S-300/400/500 News [Russian Strategic Air Defense] #2

I don't think the warhead will explode, there are lot of securities in the missiles.

yes, that was my position... the warhead would not be armed until it was within a kilometre of the target and if it missed it would be disarmed again when it was more than a kilometre away...

However the engine can explode but it's not enough to damage a destroyer or cruiser as it's not so powerfull as a military warhead and the luncher are armourd.

My position was that the rocket motor would do one of two things if it failed... the third thing was to fire up and carry the missile to the target, but the two failure options were for the propellent to detonate... in which case it would be spectacular but not actually that damaging because it would be 10-15m above the ship and the explosion would not have the weight or blast wave of a real explosive, or for the rocket motor to do nothing at all like the missile did in the video above.

There is the same issue with hot lunches, if the rocket failed to start and the missile activate it's radar and lasers and detect the structure of the luncher.

It is most likely to fail when the motor is supposed to start so for a cold launch missile that means if it explodes it will be 10-15m metres above the ship, while a hot launch missile would explode inside the launch tube which would be much more dangerous... explosions are much more damaging when contained inside a container.

That is why it was and is my opinion that cold launched weapons are safer but of course still not perfect as the video above shows...

Austin wrote:So finally India signed the deal to buy 5 S-400 system for USD $5 billion.

I am assuming 5 systems here means 5 regiment of S-400 and its damn expensive.

Can some one tell me what consitutes a regiment of S-400 , How many Radar , Missile , Reload and Transport/Telar ?

Thank You

From the links you posted previously, a Russian regiment would have one 30K6E type unit and two 98J6E type units (battalions). All three units are generally located separately within a 100 km's. There are normally two batteries of 3-4 TEL's in each battalion. In addition there are Communication & Command, Maintenance & Support, Transport and Training vehicles. Only one of the present Russian Regiments have three battalions and most appear to have the 3 TEL batteries as opposed to the previous 4 TEL batteries of the S-300 series.

EDIT: a Regiment may have more then 2 battalions and a battalion may have more the 2 batteries. However those are the norm.

They are simply the result of different evolutionary streams with different customers.

The S-300 has three branches... the S-300P of the Air Force, the S-300F of the Navy and the rather different looking S-300V for the Army.

The S-300V has track based vehicles for army use and it has two very different missiles... one with a quad launcher and one larger one with a twin launcher with two stage missiles.

Basically the S-300P and S-300F have evolved into the S-400 and then S-350, while the S-300V has evolved into the S-300V4 or Antei-2500/-3000 for export.

The A-235 is not for the army or air force or navy... it is for the Strategic rocket forces and aerospace defence forces to defend ICBM fields and cities and ports and areas of strategic value.

S-300F evolved into the Redut VLS rather.

Some navy SAMS are unique... the SA-N-3 for example, but the Redut is based on the land based S-350, so in many ways the redut is more a naval S-350 than an evolution of the S-300F.

Semantics of course.

Both the S-350 and Redut will likely include the 9M96 and 9M96D (the small missiles of the S-400 family) and the 9M100 Morfei system... the latter will also likely be a short range AAM for the airforce as well... which would be interesting as it would be fairly obvious to suggest in that case that air to air versions of the 9M96 and 9M96D would also make sense as well....

So basically you are saying that S-500 and A-235 will be used in tandem? If A-235 fails to destroy the incoming warheads then the S-500 will be pressed into action. Is that what you are saying? Thanks.

Their areas of protection will likely over lap.

For instance they might decide to put A-235 in Moscow and Leningrad and also Murmansk and other large cities and ports and industrial regions that the US might target with ICBMs or SLBMs.

The S-500 being fully mobile will likely also be used to protect Coms centres and HQs, and major ports and airfields.

Neither would be positioned on their own... they will likely have close in support from S-350 and S-300V4 and of course Pantsir-SM and Tor and other systems able to defeat swarm attacks... they might even have a few Boomerang vehicles with 57mm cannons and air defence radars as air defence gun vehicles with excellent mobility on roads.

Even a Manpads like Verba would be excellent for bringing down a cruise missile with enough warning.

BTW that video is interesting but reality was rather worse.

It not only lost track of incoming missiles... the fusing of the Patriot missile was wrong too... as mentioned it was designed to intercept aircraft flying at a fraction of the speed of a modified incoming scud. Further more the unstable nature of the incoming scuds meant they often broke up in flight.

These two factors made the performance of standard Patriot to be pathetic.

The first factor meant that even on the few occasions the missile actually got close to the incoming Scud what often happened was that the spray of fragments from the exploding Patriot warhead shredded the rear of the missile and completely missed the warhead. By the time of interception the scud was basically falling and shredding the engine section or the fuel tanks did very little to effect the performance of the Scud itself... the warhead continued to the ground and exploded anyway... it didn't matter how many holes were in the engine or fuel tanks as they were no longer operating and were basically dead weight.

The second factor meant that by the time Patriot was approaching the incoming scud it had often broken up into several pieces... the largest piece being the rear engine and fuel tank sections and the smallest being the warhead... the patriots tended to try to hit the engine sections and fuel tanks and leave the warhead to hit the ground intact.

But then what can you expect when you use a missile designed to shoot down planes to shoot down something totally different without any modification.

If I recall correctly, before they announced the S-350 Vityaz, they were working on systems called Poliment-Redut for smaller ships and Krepost for bigger ships. Probably the Poliment-Redut for the navy developed legs and evolved into Vityaz.

