Russian Army ATGM Thread

ok so why isnt replaced

Fairly obvious isn't it?

All three weapons are fairly cheap and the Russian military has enormous stocks of Shturm and Ataka... with all the exercises they are doing now they will likely be working their way through those stocks.

Krisantema is likely a little more expensive but when bought in numbers will be rather cheaper than Hermes and Vikhr.

The point is that Krisanthema uses SARH which means it needs a MMW radar to paint the target or it uses laser beam riding guidance.

The Ka-52 can provide the latter as the Vikhr uses the same guidance, but the thimble nose guidance system on the Mi-28 and Mi-24/35 is a radio transmitter... not a radar. The Ka-52 has its radar and could in theory use Krisantema right away but the Russian Government has clearly decided to use Vikhr with the Kamov, so for the Havoc to use Krisatema to its full all weather day/night potential it needs the radars recently cleared for service to be fitted... so there is not rush to get them into service.

By 2018 when most of the Mi-28s have been upgraded to M level and new Ms are in production the Krisantema will be in production as the cheap simple ATGM for the Mi-28M while the Hermes will be the heavy long range system. The Kamov will have the Vikhr and Hermes respectively in production for the same roles.

Right now Ataka is good enough and in stock... the Mi-24/35s will likely be using up stocks of Shturm and Ataka too... they are still effective missiles for most purposes.

The operator must keep line of sight there is input its from a computer its not true fire and forget

The operator must do nothing... it uses an autotracker to track the missile and the target...

If the operator still had to follow the target with his crosshairs then it would be CLOS... like older systems from the 1980s.

the enemy migh be trying to hide and jav can using top attack go where metis cant

When fitted with a thermal sight the Metis-M1 can see anything the Javelin can see and hit anything a Javelin can hit... or are you going to suggest the Javelin can see through buildings?

To use top attack capabilities the Javelin has to get a lock before launch... if the target is behind a wall or some trees... or even if it is a tank with its engine off or with IR signature reduction camouflage then Javelin wont get a lock and can only be fired in CLOS mode and is no better than Metis-M1... well it is actually worse because Metis-M1 can penetrate an extra 200mm of RHA.

medo said they wont so who is right a?

Medo didn't say they wont... he said they aren't. I am not saying they are, I am saying they will.

Until Mi-28N doesn't get its radar, there is no sense to use those missiles on Mi-28N, when newer Ataka missiles do their job just fine and have range of 8 km.

The Krisantema has two modes of guidance... laser beam riding, and SARH MMW radar guidance. Mi-28N has a MMW radar communications pod but not a radar yet. It also is not equipped to use laser beam riding missiles as Shturm and Ataka are radio command guided missiles.

The Mi-28M however will be upgraded to allow the use of laser beam riding missiles and with its MMW radar will be able to guide at least two Krisantema missiles at once... likely the radar can lock onto multiple targets at once so there is potential for multiple target engagement there for the future... the MMW radar on the Pantsir-S1 allows 3 targets to be tracked and four missiles to be guided at one time so there is potential for the radar of the Hokum to do something similar.

Ka-52 is for now the only helicopter, which could use them in radar mode, but MoD decide to equip them with Vikhrs until Hermes is ready.

It is rather likely that Ka-52 could guide Krisantema in laser beam riding mode too, but Vikhr is available and offers better performance from the box in terms of speed and penetration as well as range.

In my opinion Mi-28N and Ka-52 will in future use Vikhr/Hermes combination and Khrizantema will be, what it was designed to be, excellent self propelled tank hunter.

It is all speculation on my part though I do remember as part of the description of the Mi-28M that it would include the Krisantema as a replacement for Ataka and Shturm... note Shturm was developed for the Hind and the Ataka was to replace it, though there are still Shturm missiles in stock.

With their drive to upgrade everything I suspect they will soon stop purchasing Ataka and as Shturm and Ataka are used up they will be replaced by Krisantema.

To convert Mi-28M to allow the use of Vikhr would require an upgrade of the EO system to allow laser beam riding weapons... but such an upgrade would also make it compatible with Krisantema too while Vikhr isn't MMW radar guided.

Personally I think the future missiles should be Vikhr, Krisantema, and Hermes for the former twos low cost and different performances, and the latter for sheer performance.

increased range to 6 km (most probably replace old Shturm missile with Ataka missile)

Ataka has been used by the Shturm system for years.

This article is talking about adding Krisantema to the existing Shturm vehicles.

Krisantema would be a useful upgrade for the old system in terms of range and power of the warhead even if they don't adopt the radar guidance... the optical guidance would be rather cheaper if less effective...

The article mentions that the MMW radar guidance is expensive and heavy and doesn't offer the accuracy and low cost of the laser beam riding guidance so they have added the Krisantema missile but not its radar guidance system to get it into wider service quicker and at lower cost.

