a titan of radio engineering : the centennial of the birth of academician a.a raspletin

7/24/2019 A Titan of Radio Engineering : The Centennial of the Birth of Academician A.A Raspletin

1/6

ISSN 10193316, Herald of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 2009, Vol. 79, No. 5, pp. 495500. Pleiades Publishing, Ltd., 2009.Original Russian Text I.R. Ashurbeili, A.P. Reutov, E.M. Sukharev, 2009, published in Vestnik Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk, 2009, Vol. 79, No. 10, pp. 937943.

495

The centennial of the birth of AleksandrAndreevich Raspletin, a prominent Soviet researcherand designer, has been commemorated recently. Anadventurous engineer and brilliant administrator, hetook a leading part in many R&D efforts to the benefitof the national economy, defense, and science.

Raspletin was born on August 25, 1908, into a merchants family in Rybinsk near Yaroslavl [1]. As aschoolboy, he had an interest it chemistry and physicsand played in his schools brass band before he becamefascinated by radio. He built a transceiver and began

experimenting with establishing longrange communications as a member of the local hamradio society[2]. His dedication earned him the respect of his fellowmembers; they elected him chair of the shortwave section in 1928 and selected him to represent the societyat the First AllUnion Conference of Ham RadioOperators in Moscow December 2428, 1928.

In 1930, Raspletin moved to Leningrad and took ajob at the Comintern factory. The factorys chiefresearcher A.L. Mints assigned him to the piezoelec

tric laboratory to develop piezoelectric crystals as partof shortwave transmitters. He also set Raspletin themore challenging task of designing a piezoelectric frequency standard. In 1932, the first technical paper byRaspletin appeared in the journal Tekhnika radio i

slabogo toka (Radio and LowCurrent Technology),which presented his results concerning piezoelectriccrystal fabrication and adjustment and circuit designfor accurate time measurement [3].

Once in Leningrad, he began his studies to enterthe radioengineering profession. After graduatingfrom the Leningrad LowCurrent Technology Collegein 1932, he enrolled as a radioengineering student inthe evening department of the Leningrad Electrotechnical Institute. During his time at the institute, hepublished five more papers and obtained two inventors certificates. Despite his great workload, he also

joined a shortwave military unit as a consultant. Hetook part in building the first shortwave radio stationsfor the exploration of the Northern Sea Route.

The year 1932 was a turning point in Raspletinscareer during which he became engaged in the development of television. The piezoelectric laboratory wasreorganized into part of the Central Radio Laboratory,in which a laboratory of television and electrooptics

was set up under the leadership of V.A. Gurov, theauthor of The Fundamentals of LongRange Viewing(Osnovy dalnovideniya). Raspletins first investigationinvolved running comparative tests of receivers used inmechanical television, for which purpose he organizedthe fabrication of a batch of TV sets based on a mirrorscrew and lens disk in December 1932. The results

were published in 1933 as a series of papers [4].

His work on electronic television began with developing the first allelectronic television receiver, aimingto offer a resolution of 30120 lines. In 1934 a teamled by Ya.A. Ryftin created a technology that provided180 lines of resolution at 25 frames per second. In September 1938, Raspletin came up with the first SovietTV set, named VRK, which was designed to receive

broadcasts from a newly built pilot TV center in Leningrad. During 19381940, pioneering efforts weremade to design a largescreen TV set for collective

viewing; the result was the TE1 and TE2 projectionTV sets with a screen measuring 1.0 1.2 or 2 3 m,

DOI: 10.1134/S101933160905013X

A Titan of Radio Engineering

The Centennial of the Birth of Academician A.A. Raspletin

Profiles

Academician Aleksandr Andreevich Raspletin (19081967).


2/6

496

HERALD OF THE RUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES Vol. 79 No. 5 2009

ASHURBEILI et al.

respectively, based on the US model TK1. As early as1937, Raspletins team began developing the firsttabletop personal TV sets, named TI1 and TI2,

which were simpler variants of VRK and TK1. In1939, an improved model, TI3, appeared for receiving broadcasts from the TV centers in Moscow andLeningrad. It went into mass production at the Radist(Radio Operator) factory in Leningrad under the codename 17TN1. It was the first Soviet tabletop radio

and television receiver of tower configuration thatimplemented electronic scanning and direct detection. Later, it served as the prototype of the KVN49,probably the most popular Soviet TV set.

