variant. According to Missile Threat, a purely inertially-guided variant would have a 200m circular probability of error accuracy, but coupled with GPS or GLONASS, that could be reduced to 50m or less. If those systems were supplemented by radar or electro-optical sensors, the Iskander’s accuracy could be better than 10m.