Kurganets & Boomerang Discussions Thread #2

Back on topic both Kurganets and Boomerang will likely have their own drones... including tethered ones that can pop up from behind cover or concealment and use radar or IIR to search for targets and gather information without exposing anything vulnerable...

From the enemies perspective they will know there is something behind that building or hill or line of trees or bushes but they wont know if it is a jeep like a Tigr with a tethered drone gathering info or an Armata division or anything in between...

And BTW do we have any info about the missiles of the Bulat like range, size, guidness and so on?

The optical sensor on its tail suggests it is a laser beam rider like Kornet, but nothing else is solid...

The Kornet has two warheads... one in the nose and one in the rear... the front to set off ERA and the rear one focused and huge to penetrate down the hole the front warhead creates... hard to say what the Bulat has.

Externally it looks the same except scaled down, so the overall design is probably the same so propellent in the centre and warheads at each end is good for balance no matter whether it is at the start of its flight with full propellent or near the end where most is burned up... having the propellent around the centre of gravity makes its aerodynamics easier to manage and stabilise... having a warhead at the front and the back balances things and sets up the opportunity of two separate charges... for Kornet that mean a precursor charge to get rid of ERA panels and then a main rear charge, but as I have mentioned for a weapon supposed to be used against lighter armour a front charge to punch a hole in the armour or exterior of a target like an IFV or APC or building or bunker and then the rear charge being a thermobaric material blown through the hole into the target where it then detonates and consumes the oxygen inside the vehicle or building would be a very potent and powerful weapon.

Even with a missile as powerful as Kornet if you hit an APC odds are the powerful HEAT beam with melt a finger sized hole in and straight through and out the other side... unless you are in the path of the beam or spall and as long as it doesn't hit and set off ammo or fuel you could probably survive the hit a lot of the time...

With a thermobaric follow up charge will kill everyone inside by explosive level shockwave breaking bones and of course the conflagration consuming all the oxygen so you would suffocate too.

That would be interesting... perhaps with a rear booster section to launch it out of the tube and send it on its way... most attack helos that can carry 80mm rocket tubes can also guide laser beam riding missiles already so there would not be much modification needed...


Regarding the thermobaric warhead, it is an efficient way to destroy and kill sadly, it would become a quite efficient way of destroying a lot of targets a HEAT round would normally simply burn a narrow hole right through.

For instance when engaging a helicopter its armour to stop bullets can reduce the effect of HE explosions, but punching a small hole and pumping explosive inside and then detonating it would be vastly more effective at destroying the aircraft. With regard to your average building you do considerably more damage by making a hole in the wall and moving the explosion from outside to inside... an explosion is pressure so outside the pressure is free to be released in all directions so you need a powerful charge to damage things behind cover. If you can penetrate that cover and detonate the charge inside then the cover actually makes the explosion more devastating by concentrating and reflecting the shockwaves so you get hit with multiple shock waves from different directions... makes them much more lethal... while reducing the danger outside the building or vehicle unless they are shattered and then you get fragments of the target added to the damage created...

Yes the 3БМ76 is the projectile and to the right you have its 3УБМ21 round and is integrated also in the reduced ballistic 2A94 gun to engage at stand-off distance the new generation of foreign enemy IFV together with the "Булат" and or "Корнет".

Awesome... so in many ways it is a telescope ammo type round with a large low velocity heavy and powerful for its calibre HE round, but also a small high velocity small kinetic penetrator round... excellent.

The ammo also seems rather compact too... I thought having a power HE round was an advantage due to the compact nature of the ammo, but the cost would be lack of case capacity for a high velocity penetrator anti armour round but it clearly is better than I imagined.

I wonder if they could do the same with the 23x115mm round... the 23mm shell has a good HE capacity but a high velocity APFSDS round would be interesting... they could replace the KPV in 14.5mm with a KPV in 23mm calibre... similar sized and weighted round but better armour piercing potential with an APFSDS round and obviously with the 23mm round a much better HE projectile too in basically the same gun using pretty standard ammo containers similar to existing types.

"If you saying that the Bulat's missile can be launched at 1,000 M/S or more that's new for me."

No. Bulat is the small missile in front of the Kornet. We are talking about the 57mm grenade launcher ammo on the table... to the left the 57mm HE round and then the APFSDS round with the sabot in the middle and the same APFSDS round in the case to the left on the table.

"Which are the RCWS turret that you have on mind?"

The previously shown photo of the turret with the 57mm grenade launcher... all the new weapon turrets including the 125mm gun turret on the T-14 are RCWS turrets in that they are unmanned.

I am asking this because the 57mm gun on the Epocha combat module is a low pressure gun. I expect low muzzle velocity. So why have an APFSDS round when you are not going to get high velocity?????

I suspect based on the thickness of the actual barrel and the existence of a APFSDS round suggests it is not a low pressure gun but a high pressure gun and is probably a rifled gun, while the 57mm gun of the BMP is also high velocity and probably rifled to allow compatibility with existing 57mm gun ammo...