With the increasingly tense situation in Europe,Raspletin took an interest in military applications oftelevision. He and Ryftin initiated a project to developa TV system for air reconnaissance. Unfortunately, it

was abandoned after the Great Patriotic War brokeout.

In 1941 the German aggression against the SovietUnion made it impossible to continue any work on

television. Raspletin and his coworkers spent over twoweeks constructing the Luga Defense Line as part ofthe war effort. In August, all radio broadcasting stations in Leningrad were rendered inoperable exceptfor the mediumwave one (RV70) in the Petrogradskii district, but its transmitters were not powerfulenough to reach Moscow. Its chief A.I. Mironov andRaspletin came up with a way to convert availableultrashortwave TV transmitters to shortwave radiotransmitters, so that the radio station began broadcast

ing worldwide as early as September, via relay stationsin Moscow.

His more ambitious idea was to design and makeportable transceivers for use on the battlefield, which

was approved in July 1941. The Sever (North) radio set(also known as Omega) was thus created and began to

be manufactured by the Television Research Institute,with Raspletin responsible for quality control andcompliance with the specifications (there were no military representatives at the institute). In February1942, however, Leningrad was cut off from electricitysupply, and the production of radio sets ceased. Underthe circumstances, the decision was made to evacuatethe staff of the institute to Krasnoyarsk.

The siege of Leningrad took a heavy toll on Raspletin: he lost his mother and wife and many coworkers.

During the war, Raspletin became interested inmilitary electronic technologies for early warning orguidance. In later years, he was concerned with automated targeting systems, whether groundbased, air

borne, or spaceborne [5].

In fact, he advanced the concept of a TV facility toguide fighter aircraft as early as 1938. The idea found anumber of successful implementations. In particular,it was developed by E.I. Golovanevskii into the concept of a TV system for transmitting data from theRedut (Redoubt) radar to the headquarters of the Leningrad Front. Golovanevskiis proposal was put intooperation to effectively become the first commandandcontrol system for airdefense electronic facilities.

In September 1942, Raspletin was transferred to

the Special Design Bureau at the Lenin AllUnionElectrical Engineering Institute in Moscow, where hewas appointed the research supervisor of a teamcharged with creating a TV system for guiding fighters;the effort was given the code name RD. In November1943, Raspletins team was transferred to AllUnionResearch Institute No. 108, which was established onJuly 4 to develop radar technology. Intended for theLeningrad AirDefense Army, the RD system was oneof the main projects of the institute. It was presentedfor acceptance tests in late 1944, and passed them inthe battlefield near Breslau (now Wroclaw) and Leningrad.

In 1946, Raspletin worked on the design of a radarinstallation, codenamed RT or SNAR1, for frontline detection and accurate location of ground targetssuch as tanks, armored personnel carriers, and artillery positions.

He came up with three inventions, the most notable of which was a radioengineering technique to protect armored vehicles, devised in collaboration withthe prominent physicist M.A. Leontovich, P.Z. Stas(director), and A.M. Kugushev (chief engineer).

Raspletins 17TN1 television (Polytechnical Museum,Moscow).


3/6


A TITAN OF RADIO ENGINEERING 497

In 1947 he conducted pioneering research on millimeterwave technology; these efforts were namedTaiga and Les (Forest).

Returning to Raspletins contributions to television, we note his conception of a massproduced TVset, which was implemented by A.Ya. Klopov,D.S. Kheifets, and others, as a single and a threechannel model (T1 and T2), and produced by the

Kozitskii Factory in Leningrad.

Raspletin was a brilliant proponent and a coauthorof almost all Soviet TV standards [6]. His efforts culminated in the adoption of a 625line national standard on December 31, 1955 [7]. Indeed, almost all ofhis conceptions in the field of television have proved

viable.

