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editThe article claims that R-16 to be the first ICBM. Well, maybe it was the first ICBM that was used in large scale. The R-7 seems to be the first ICBM that proved that it worked.
The article claims that R-16 was inferior to American missiles. No citation or comparison data is given. Considering that R-16 became operational in 1961, that R-7 flew in 1957, and that R-7 was the first ICBM ever, I don't know what American missiles R-16 is compared to. 4 years before R-16 flew Americans did not have ICBMs at all. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mikus (talk • contribs) 22:03, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
The Atlas missile, built by Convair Division of General Dynamics, was tested in 1957. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_(missile). My father was a telemetry design engineer on that project. User:Windofkeltia 15:00, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
Not a deterrent
editIn the previous version of this article, the R-16 was referred to as "the first truly credible rocket-based nuclear deterrent" in the Soviet arsenal. This is inaccurate -- the long response time and unprotected launch facilities meant that the R-16 was a first-strike weapon only (as was its counterpart the Atlas), because in case of a surprise first strike by the US, all these missiles would have been blown to bits before they could even be fueled for launch. I've changed the text to "the first truly successful intercontinental ballistic missile". 24.5.122.13 (talk) 08:58, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
- Correction on the Atlas: its response time actually was (barely) short enough to launch-on-warning, so in fact it WAS a (sorta-kinda) second-strike weapon -- but the R-16 still wasn't, because of its much longer response time. 24.5.122.13 (talk) 22:49, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
Contradictions
editThere seem to be two small contradictions between this article and two other WP-articles. Firstly here the number of deaths by the Nedelin desaster is given as 78 while the article about the desaster states that the number is not known. Secondly this article labels the R-16 as the first operational ICBM deployed by the SU while the article about the R-7A Semyorka more or less states the same thing. I understand that the R-7A is considered to be "experimental" here, but in my opinion you can have only one first operational and deployed ICBM ... Was the R-7A deployed ? Yes, at two cosmodromes, Plesezk and Baiconour. Was it operational ? Sure ... the R-7 has a good enough service record to assume that some whould certainly have arived if sent. So how do you define something to be "the first real ..." when the predecesor already had all what's needed to be the first ? I think it would be great if those contradictions could be ironed out. JB. --92.193.232.13 (talk) 06:16, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
- I made an attempt to clear up the contradiction about the number of people killed in the accident. I used the range reported by the Nedelin catastrophe article's infobox and copied the two sources for the upper and lower bounds. However, even this might not sufficiently convey just how uncertain we are about the number. Foxbud (talk) 16:18, 9 June 2024 (UTC)