The 12th Chief (or "Main") Directorate of the Ministry of Defense (12 GU MO) of the former Soviet Union and of the Russian Federation after 1991 () is a highly secretive department within the Russian Ministry of Defense. Since its creation in 1947, it is responsible for the safe-keeping, technical maintenance, transportation, delivery, issuance, disposal, etc. of the Russian nuclear weapons, and all nuclear weapons storage sites operated by nuclear capable units of the Strategic Rocket Forces, Ground Forces, Air Force and Navy, as well as the testing of nuclear charges, which includes ensuring ecological safety of such tests and the maintenance of former Soviet/Russian testing grounds. These are known in Russian as "polygons" – in Semipalatinsk (Semipalatinsk Test Site, now Kazakhstan) and on Novaya Zemlya Archipelago.
Unlike the GRU (Chief Directorate of Intelligence), the 12th GU MO is not a chief directorate of the General Staff, but a chief directorate of the Ministry of Defense. As such it is not subordinated to the Chief of the General Staff of the Soviet/Russian Armed Forces, but directly to the Minister of Defense, which makes it higher in status compared to the GRU. The position of the Chief of the 12th GU MO is equal to that of the commander of a military district, and supposed to be occupied by a 4-star General or by a Marshal of Artillery. However, in practice, out of seven chiefs of this Organization, only one (E.V. Boichuk) has held such a high rank – the other six were only three-star Generals.
Officers Officers, or cadres, for the 12th GU MO are supplied mainly by a special nuclear weapons faculty of the Peter the Great Military Academy of the Strategic Missile Forces situated in Serpukhov, near Moscow, and by a special faculty of the Dzerzhinsky Military Academy. The 12th GU MO maintains its own training facility for commissioned officers and for warrant-officers at Sharapovo village, near the city of Sergiev Posad, where commissioned officers possessing other military specialties are educated in nuclear arsenal maintenance skills in 6-month-long courses. Non-essential specialists (those commissioned and non-commissioned officers and soldiers who perform general tasks unrelated to nuclear weapons) could be supplied by other military colleges and academies, but these people can not obtain positions in the 12th GU MO or in either of its subordinated units unless they (as well as their family) could get a special security clearance.
In the USSR only members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union could be appointed to serve in the 12th GU MO or in any of its subordinated units, including its Special Control Service (even young conscripts who served there only two years without actually knowing anything about nuclear weapons must obtain special security clearance and must necessarily be members of the Communist Union of Youth, a.k.a. "Komsomol").
Structure and tasks
In its main part the 12th GU MO consists of the headquarters, or the "directorate of the Chief of the 12 Chief Directorate", located in central Moscow – Znamenskiy Pereulok 19, unit number 31600. There was also a central archive, popularly known as "the nuclear registrar," where any and every piece of the Soviet or Russian nuclear munitions is registered. Besides, it consists of a network of nuclear arsenal bases both central and "dedicated" where nuclear warheads/munitions are actually being kept. During the Soviet period, these units were known as "Repair-Technical Bases". In addition to their main duties, they were also tasked with security of all nuclear weapons sites. These bases are now called "Special-Technical Formations", but their whole is called "Special Troops of Supreme Command Reserve".
Each base is typically the size of a regiment, sometimes the size of a brigade, but it is usually commanded by a major-general or sometimes by a rear admiral rather than by a colonel because their importance and elevated status makes them technically equal to that of a regular infantry or other division. Many of commanding officers serving at its Moscow headquarters bear general's and admiral's ranks, since almost all of them are being promoted from among remote arsenal base commanders. That is why the percentage of generals and admirals among commissioned officers in the 12th GU MO is considerably higher than in any other military organization of the Russian Army or the Russian Navy. Such nuclear arsenal bases are usually located far enough from big cities (at least 50 kilometres), but close enough to the military units that would use these nuclear warheads in case of war (primarily it is Intercontinental Ballistic Missile batteries, but also missile batteries with shorter range, theatre and tactical missile units, navy and aviation units armed with nuclear weapons, units of military saboteurs and engineers that were supposed to use portable nuclear munitions, anti-aircraft and anti-ballistic missile defences that use nuclear-tipped missiles, etc.). So the main purpose of the 12th Chief Directorate's existence is to securely separate "end-users" of nuclear weapons from their actual nuclear weapons during times of peace. Only in case of real necessity those who are supposed to have nuclear weapons would get them and it could only happen when authorized by the top political leadership. Presently only some small number of nuclear warheads are always issued to end-users, such as warheads attached to ballistic missiles currently at service, but most of the Russian nuclear arsenal is being securely kept by the 12th Chief Directorate units and could only be issued to others in case of emergency.