Well that is all together quite possible, though you would have to ask yourself if the naval S-350 was started first why is it so far from deployment...

The first S-350s in service are South Korean...

My point was is there a necessity for a hit-to-kill system like S-500 when A-135/235 is effective already?

IIRC, A-135/235 is also mobile.

A-135 and A-235 are huge silo based missiles... the latter has been shown on the back of a truck but AFAIK it is not a TEL... merely a TE that raises the missile and lowers them into silo tubes.

The A-135 and A-235 are strategic ABM systems that might move to position in trucks but will operate from fixed hardened silos with fixed infrastructure.

The S-500 on the other hand will be fully mobile with mobile control and radar and TEL vehicles... and will likely be operated by the air force, army and navy in different versions.

Did you hear what the MIT professor said about the Scud missiles? Apparently, the Iraqis removed part of the warhead to increase the range of the Scud from 300kms to 600kms. But how is that possible?

Imagine all the ballistic, cruise missiles that Russia, US & others have exported to several countries. These countries can now simply reduce the size of the warhead & increase the range of the missiles. I susoect he is wrong. There are probably other fail safes in place, else MTCR treaty would not have been that important.

It is fairly simple maths... the velocity of a ballistic missile is determined by its rocket power and its mass and the angle it is fired.... make the structure lighter or the payload then it will go faster and further.

Redesigning the Scud to allow more fuel to be carried so the rocket motor burns longer will also increase range.

As mentioned however increasing speed can often have other negative effects... the unstable flight performance at the higher speed makes the abysmal accuracy even worse and reducing the warhead by too much can make it not even worth the while.

RTN wrote:

GarryB wrote:
The A-135 and A-235 are strategic ABM systems that might move to position in trucks but will operate from fixed hardened silos with fixed infrastructure.

I understand that in the case of ICBMs you need silos because no truck will be able to carry a 100 ton ICBM for example Sarmat but what's the need for silo based ABMs? Makes far more sense to make them mobile.

GarryB wrote:Redesigning the Scud to allow more fuel to be carried so the rocket motor burns longer will also increase range.

I am not questioning the technicalities. All that I'm saying is if it is that easy to modify a missile to increase its range how do countries that are signatories to MTCR like US, Russia etc ensure that the buyer is not tampering the missile to increase the range.

Top of my head the program that runs these missiles will ensure that the max range is not breached, which is why I found Prof.Theodore Postol's explanation that Iraqis were able to increase the range of the Scud from 300kms to 600kms somewhat amusing.

1) Their missile are very big not like S-XXX series. Any truck firing this would have damages. Plus they can just have ABM around Moscow. A mobile luncher allows to cover much spaces. Russia signed a deal with US. It's the same for US, can cover just one particular area not all the country.



2) It's easy but the results are very bad. Iraqui lunched some modified Scud on Israel, most of them landed in the sea. But now they are developing their aow industry of BM like Iran and North Corea. They are not as precise as Russian Iskanders but they are capable to target bbig target like cities or military bases.

GarryB wrote:They are simply the result of different evolutionary streams with different customers.

The S-300 has three branches... the S-300P of the Air Force, the S-300F of the Navy and the rather different looking S-300V for the Army.

The S-300V has track based vehicles for army use and it has two very different missiles... one with a quad launcher and one larger one with a twin launcher with two stage missiles.

Basically the S-300P and S-300F have evolved into the S-400 and then S-350, while the S-300V has evolved into the S-300V4 or Antei-2500/-3000 for export.

The A-235 is not for the army or air force or navy... it is for the Strategic rocket forces and aerospace defence forces to defend ICBM fields and cities and ports and areas of strategic value.

Hello, I do not know if this is the proper topic, but I would like to understand the difference between the S-300 family and the BUK family (recently upgraded with the BUK M3).
Are they supposed to work together?
from what I understood usually medium/long range SAMs like the s-300 or S400 wotk together with system like  Pantsir for short range pbrotection.

Where does the BUK system fits in all of this? is it an alternative, or what?

Rodion_Romanovic wrote:

GarryB wrote:They are simply the result of different evolutionary streams with different customers.

The S-300 has three branches... the S-300P of the Air Force, the S-300F of the Navy and the rather different looking S-300V for the Army.

The S-300V has track based vehicles for army use and it has two very different missiles... one with a quad launcher and one larger one with a twin launcher with two stage missiles.

Basically the S-300P and S-300F have evolved into the S-400 and then S-350, while the S-300V has evolved into the S-300V4 or Antei-2500/-3000 for export.

The A-235 is not for the army or air force or navy... it is for the Strategic rocket forces and aerospace defence forces to defend ICBM fields and cities and ports and areas of strategic value.

Hello, I do not know if this is the proper topic, but I would like to understand the difference between the S-300 family and the BUK family (recently upgraded with the BUK M3).
Are they supposed to work together?
from what I understood usually medium/long range SAMs like the s-300 or S400 wotk together with system like  Pantsir for short range pbrotection.

Where does the BUK system fits in all of this? is it an alternative, or what?

Buk are used to defend troops in front line and move with them.

S-400 and S-300P/PMU defend cities, industries, nuclear plant and all strategic areas.

S-300V/VM are defending troops against small/medium range ballistic missiles and B-52/B2 bombers and cruise missiles.

Pantsir can be used in both case, defence of lang range SAM or defence of troops against helicopters and attack plane.

But in Russia it's more complicated because they link every SAM they have ( they have LOT OF them)  between them so you don't really know what SAM you will have to deal with while attacking troops or strategic target.