Just for clarity here is the photo in question:



Note the big missile at the back is Kornet, the smaller missile in front of it is Bulat, while on the table there is the 3ОФ91 57mm HE grenade, then to the center the 3БМ76 projectile which is an APFSDS dart and sabot petals and to the right the complete 3УБМ21 round which is an APFSDS 57mm round.

This is all rather interesting because as a vehicle mounted weapon it becomes much more useful and flexible, but also for a while there was a 30mm cannon used by Russian special forces as an anti MRAP weapon, but if this weapon can fire APFSDS rounds then it would be even better with a much more powerful HE round and an AP round able to penetrate most light vehicles on the battlefield... awesome.

The Bulat missile seems to be larger calibre than the 57mm grenade so it might be a 65-75mm calibre missile?

Would be interesting if they did develop a version to be carried in an 80mm rocket launcher pod... 80mm rockets are rather long so there would be plenty of capacity in the launch tube to put a rear mounted first stage booster rocket to blow it out of the tube and on the way to the target... you could loft it into the air for extended range reach as there is no wire dragging behind it so if the booster rocket burns out at say 500m/s it could delay igniting its own motor till it started to slow down and reach targets a good distance away... and remember the new rectangular rocket launchers for ground and air vehicles to carry... make it much more versatile....

APHE tend to be full calibre shells and I suspect this only works with this size round because the very small thin dart like projectile leaves enough volume for a good amount of propellent to get a nice high velocity.

If the projectile needed a decent sized HE charge then there would be enough space for propellent so it would end up being a low velocity round with poor penetration... and they already have a huge HE round which also explodes on the outside of armour.

I definitely agree that HE is vastly more effective in terms of terminal effect on target but you would need a 57mm high velocity round like the 57mm high velocity gun round for that... the S-60 AA gun had an excellent APHE round but being an old AA gun the armour piercing and the HE rounds had to have a similar weight and a similar velocity otherwise when firing a mixed clip the different rounds would go to different points of aim.

With modern digital fire control systems it probably detects the round currently loaded and puts the aiming point through the sight to show where the round will hit... place that dot on the target and fire...

A mixed belt of HE and APFSDS rounds means the points of aim would shift wildly for each round but you are unlikely to want to shoot both HE and AP rounds at a single target anyway.

They could probably make it a tungsten tip with a mild steel core or it could be tungsten capped and a cheaper projectile material for mass... it all depends on the target I suspect they might save the APFSDS rounds for the very hard targets and just use HEAT rounds for everything else perhaps and a HE for soft and area targets... they certainly will have plenty of missiles too.

Note this is not a 125mm gun, so while a APFSDS round won't obliterate an IFV... a burst of 4-5 rounds to the turret and hull could do some serious terminal damage.

Bulat looks like it's 1/3 the width of Kornet, or something like 50mm in diameter.

I would say it would be better to compare with the 57mm calibre grenade on the table next to it... and the Bulat looks to be a bigger calibre than that... in fact the narrow rear of the Bulat looks larger than 57mm so the body is probably 65-75mm calibre at its widest point I would guess.

As reported on April 6, 2020, the TASS news agency, modified after preliminary tests of the BTR and BMP Boomerang, will receive an enlarged hull with improved buoyancy. This will increase the armor of vehicles during water operations, TASS was told in the press service of the Military Industrial Company (VPK), which developed the Boomerang platform.

See the value of proper testing, they determined they needed to make it bigger so they are going to do so... one would expect the testing of the Armata and Kurganets and Typhoon platforms might also lead to some fundamental changes to the basic design before they put them in full production...

What's really intriguing is if they decide to integrate Bulat with the man portable versions, to give them options in engaging targets. If Bulat is 50mm in diameter, they could probably fit 9 Bulats in a 152mm diameter tube, almost like pod rockets for manpower. A crew of 4 in a ATGM team could have one guy carrying the optical stand, 2 guys carrying 2 HEAT ATGM's each (4 total HEAT munitions), and the last guy carrying 2 tubes of 9 bulat carrying canisters, giving a total of 18 Bulats to engage soft targets.....sound's quite formidable!

The problem would be that they would need to carry a launcher a bit like the Kornet launcher... which is quite a bit bigger than the one for Metis and includes a laser beam to guide the missile. These missiles would be similar to RPG-18 rockets I would suspect in terms of calibre and weight perhaps so you could probably carry 4-5 per person comfortably... in the photo above the Kornet is a 152mm missile so you could probably carry 3-4 for every Kornet you would normally carry... but keep in mind Kornet is NOT a man portable light infantry missile... you would need a light vehicle to haul around the launcher and missiles... which are about 35kgs each.  In comparison the Metis missile system has missiles that are about 14kgs each... There was talk of a new model faster Metis-M2 with a flight range of 3km... but that might just be a laser beam riding model...

One day the American will get the 50mm gun on there IFVs instead of there 25mm gun and that will change the distance of engagement.

Changing to a 50mm gun won't massively increase their effective range... they changed from a 25mm gun because the 25mm gun wont be effective at any range soon...