Moreover, this organization is tasked to collect currently issued nuclear warheads back from their end-users for a reason of replacement or upgrading, and to conduct technical maintenance on nuclear weapons currently issued to end-users at their territories. For this reason each military unit that armed with nuclear warheads currently in service also has some permanently attached representatives of the 12th GU MO nearest arsenal bases whose main duty is to supervise prescribed handling and to conduct required technical maintenance of these issued nuclear warheads. The 12th GU MO nuclear arsenal bases' staff is additionally trained for being able to attach nuclear warheads to their carriers, ballistic and other missiles, to strategic bombers and to other kind of aircraft, a task which usually assigned to special units of end-users. Such additional training is conducted for a reason that 12th GU MO specialists could replace specialists of the end-users in this capacity in case of emergency.
Another task of the 12th GU MO is to prevent so-called "nuclear terrorism", but this is a relatively modern task, which did not exist formerly. Besides these nuclear arsenal bases, the 12th Chief Directorate maintains several nuclear weapons research institutes in Moscow and in Sergiev Posad, near Moscow, with their subsidiaries located at nuclear testing grounds in Semipalatinsk-21 and on Novaya Zemlya Archipelago, and in several other cities (Saint Petersburg, for example). It also maintains a separate research institute tasked with developing nuclear explosions detection technology. Another function of the 12th GU MO is to serve as a link between the Armed Forces and those branches of Soviet/Russian industry and science related to nuclear weapons developing and manufacturing. It is actually the 12th Chief Directorate that develops detailed plans for required nuclear armament and its improvements and places orders for nuclear weapons production before civilian manufacturers.
Secrecy The 12th GU MO is probably the most secretive organization of the Soviet/Russian Armed Forces, even more than the GRU or the Strategic Rocket Forces. Even though today Russia has become more open and even some articles appear in its mass-media openly describing the "Nuclear Technical Service" Directorate, this organization remains off-limits. However, during Soviet times the most of commissioned officers, even though highly educated ones, had little or no knowledge that the 12th Chief Directorate existed. In the Soviet times it was considered taboo to talk about it outside of secured premises. When talking to strangers, even to other commissioned officers of the Armed Forces, one could only refer to their unit by its coded number. For example, you could say that "I serve as a tank platoon commander at the military unit 31600," but nothing more than that.
Most of officials of the 12th GU MO headquarters wear gunnery uniforms and bear military ranks typical to artillery, since this organization is considered being primarily an "arsenal". However, when it comes to its personnel serving in its remote nuclear arsenal bases, it could wear various military uniforms, ranging from aviation and navy to even tank-crews and marines, because it is a long-time policy, since its creation, of the 12th GU MO to disguise its remote units. During the Cold War, 12th GU MO personnel were also stationed at facilities operated by nuclear-capable units in Warsaw Pact countries, and would often wear the uniforms of the respective armed forces of that country. All service personnel of the 12th GU MO are explicitly forbidden to reveal to anyone, even to their spouses, that they serve in the Nuclear Technical Service, in the 12th Chief Directorate, or that they have anything to do with nuclear weapons. Moreover, a majority of non-essential staff of nuclear arsenal bases do not know that they actually maintain nuclear weapons. Every unit of this organization has its own cover story based on its location and its currently worn uniform and all its personnel must strictly adhere to this story when dealing with strangers. Some bases also use "civilian legends." For example, nuclear arsenal base unit number 62047 in Krasnokamianka, Kizil-Tash, Crimea, was masquerading as a "wine-making enterprise".
Active disinformation measures to this effect are meticulously planned and are regularly conducted not only in order to create a wrong impression among local population and neighbouring military units, but even to misinform conscripts and other unrelated staff serving at actual arsenal bases. For example, tanks and artillery pieces that are maintained as a part of the cover story could be seen by neighbours on daily "routine" exercises in corresponding bogus "tank" or "artillery" regiments. In order to minimize spreading of information about these bases, their commissioned staff was encouraged to serve at one location for as long as possible and not to seek promotions outside their bases (while it was typical for Soviet military in general to move officers every 3–5 years to various places and to promote them exclusively outside of their former military units).
Nuclear arsenal base structure Each nuclear arsenal base typically consists of the following main services and units: Command (that includes the formation's commander and his deputies, chief engineer, chief of staff, chief of political department with their staff, cadres, financial departments, and other administration). Engineering-Technical Service or ETS (Russian abbreviation "ITS") – the most important service of the arsenal that actually handles nuclear weapons and deals with end-users. It is subdivided into several departments, bearing names such as "2nd department", "3rd department", "3rd A department", "3rd B department", and similar. Each department deals with specific kinds of nuclear munitions and with specific "customers".