In 1950, Raspletin joined Design Bureau No. 1,codenamed KB1, to direct the Berkut (GoldenEagle) airdefense project. That year a meeting of theDefense Council chaired by J. Stalin concluded thatMoscow was defenseless against possible air attacks of

the potential enemy, particularly from the west, northwest, and north. To rectify this, the decision was madeto build an airdefense system for the entire Moscowindustrial region. Stalin stressed that the air defensemust be perfectly impenetrable, considering the threatof atomic bombing.

To the Soviet government, the Berkut project was asimportant as the creation of nuclear ballistic missiles[8]. Raspletin took responsibility for its radioengineering side as a deputy to its chief designersP.N. Kuksenko and S.L. Beria, Jr. (son of L.P. Beria).In fact, he made decisions about the configuration ofthe entire system, as well as of its radar facilities. It wasRaspletin who advanced the unprecedented conceptof a multichannel radar station capable of tracking upto 20 targets concurrently within a fixed coverage sector. The facility was named the B200 Central Guidance Radar.

In addition, Raspletin and A.P. Reutov proposedproviding the Berkut system with an earlywarningand missiletargeting capability in the form of Tu4aircraft equipped with a longrange radar and radiohoming airtoair missiles for defense, the latter beingpreviously designed by SB1. The proposal was supported by the leading airborneradar designer

V.V. Tikhomirov, and was approved by Kuksenko andStalin in 1951. The aircraft was codenamed D500.

The Berkut system began to be tested as early as1952, with Raspletin as the resident technical supervisor at the test range.

In November 1952, a simulation was successfullyconducted of firing a V300 surfacetoair missile(SAM) at a target under closedloop guidance. Thefirst target drone was shot down on April 26, 1953, andthe first phase of test firings was finished the nextmonth, the tests involving Tu4 aircraft.

In the middle of 1953, Raspletin succeededS.L. Beria, Jr., as chief designer, and the Berkut system

was renamed the S25.

The final series of ground tests of a fullfledged prototype that guided missiles to 20 targets concurrently

were conducted in 1954 and 1955. The same years sawthe deployment of actual S25 facilities near Moscow,

which involved an enormous amount of constructionwork. On May 7, 1955, a meeting chaired byN.S. Khrushchev declared S25 accepted. Raspletin

was given the title of Hero of Socialist Labor and waspresented with a ZIM luxury car.

However, S25 had the obvious disadvantage ofbeing immobile, and as such could not be used todefend the cities and other critical assets of the country. Continual violations of the Soviet airspace madethe need for nationwide air defense more pressing.Considering the circumstances, Raspletin came for

ward with an initiative to design a mobile SAM system,which was given the code name S75 [9].

The work on S75 began when the S25 project wasstill in progress. The acceptance tests of S75 in a tentative frequency band were finished as early as 1957,and its final version entered service the next year. Raspletin was awarded the Lenin Prize in recognition of

SNAR1 radar station in transit.

Central Guidance Radar of the S25 system.


4/6

498


ASHURBEILI et al.

his leading part in the effort. In 1958 he was elected acorresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and was named to the Supreme Soviet of theNational Economy (Vesenkha), chaired by V.M. Rya

bikov. In January 1961, Raspletin was appointed general designer of KB1.

S75 became famous when a U2 spy aircraftcrossed the border and was shot down near Sverdlovsk(now Yekaterinburg) on May Day in 1960. The sameday, D.F. Ustinov called a meeting in the Kremlin todiscuss the event. Raspletin, who had just talked withthe airdefense commanderinchief, pointed to theurgent need for an integrated automated system forcommand and control of all airdefense facilities. Theproject to implement his proposal was named Elektron(Electron).

In the spring of 1958, Raspletin formulated the taskof creating an airdefense system with an increasedrange of operation compared with S75 and the nextmobile SAM system, S125 [10]. The rationale was theemergence of aircraft with a longrange jammingcapability and airtosurface missiles with a rangeexceeding 100 km; indeed, radars of increased coverage were more suitable for a country with a vast terri

tory. The conceptual design of the longrange SAMsystem, codenamed S200, was finished in May 1959;the preliminary design was performed during Decem

ber 1959 and January 1960; and the ground testsstarted in 1966. The same year saw the beginning of

work on its successor, S300.

