Provisions of the SALT II agreement prohibited the deployment of more than one new missile ( which became RT-23UTTh ) , it was officially declared by the Soviet Union that the RT-2PM Topol was developed to upgrade the silo based RT-2 . The US government disputed this view , contending that the missile was clearly more than 5 % larger and had twice the throw-weight as the RT-2 and therefore constituted a new missile system . Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov , Soviet Chief of General Staff cancelled the September 1 , 1983 test flight of the RT-2PM Topol which was to be launched from Plesetsk ( the launch site in northwest Russia used for test firing of solid fuel propellant ICBMs ) - 24 minutes later to land in the Klyuchi target area on the Kamchatka Peninsula . The night of the scheduled launch was the night that Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was shot down after accidentally intruding Soviet airspace over Kamchatka
Korean Air Lines Flight 007
Korean Air Lines Flight 007
RT-2PM Topol