GRAU
The Main Missile and Artillery Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation (), commonly referred to by its transliterated Russian acronym GRAU (), is a department of the Russian Ministry of Defense. It is subordinate to the Chief of Armament and Munition of the Russian Armed Forces, a vice-minister of defense. The organization dates back to 1862 when it was established under the name Главное артиллерийское управление (ГАУ – GAU). The "R" from "rockets" was added to the title in 1960. In particular, the GRAU is responsible for assigning GRAU indices to Russian army munitions and equipment. Arsenals  of the GRAU, according to Kommersant-Vlast in 2005, include the 60th at Kaluga, the 55th at Rzhev, the 75th at Serpukhov south of Moscow, (all three in the Moscow Military District) and the 80th at Gagarskiy, the 116th at Krasno-Oktyabrskiy and the 5th, all in the Volga–Urals Military District. As of December 2021, the current Chief of the GRAU is Major General Nikolay Romanovsky. Current GRAU indices. GRAU indices are of the form " ", sometimes with a further suffix " ". They may be followed by a specially assigned codename. For example "2 S 19  "Msta-S"", the 2S19 Msta  self-propelled howitzer, has the index "2S19", without suffix; "Msta-S" is the codename. Misconceptions. Several common misconceptions surround the scope and originating body of these indices. The GRAU designation is not an industrial designation, nor is it assigned by the design bureau. In addition to its GRAU designation, a given piece of equipment could have a design name, an industrial name and a service designation. For example, one of the surface-to-air missiles in the S-25 Berkut air defense system had at least four domestic designations: Some Soviet general-purpose bombs bore a designation that looked confusingly similar  to GRAU. Designation scheme. The first part of a GRAU index is a number indicating which of the several main categories of equipment a given item belongs to. The second part, a Cyrillic character, indicates the subcategory. The third part, a number, indicates the specific model. The optional suffix can be used to differentiate variants of the same model.