Raspletin also directed missiledefense projects. In1953, seven marshals wrote a letter to the CentralCommittee of the Communist Party, alerting it to theemerging threat from longrange ballistic missiles. It

contained the following points: In the immediate

future, we expect to see the potential enemy deployinglongrange ballistic missiles as the main vehicle to

deliver nuclear devices to the critical assets of our coun

try. However, our airdefense facilities, whether in ser

vice or in development, are incapable of combating the

missiles. We are writing to request that branch ministries

be ordered to launch projects with the aim of creatingfacilities to combat the ballistic missiles. On October 28,

the Council of Ministers issued the order On the Feasibility of Creating MissileDefense Facilities, followed

by the December order On the Development of Techniques for Combating LongRange Missiles.An appro

priate unit was set up in KB1 in response to the

request by senior military officials that leading experts

of the design bureau took part in the missiledefense

effort. During 1955 and 1956, the government madedecisions to proceed with the feasibility study.

KB1 was selected as the leading designer of a local

missiledefense system, named Azov, and Raspletin

was put in charge of the project. In 1965, KB1 pro

duced a preliminary design and proceeded to prepare

technical documentation. Later, the design bureau

was ordered to upgrade the system for use of intercontinental ballistic missiles for missiledefense purposes.

The Azov system was conceived by Raspletin as an

integral part of a wider effort that included the cre

ation of a missiledefense system for Moscow (A35)

and a spacebased warning system designed to detect

missile firings. In 1965, KB1 was charged with con

ducting a feasibility study on such a warning system,following a request by the airdefense command. Its

U2 Affair: (a) A U2 spy aircraft in flight and (b) the government commission examining the wreckage of the U2 downed onMay 1, 1960.

(a) (b)


5/6


A TITAN OF RADIO ENGINEERING 499

concept was framed by Research Institute No. 2 of theMinistry of Defense, with a significant contributionmade by Raspletin.

As regards air defense, Raspletin put forward theinnovative idea of using laser radiation against lowflying targets. It was supported by B.V. Bunkin,F.V. Bunkin, and E.P. Velikhov, who estimated the output laser energy required to shoot down an aircraft at

2 107J (subject to air attenuation) against an avail

able input energy of 6 108J.

Raspletin assigned his deputy B.V. Bunkin to leadthe laser project, who set up a targeted laboratory inFebruary 1966, with E.M. Sukharev as its head.

Velikhov was charged by the Academys Vice PresidentM.D. Millionshchikov with related investigations intomagnetohydrodynamic (MHD) generators. A program was formulated under Raspletins supervisionthat addressed the design of a system for the precisionguidance of a laser beam. Later, it provided the basisfor a lidar project.

In the summer of 1966, Raspletin, Velikhov,B.V. Bunkin, F.V. Bunkin, and P.P. Pashinin met at theLebedev Physical Institute to discuss the laser projectand decided to prepare a note for the Central Committee of the Communist Party. The document wasready by the autumn, entitled Proposals for a BroadlyBased Investigation into Resources and Methods forBuilding Systems around Optical Quantum Generators. The Central Committee and the Council ofMinisters approved the initiative in their joint decreeof February 23, 1967. Raspletin, A.M. Prokhorov,B.V. Bunkin, and Velikhov were appointed the chiefresearchers of the project.

Regrettably, Raspletin died suddenly on March 8,1967, after a brief illness in his 59th year.

Any account of Raspletins career is seriouslyincomplete if it omits his academic work. It was beforehe graduated from the Leningrad ElectrotechnicalInstitute that he began teaching a daytime course inTVset design for fourthyear students. After he qualified as a radio engineer, he taught there for some timeand then at a retraining college, while lecturing at theLeningrad RadioAmateur Club. On March 7, 1947,he defended his dissertation On the Design of a SingleValve Sawtooth Oscillator to obtain a candidatesdegree in engineering. In the middle of 1949, he began

lecturing on automatic control and teleoperation atthe Bauman Moscow Higher Technical School. After

joining KB1, he originated the idea of a resident radardepartment of the Moscow Institute of Physics andTechnology on the premises of the design bureau, andthis was established in 1954. In 1956 Raspletin wascumulatively awarded a doctoral degree.

