Strategic Rocket Forces

The Strategic Rocket Forces of the Russian Federation is a separate combat arm of the Russian Armed Forces that controls Russia's land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles. It was created on 17 December 1959 as part of the Soviet Armed Forces as the main force for operating all Soviet nuclear ground-based intercontinental, intermediate-range and medium-range ballistic missiles with ranges over 1,000 kilometers. After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, assets of the force were in the territories of several new states, with armed nuclear missile silos in Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, and under the Belovezha Accords the other three nuclear member states transferred Soviet missiles on their territory to Russia. Together with the Long Range Aviation of the Russian Aerospace Forces and the ballistic missile submarines of the Russian Navy, it forms Russia's nuclear triad. Its size is given as 50,000 personnel in 2020.