soyuz1917First of all the US is deploying 400!!!! ABM interceptors in Europe as we speak. If you believe they are deploying 400 ABM interceptors to deal with Iran and N.Korea there is a bridge I would love to sell you. Each ABM interceptor is itself effectively an IRBM and on radar that’s what it looks like when you fire one. So just firing THAAD or SM-6 endangers the whole damn planet. Hence why they do like 1-2 tests a year. They have to phone Russia to alert them of the test just to avoid the end of the planet.
Each cell built in Romania can comfortably be used to house 2 naval Tomahawks in a pinch which means the US is effectively abrogating not just the ABM treaty but the medium range treaty because even digging a hole that may house a land based cruise missile is a violation of the treaty and the US knows this and doesnt care but when Russia builds a new ground based cruise missile in response it’s Russia that’s violating the treaty. Laughable logic.
People worrying about Iskanders accuracy are barking up the wrong tree. Not only has it been used in Georgia to a CEP of +/- 10 meters but its been used in Syria too. An air launched version isnt going to be less accurate because it’s faster. At this point its been tested in two wars and fired over 100 times. It shredded a Georgian Buk battery just fine. It’s CEP should mean it has no problem engaging a gigantic aircraft carrier though a frigate is probably a challenge. Thankfully no one is going to intentionally waste a strategic platform like this intentionally hunting a frigate.
On launch this thing is not going mach 10. From the videos it’s going about Mach 2-3 in that initial cruising stage. Janes did the math on that mach 2 number from the released video. You can google it. At some point it climbs and then has a near-terminal drop stage where it escalates to Mach 10. Iskander has a 4 way guidance package. TERCOM, GLONASS, Inertial and optical DSMAC. In its final-final terminal stage though it should again be a cruise missile. The final maneuver is supposed to be an end stage S-curve to get around point defense batteries. In the Putin video the graphic clearly shows a non-ballistic end maneuver.
I trust the videos because these leaks are intentionally being put out to get the US to negotiate a new treaty. There is no point to lie about something you will submit to inspections under any treaty negotiated.
As for ATACMS getting this capability — not any of the current versions. The current deployed versions have half the speed of Iskander and are not capable of this kind of end stage maneuvering and dont have the same kind of guidance package. The IVA blocks are just GPS and Inertial guided. They dont have TERCOM or DSMAC. A new version is in the works though.
soyuz1917The butt hurt is strong. The Kinzhal is a carrier cracker. You dont need many. About 2 per Yankee carrier is being generous as the current gen of ABM and missile defense interceptors should not be capable of engaging a cruise missile with a mach 10 maneuvering terminal phase pretty much at all. They have a tough enough time with MRBMs doing mach 10 in very simple ballistic trajectories and this thing will not be flying a simple ballistic trajectory.
As a SEAD weapon against ground based systems its much the same story. A THAAD or Patriot battery is a sitting duck and compared to the cost of the SAMs this thing is dirt cheap
The nuclear powered cruise missile is going to make for probably the ultimate EW platform as much as it is a doomsday weapon. Unlimited range and a power supply pretty much limited only by heat dissipation limits. The Kh-101 is conventional and already has towed decoys and a likely optional jamming function but this thing will take it a whole new level. It will run laps about the battlefield never running out of fuel and who is going to engage an EW platform that’s also a flying dirty bomb? Safer to let it do its thing than to shoot it down.
soyuz1917It did come from Turkey just like all those MRAPS the Iblid rebels have been driving around in in all the videos this week. $100-200k MRAPS dont magically appear out of nowhere and the same is true of factory made ordinance. The explosives in those drones were not cooked up in a bathtub. They were made in a state owned factory.
soyuz1917https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/bmpd/38024980/5127575/5127575_original.jpg
The first Project 20385 corvette got his radars.
soyuz1917Correct me if I am wrong but I’m about 100% certain that there is no more L-410 component production going on in the Czech Republic. When the Russians bought out the production line they shipped 100% of the tooling over to Russia and fired all the Czech workers after waiting like 3 years for the union contracts to end.
soyuz191719 is the number of regiments as of April 2017. With the 2017 deliveries it’s either 22 or 21 as I don’t remember if that 19 figure includes the first 2017 set or just the 2016 sets. Still they were supposed to have 58 by the end of 2020 and that is just never going to happen….
soyuz1917Take a look at the path the Kuz took to get to the Med on its way to Syria. It was basically forced by good old god and geography to never be far from the shores of a NATO country. The Russian fleets are ALL FUBARED by geography before specs and numbers even come into play. This has always been the case hence why they fought the Crimean war in the first place. They took 500,000!!! dead to try to change that dynamic. Their naval planners understand all this hence why no tears were actually shed in naval circles over the unneeded and useless Mistrals and why they prioritize submarines over surface ships and why they over-gun all their combatants at the price of rough sea handling and why the Russians look on at the Chinese building a political navy with basically a lot of indifference if not outright joy because every new Chinese destroyer is that many fewer Chinese J-11s and Type 99s.
soyuz1917Treaties is why. The Russians are not allowed ground based long range cruise missiles with a range over 600km by treaty. Iskanker-K is not a ground based Kaliber. It’s a much shorter ranged “tactical” platform. Russia and the US can only deploy long range cruise missiles on naval hulls and bombers. Of course how long this will remain true is an open question given that the US accuses Russia of violating the INF treaty by sticking some kind of new long ranged missile on a ground based TEL. The Russians deny doing this. And of course the Chinese are not treaty bound to do anything and have been sticking CJ-10 long ranged cruise missiles on ground based TELS to their hearts content which will inevitably force a US and Russian response at some point….
