Kh-555 not yet operational
David C Isby
JANE’S MISSILES AND ROCKETS
Date Posted: 30-Sep-2005

Cita:
Although deliveries of the Russian MKB Raduga Kh-555 conventional air-launched cruise missile started in 2004, the weapon is not yet operational with the Tu-160 ‘Blackjack’ strategic bomber force, writes David C Isby. Eventually, each bomber will be capable of carrying 12 missiles internally.

The new missile received extensive publicity on 17 August 2005 when Russian President Vladimir Putin flew on a Tu-160 bomber mission that included launching four examples of this missile from two bombers (see JMR October 2005, p11). All four cruise missiles are reported to have struck their intended targets, which were building shells on the Pemboy range on the Kolskiy peninsula near Vorkuta.

The Kh-555 uses the basic airframe and power plant of the nuclear-armed Kh-55 (AS-15 ‘Kent’) strategic cruise missile. Some 1,500 Kh-55s are still in Russian stockpiles, according to press reports, and many of these are expected to be converted into Kh-555 missiles.

It is uncertain how much of the original structure is retained in the Kh-555. According to Russian press reports, only the basic fuselage structure is the same. The maximum range is increased from the 3,000 km of the original missile to around 3,500 km by fitting two external 220-litre conformal fuel tanks. These are jettisoned in flight when empty. Other Kh-555 differences from the Kh-55 include increased use of radar-absorbing material in the fuselage, wings and tail.

The Kh-555 cruises at 40-110 m altitude and carries a conventional warhead of 350 kg in place of the original 130 kg nuclear warhead. Future warhead options are reported to include penetrating, shaped-charge, fragmentation and high-explosive payloads, but not the guided submunitions proposed earlier for use on modified Kh-55s. Although the Kh-555 was designed primarily to deliver conventional warheads, the use of a nuclear warhead is reported to be a possible option.

The Kh-555 has a claimed circular error probable (CEP) of less than 20 m. It is reported to use terrain comparison (using pre-programmed digital maps) and GLONASS satellite guidance. While on the aircraft, it is linked to the Tu-160’s onboard navigation system, which is also programmed with the missile flight planning data.

There is a pic of a “supposedly” Kh-555 into the bomb bay of a Tu-160, but it lacks the fins…could be that the draw is wrong, or the caption of the photo is wrong, I don’t know!

Gatorfrey I have a photography of what appears to be Vepr at surface with their bow planes retracted and fully showed…are you interested?

Neptune said:

The Vepr and Gepard also have a lenthened sail along with a new device. The other Akulas have three acoustic receivers on the stbd side, while Vepr has it on the port side and something else on the stbd side.

That’s part of the SOKS non-acoustic devices…

945 Barrakuda and 945A Kondor (Sierra-I and II) also have non-acoustic sensors, but the arrangement is different:

From Combat Fleets 2002-2003:

Sierra II

In addition to the hydroacoustic arrays, also carry a nonacoustic antisubmarine sensor system incorporating some 12 probes, nine on the forward edge of the sail and three on a protrusion to starboard from the forward end of the sail.

Sierra I

Carry environmental sensors on the sail for nonacoustic submarine detection and are equipped with a mast-mounted Pert Spring communications satellite antenna.

Su-30MKM aren’t ready yet.
Su-30MK2V for Vietnam…could be!.
Su-30MK2 for PLANAF could be, but didn’t they used Kh-31A for this?, waiting Kh-59MK?

I think it could be Algeria’s Su-24Bis or /maybe/ IAF’s MKI mk3…but who knows 🙁

Weird things:

There is STILL no “confirmed” Yasen/Severodinsk/Pr 855 layout, while it have been universally stated as having the new Irtysh-Amfora massive spherical bow array (first tested on Akson-2) some drawings beggining from “Tekhnika-Voruzhenie” magazine then showed “typical” Skat-alike conformal bow array with super-imposed TT…

Combat Fleets 2002-2003 claims this:

The Irtysh-Amfora bow sonar array is expected to resemble the array of the U.S. BQQ-2, in which a spherical active/passive array is flanked by passive receiving hydrophone arrays, but a drawing of the ship published in 1996 showed a standard Russian-style cylindrical bow array (the system dubbed Skat-3) with the torpedo tubes above it. Resource constraints may have forced Russia to abandon the more complex spherical array, which is installed in Yankee Big-Nose trials submarine Kazan (KS-403); see under [SSAN]. Locating a spherical sonar array at the bow requires the torpedo tubes to be relocated further aft, angled outboard, as in U.S. submarine designs since the late 1950s; if the design has been altered to employ a cylindrical array, however, then the tubes will likely have been relocated at the bow.

Interesting…I think we would need to see the real thing whe its launched so to clarify this…

Borey uses an improved version of the all-digital and /massive/ conformal bow array MGK-540 Skat-3, the Skat-3M…surely using new DSP and computers…maybe something else?

If anybody is intersted in reading “Rising Tide: The Untold Story of the Soviet Submarines that fought the Cold War”, please tell me (via PM) I have the book on e-book format, but don’t want to post the link right here due to copyright thingies

P.S: If you’re talking about of anecoic or rubber coat (like on the external hull), let me say that most of the third generation Russian boats have them too…RSM55 talked at lenght about them, advantages ar cons, and this is not a british invention 😀

Austin I have full OOB of the Rocket Forces somewhere but in Russian, if you like, I can send to your mail a Systran translation, are you intersted?

They’re the same. S-E is for export.