But the most important product of Raspletins academic and mentoring activities was his school ofresearchers and engineers including B.V. Bunkin,

G.Ya. Guskov, V.I. Markov, P.M. Kirillov, A.E. Basistov, A.I. Savin, G.V. Kisunko, Yu.N. Figurovskii,K.S. Alperovich, V.P. Shishov, V.M. Shabanov,E.M. Sukharev, V.G. Repin, V.M. Sidorin, and

A.P. Reutov. He advised more than 40 graduate students.

For many years, Raspletin served as a member ofthe expert council of the Higher Attestation Commission and a member of the Special Committee at theCouncil of Ministers. He chaired the technical boardat KB1.

In 1956, Raspletin was awarded a doctoral degreein recognition of his achievements in radio engineering. In 1958 and 1964, he was elected a correspondingmember and a full member, respectively, of the USSR

Academy of Sciences in the field of radio and electronic engineering.

Raspletin belonged to a new generation of engineers. Those who knew him personally remember hisclearsightedness; extensive expertise in matters of sci

ence, engineering, and manufacturing; enthusiasmbalanced with sound judgment; equal attention to theoretical and practical aspects; resourcefulness; andamazing capacity for hard work. In his professionalrelationships, he strove for exacting standards while

being approachable and cheerful. Intensely patriotic,he made invaluable contributions to the national science, technology, and defense [11]. Four decades afterhis death, we admire him even more.

I.R. Ashurbeili,

Cand. Sci. (Eng.),

A.P. Reutov,

RAS Corresponding Member,

E.M. Sukharev,

Dr. Sci. (Eng.)

REFERENCES

1. V. I. Garnov,Academician Aleksandr Raspletin(Moskovskii Rabochii, Moscow, 1990) [in Russian].

2. A.A. Raspletin and His Place in the Russian Radio HamMovement in the 1930 and1940s: A Report by the OAOGSKB AlmazAntei, the MilitaryHistorical Museum ofArtillery, Engineering and Signal Corps, and the BudennyMilitary Academy of Communications of the RussianMinistry of Defense(Moscow, 2008) [in Russian].

3. E. S. Makushin and A. A. Raspletin, Standard of Frequency of the Central Radiolaboratory of the AllUnion LowCurrent Union, Tekh. Radio SlabogoToka, No. 10 (1932).

4. E. M. Sukharev, The Role of A.A. Raspletin in theHistory of Development of the First Russian Television


6/6

500


ASHURBEILI et al.

Receivers, Elektrosvyaz: Istoriya Sovremennost,No. 1 (2008).

5. E. M. Sukharev, A.A. Raspletin and Television Methods of Reflection of the Air Situation, Elektrosvyaz:Istoriya Sovremennost, No. 2 (2008).

6. E. M. Sukharev, The Participation of A.A. Raspletin inthe Development and Implementation of Blackand

White Television Standards, Zh. 625, No. 7 (2008).

7. Standard 625: World Recognition, Zh. 625, (Special ed.) (2008).

8. K. S. Alperovich, Years of Work over the Moscow AirDefense System: 19501955 (Engineers Notes), 2nd.ed. (Uniserv, Moscow, 2006) [in Russian].

9. Sixty Years of NPO Almaz: Victories and Prospects:A Collective Monograph (Uniserv, Moscow, 2007) [inRussian].

10. A. V. Ryazanov and E. M. Sukharev, Aircraft andRocket Complexes and Air Defense Systems, inDynamism of Radio Electronics(Moscow, 2007).

11. I. R. Ashurbeili, Geopolitical Aspects of A.A. Raspletins Scientific and Engineering Activity, Rossiya,Sept., 11 (2008).

a titan of radio engineering : the centennial of the birth of academician a.a raspletin

Documents