Russia to dispose of Topol ballistic missiles
Russian state-owned corporation Roscosmos has posted an online public procurement application for the disposal of nine intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) Topol RS- 12M. The maximum contract price is 9.78 million rubles ($170,000 USD).
Lot includes the disposal of the missile parts, sale of the obtained materials and disposal of illiquid waste. The contractor must have a valid license for the dismantling of military equipment, the Russian Armed Forces security clearance with access to classified information and license to work with precious metals.
According to the application, it’s possible to get 1.8 kilograms of gold, 42 kilograms of silver, 45 grams of platinum, more than 16 tons of ferrous and 13 tons of non-ferrous metals from the utilization of nine rockets. Funds from the sale of the metals should be transferred to the federal budget. The work must be carried out at the ICBMs Disposal Centre at Votkinsk Machine Building Plant in Udmurtia.
Ballistic missile RS-12M Topol was put into production in 1984. For 10 years, the Votkinsk plant produced about 400 missiles of this type, then the production of Topol was stopped and the plant was engaged in the production of a more advanced ICBM - Topol-M.
In recent years, the number of RS-12M in the Strategic Missile Forces is rapidly declining. In 2010, 171 Topol missiles were in operational but at the beginning of 2018 only 36 of them were left.