The European countries get the 35 & 40mm guns on there IFVs and most of all they manufacture and buying the new Spike-ER ATGM that has range of 10 km. So I’m not so sure that the Bulat will have any advantage against them.
And that’s way I prefer to have extra 4 Kornet than 8 Bulat’s missiles.

But what against?  Against an Armata division then how will Spike perform against a modern APS system and a group of vehicles which all have MBT level protection... I mean even a Boomerang division has better armour than current BMPs like the BMP-3, and that is all the vehicles... today a tank division has BMPs and BTRs and MTLBs that are barely bullet proof and not HMG proof... every Boomerang based vehicle will need a 30mm gun or better to even have a chance of being threatening...

Thanks Mindstorm for the nice Pictures, and thanks GarryB for his adding that help me to understand.

Finding this stuff out together is fun...

Hi Garry Look how the 5 tubes on this launcher are close to Bulat's launcher.

Well it will be interesting when we do find out the actual calibre of the missiles... will be interesting.

I mean in aviation rockets they have 57mm (16 and 32 tube) calibre, 80mm (7 and 20 tube) calibre, 122mm (five tube) calibre, and also a single tube 266mm calibre rocket pod range of existing types...

The more I see those new rocket pod launchers the more I like them...

Is the 3УБМ21 round is also used in the 57mm gun used by the AU-220M?

AFAIK the AU-220M uses the standard 57mm gun of the S-60 AA gun and has a large bottle shaped shell case... we have seen them firing and it does not have the same straight walled case these rounds have.

Way do we need a 57mm AGL that can shoot Low Velocity rounds and High Velocity rounds? Those rounds are used for different activities. For example I will use the Low Velocity with a bigger warhead in urban city, and the High Velocity in open area against soft targets and against short live targets. But for better use, I’ll use the 57mm high velocity rounds like the 3УБМ21 with the AU-220M turret, and the 57mm low velocity rounds like the 3ОФ91 57mm HE grenade with the Epoch turret.

It is more to do with the rounds themselves... a HE round does not really benefit from high velocity... it does benefit from being bigger and heavier with more HE mixture to make it more powerful. AP on the other hand loses velocity with large volume heavy projectiles which reduces performance.

Most vehicles will come across a range of targets from area targets like troops in the open or hard targets like an enemy vehicle or bunker or building so having a variety of ammo means it can deal more effectively with what ever it encounters.

For the original 57mm gun there was a problem... you have to fire the different rounds through the same gun at the same target... so you would fire a mix of APHE and also HE Frag, but the HE Frag benefits from being slow and heavy while velocity improves penetration for the APHE... but because they were both being fired at aircraft the level of penetration didn't need to be high so both rounds could be made with a similar speed and weight so they both hit the same point of aim.

If you want to use it against a mix of armoured ground targets and soft targets like troops or aircraft then you need a much better penetrator. Sacrificing the APHE for a small dart means you can load up a lot more propellent so instead of 1,000m/s you should be able to manage 1,400m/s with the extra propellent and lighter projectile. Such high velocity is of no value to the HE round in fact even reducing its speed to perhaps 600m/s but with more mass could greatly improve its performance on target by making a much bigger boom with more metal fragments to damage the target.

The problem now is that you can't fire them in a belt because the HE rounds will drop short and the high velocity AP rounds will fly over the target.

Obviously if the target is heavily armoured then you use only the APFSDS rounds but if it is soft you use the HE Frag rounds and aim accordingly.

This is brilliant because instead of compromised performance like with the 30mm rounds or 57mm rounds you can get much better performance for the different round types.

A gun that can fire powerful and effective heavy HE rounds is very useful on an IFV... that is why the BMP-3 has a 100mm rifled gun... those 100mm rounds look a lot like the 57mm grenade above... all projectile with a tiny stub propellent charge, but a high velocity armour penetrating round is also valuable because they are harder to stop than HEAT rounds and give rather more consistent penetration performance against a range of targets...

Look at early WWII tanks... those terrible multi turret monstrosities the Soviets built and the British talked about but never made many of needed different guns for different roles... normally a stub 76.2mm gun for HE rounds, and a 37mm or 45mm high velocity gun to penetrate armour.

They tested the T-34 with a 57mm high velocity gun at the start of WWII and it could penetrate Tigers and Panthers when they entered service but the HE projectile was not powerful enough so they went with a 76.2mm gun that had a better HE shell and an AP round that was good enough... they later replaced it with an 85mm gun with better anti armour performance but still a good HE round.

Very simply infantry support tanks had HE oriented guns or machine guns, while anti tank tanks had high velocity small calibre guns for penetrating armour and not much else. It wasn't quite so bad for the Soviets because their 45mm guns had a HE round, which the British 40mm tanks guns did not.

A high pressure "grenade launcher" make the vehicle using it much more flexible and capable against a range of targets and threats... remember in a very modern vehicle these will have modern thermals and battle management systems... when they see a set of helicopter main rotors behind a tree they can fire a burst of APFSDS penetrators through the tree at the attack helo who thought he was safe...