Ooops, yes, sorry, my mistake.

The Shturm and Ataka were both command guidance missiles though they added laser beam riding to some ATAKA missiles for use on other platforms like Ka-50.

Krisantema is primarily radio command but its launch platform uses MMW radar to detect and track the target and outgoing missile and sends command guidance flight corrections to the missile in flight.

The main difference with laser beam riding is that you just need to track the target while the missile itself identifies its own position within the laser and steers itself to the target.

Sorry, when I was referring to optical guidance I was meaning the optical sensor in the tail of the missile that looks back at the launch vehicle to detect the missiles position within the laser beam. If it senses it is too high or too low or too far right or left of the centre of the beam the missile itself will manouver to enter the centre of the beam and fly to the target.

very simple very cheap very accurate and effective.

Super RPO-A?

The main reliability problems with Spike and Javelin is because the IR sensors on the missiles are cheap... well relatively cheap so they are not high performance TI optics like say that fitted to a modern rifle scope or whatever.

QWIP sensors are just like the CCD chips in a video camera and once in mass production they will not only be able to be made in models sensitive to different frequencies (ie visible light like a video camera plus IR and UV) but they will be able to stamp them out like DVDs for a few dollars each.

The thing is however... you probably want a more sophisticated sighting system on the launcher and also I assume the lines near the front of the missile are pop out control fins...

Seems like a bit of a waste of effort in my opinion unless they managed to make it truly fire and forget with a launch range that makes it useful.

METIS-M1 plus Kornet-EM are already good enough and cheap enough to be mass produced.

Personally I am not really impressed, unless it is possible to make it cheap and fire and forget... or has something special that makes it more interesting.

MMW radar AND IIR? Or one or the other? The sight looks like the scope from an RPG-7...

Do you know who will make them?

If it is KBP then they might have technology similar to that being developed for HERMES.

The drawing makes the support base look very basic and the sight looks very cheap and simple.

the enormous cover over the nose and rear of the missile are interesting too... being a Russian weapon I would expect costs to be reduced by exposing the nose sensor of the weapon and using that for targeting, but if this is a lock on after launch fire and forget system then we are looking at technology like that to be used in Morfei in IIR and indeed Brimstone in MMW radar.

The small optics suggest a large weapon... but if it is a fire and forget top attack weapon then it shouldn't need too much in the way of calibre to be effective.

With a QWIP based optical sensor a simple AI logic algorithm would allow crew hatches to be targeted directly... meaning even a relatively small HEAT warhead should be very lethal.

It is an RPG-7 "complement"/"replacement"; so it constitutes the "first" publicization of an ATGM at a level (section-organic) below that of "Metis" class of missiles (company-organic).

Some Avtonomiya missiles types are of 125 mm diameter and some are 152 mm in diameter, and probably some are of other diameters.

I was hoping that would be related to the RPG-32 launcher joint developed with Jordan.

Adding guidance will increase costs enormously, while a simple launcher with the capacity to clip on the full range of disposable RPGs and other engineer weapons, perhaps with a sophisticated sighting system to improve accuracy makes more sense in my opinion.

A modern ballistic sight that can compute impact points reasonably accurately and offer a night and all weather capability would in my opinion be more useful than a terminally guided missile.

9K111 Fagot




9M113 Konkurs




9K115-2 Metis-M




9M133 Kornet




These are the ATGMs in service with Russian army. Kornet is laser guided while the other 3 are wire-guided.

There is also 9M123 Khrizantema supersonic missile mounted in BMP-3 variant.




We can discuss in this thread about their numbers and prospects in Russian army.

It should be noted that the BMP mounted launcher for AT-4 and AT-5 was later unified so either missile could be fired from the one launcher type and just looking at the launchers above I suspect they could do the same.

this is the equivalent of the Milan being able to fire HOT missiles, or in the US Army the Dragon being able to fire TOW missiles.

The Kornet EM has improved guidance optics and control systems that allow use to extended ranges.

I would suspect the standard Kornet launcher could launch the new missiles, but they would not be as accurate as if fired from a newer launcher... especially at extended ranges.

The anti armour missile has a range of 8.5km, while the HE missile has a range of 10km... I would expect much shorter accurate ranges from the original control post.

nemrod wrote:

GarryB wrote:The Kornet EM has improved guidance optics and control systems that allow use to extended ranges.

I would suspect the standard Kornet launcher could launch the new missiles, but they would not be as accurate as if fired from a newer launcher... especially at extended ranges.

The anti armour missile has a range of 8.5km, while the HE missile has a range of 10km... I would expect much shorter accurate ranges from the original control post.

My question, who will replace the AT-14 Spriggan aka Kornet ?
The AT-15 Springer -aka Khrizantema-?

both Khrizantema and Kornet are the most modern russian ground forces ATGM. I dont think that Kornet is for replacement