Molniya Buran OK-92 Original military space bomber version

In 1972, U.S. President Nixon approved a program to develop a reusable Space Shuttle system. In the USSR, the space shuttle was viewed first of all as a carrier of nuclear weapons. The Soviet military convinced that U.S. planned to use the shuttle for a pre-emptive nuclear strike on Russia. Therefore the USSR needed an analogous capability to maintain the strategic balance. In 1976, the Ministers of the USSR launched the program of the reusable spacecraft system. The U.S. shuttle design was studied by Russian scientists and the obvious choice was a straight aerodynamic copy of it. The military specification was issued at the same time with the code name Buran. MiG was selected as subcontractor to build the orbiter. For this purpose, MiG spun off a new design bureau, Molniya. The two designs, the OK-120 and OK-92 were submitted and the OK-92 which was fitted with two air-jet engines for flight in the atmosphere was signed. Before the construction began, the final design was split into two configurations, the aero test prototype OK-GLI that keeping the jet engines mounted at the rear and the space flight vehicles OK-1.01 that only installed with rocket engines.