The symbol NA is for a logical missing value:
class(NA)
#[1] "logical"
This is convenient, since it can easily be coerced to other atomic vector types, and is therefore usually the only NA you will need:
x <- c(1, NA, 1)
class(x[2])
#[1] "numeric"
If you do need a single NA value of another type, use NA_character_, NA_integer_, NA_real_ or NA_complex_. For missing values of fancy classes, subsetting with NA_integer_ usually works; for example, to get a missing-value Date:
class(Sys.Date()[NA_integer_])
# [1] "Date"