Iskander-M

Russia's primary road-mobile short-range ballistic missile — nuclear-capable, maneuvering, and the workhorse of its deep-strike campaign in Ukraine.

Overview

The 9K720 Iskander-M, known to NATO as the SS-26 Stone, is a road-mobile short-range ballistic missile (SRBM) system that forms the backbone of Russia’s theater precision strike capability. It fires a quasi-ballistic missile capable of depressed trajectory flight, high-g terminal maneuvering, and a variety of conventional warheads, and is publicly established as nuclear-capable. The same transporter-erector-launcher (TEL) can also fire the Iskander-K cruise missile family, giving a single brigade both ballistic and cruise-missile reach. Since 2022 the Iskander-M has been the primary Russian SRBM in the war against Ukraine, employed against command posts, air defenses, infrastructure, and city targets.

Development

The Iskander was developed by KBM Kolomna as a successor to the OTR-21 Tochka (SS-21 Scarab) SRBM and entered Russian service in 2006, according to CSIS. The 9M723 ballistic missile was complemented by a family of ground-launched cruise missiles: the 9M728 (NATO SSC-7) and the later 9M729 (SSC-8), the latter assessed by the United States as having a range exceeding the 500 km limit of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. The missile’s development and deployment became a central factor in the US withdrawal from the INF Treaty in 2019, a connection documented by CSIS.

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