Ships are just platforms for carrying missiles. For Russia the truth is even if they had unlimited funds there is little reason to build huge numbers of blue water combatants because they are geographically trapped in bastions no matter their capability. The Russkies just by reasons of geography are screwed in a straight out fleet v. fleet action even if you give them parity otherwise. Sticking Kalibers on anything that floats however makes all the sense in the world given their reality.
Containerized Klub in a long range cruise missile config likely would violate the INF treaty as it would be based on land 99% of the time and would almost certainly be land fireable. My understanding is they only built anti-ship or short ranged versions in containers.
soyuz1917The 21631s are zero day platforms. They are a strategic capability on a 950 ton hull. Comparing them to FACs which historically have never even had a beyond the horizon capability is rather disingenuous intellectually. These hulls in a shooting war with NATO will fire their missiles most likely without ever leaving port and be scuttled 5 minutes later. A saying that the the Russians like to misuse “a capability with no analogue in the West” is actually quite fitting when applied to them because this capability does not exist in the West. It may be asymmetric and feel almost like a cheat to those who spend a billion and a half per hull but it is a brilliant response to a non-parity in capability elsewhere. Their pre-designated targets are going to be air bases in Europe. They will likely never shoot at ships — ever — and if they do shoot at naval bases it will be pretty exclusively at nuclear submarine pens as the Russians would not waste precious cruise missiles on parked NATO surface combatants which in the Eurasian land war that would begin about 30 second later would have almost zero strategic impact.
soyuz1917The Kamov has an image stabilization function that lets it actually shoot things out to 8km. The Mi-28N does not so good luck hitting anything past 4km. That said the Kamov still lacks an auto-track or any kind of fire and forget. An auto-track should at least be within the Russian’s technical capability, but no each missile is flown in totally manually by the pilot. A waste. Russian attack helicopters are where US attack helicopters were in 1991. The gap is 25+ years.
soyuz1917There are no Syrian Air Defenses. There are Russian Air Defenses and that’s the problem. Russia isn’t going to start a shooting war for Hezbollah.
soyuz1917The Russians absolutely love firing NARY at things. Those Su-35 pilots probably have giant smiles on their faces. Lets remember they hold an annual competition where crews fire unguided rockets at things for points. Crew with best accuracy wins a Lada. So as that goes it’s as much training as anything else. Being able to snipe things with rockets is how Russkies gauge piloting skills.
There’s no shortage of attack helos in Russia right now. They have the second largest attack helo fleet on earth after the US. If they thought they needed more combat helos they would deploy more combat helos. This latest rebel offensive is tiny and already broken. I dont think they need more assets in theater. This war is basically over. These “offensives” are suicidal nonsense at this point.
soyuz1917” An armed drone watching over those guys could have easily taken them out.”
Really? Not with a Predator’s payload it wouldnt. Reaper — maybe. But even the US doest have that many Reapers.
soyuz1917Crippling your supply chains to the benefit of the US is the entire point of NATO. Americans are merely incompetent statesmen and let a minor periphery conflict like Syria “open the eyes” of its client states to just how screwed they really were because of said reliances. I am no JSR fan but he is right when he says Russia will make piles off money off its Syria intervention not because it showed it would back Assad “no matter what” but because the US refused to back Turkey “no matter what” and played similar dirty games with Iraq and the Gulf states to the point where everyone involved has a bad taste in their mouth from dealing with the US. So after Syria there isnt a country in the region not looking to diversify away from American suppliers.
I would also add that the US never ratified the Budapest Memorandum so it is not in fact international law. Ukraine gave up its nukes for subsidized natural gas without which it would have starved to death in the 90s — and its gas is still subsidized to this very day. Ukraine still does not buy gas from Russia at EU prices when it actually buys gas from Russia.
soyuz1917We arent talking individual jobs. We are talking macro-national level. Phazatron’s design team is probably around 50 people. It’s not a large operation man power or $$$ wise. I’m a lawyer with a background in organic chemistry. I have an MS in chemistry and used to work for Exxon if that helps. The materials sciences and good old basic physics is what drains billions and billions of dollars. Electronic subsystems are simple by comparison and dont require 15 years of work and $25-30 billion to bring to market.
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