Naval Weapon Systems & Technology

Which also means more expensive products. But consider this, Russian ballistic missiles just like U.S ballistic missiles have modern inertial navigation systems that make them more accurate than say what Iran has. So accurate ballistic missiles that are cheaper than liquid-fuelled ramjet powered cruise missiles, for conventional use can be made and used.

The core issue is that a ballistic missile has a predictable flight path... it is very much like a tennis ball or golf ball... once accelerated to speed it then continues along a predictable path and then falls to the ground. Now you can induce spin or other things to a golf ball or tennis ball to make it hook one way or another but the flight path can be essentially predicted with high levels of accuracy so interception is quite straight forward.

This means you will need to make them in large numbers to ensure some get through.

Air breathing scramjet powered weapons scoop the oxygen they burn their fuel with from the atmosphere and don't have to carry it around with them like Bulava or Topol or Minuteman, which reduces the amount of fuel they need to carry by 2/3rds at least... which is a huge saving in size and weight.

The problem of course was that a jet engine, like on a tomahawk or Kh-101 missile is that it is essentially a subsonic weapon because you would massively increase the amount of fuel burned trying to fly faster, but with a scramjet the fuel burn increase flying mach 9 or 10 is probably not that much worse than a ramjet flying mach 4-5, of course it might be 40% more but because you will be moving twice as fast it actually works out more efficient to fly faster.

Given the choice... most countries would prefer Zircon to Iskander.... Iskander is a solid rocket powered missile that manouvers but it takes an enormous flight range penalty with all that manouvering to evade enemy air defences.

Iskander and Zircon are both surface launched and Zircon is probably 2-3 tons, while Iskander is closer to 5 tons with half the range.

Ironically if you get the Iskander up to a moving start with a MiG-31K then its range and speed increases massively to 2,000km, while launching a Zircon from the same plane might give it a boost of perhaps 30-50% in range because it can already use its fuel burn and speed efficiently...

Zircon or any other cruise missile will also have to manoeuvre much like an Iskander to evade air defense systems.

Very true and to be useful it needs sensors on it to detect enemy radar and the radar emissions from incoming interceptors so it knows what to evade... ie so it moves out of the path of the interceptor instead of moving into the path of the interceptor...

However, intercepting a Ballistic missile like Iskander in order of magnitude more difficult than intercepting a cruise missile, maybe hypersonic cruise missiles are exceptions but a warhead from an Iskander is also traveling at hypersonic speed.

No. First of all a ballistic missile is ballistic... like a thrown rock... what makes it more straight forward to intercept is that it follows a predictable path... like a tennis ball that has been hit. You can put spin on it to make it curve or bob in flight but normally its flightpath is largely predictable so you can get into the right position to reach it even if it moves a little because it is not moving at enormous speeds of course.

Iskander is not ballistic... It is a 4 ton missile... its flight range should be about 1,500km or more but it isn't because it burns solid rocket fuel all the way to the target... it climbs to altitude and the cruises in level flight.... above mach 5 the body of the missile creates aerodynamic lift like a wing and allows it to maintain height.. at very high altitude the thin air minimises drag but it burns rocket fuel to maintain speed and as it approaches the target area it looks for threats like SAMs and radars and starts to manouver to evade any air defences. It can't loop the loop, but at the speeds it is moving it does not have to... mach 7 is very fast.

The only reason a ballistic missile was hard to intercept was its speed... if your cruise missile with a scramjet motor can actually fly faster than your semi ballistic missile like the Zircon can then it becomes much harder to intercept too.

Hypersonic Cruise missiles and hypersonic manouvering targets are hard to intercept because their flight paths are not predictable so you can't pick a point dozens of kms in front of the target where you launched missile can meet the target and shoot it down because you don't know where it is going to be those few seconds later. Their flight paths are not predicable smooth curves based on their speed and current flight direction. The enormous speeds just make things harder and demand much more accurate tracking and better precision guidance of the interceptor.

When the target is moving at 3km per second then one second out even a nuclear warhead might not stop the target, because your interceptor missile is likely going at least 1.5km per second so that would be a miss by almost 5km...

@Hole... excellent... thanks for posting that... had not seen that before and had wondered if the hatches fed rockets one at a time or if the entire pallet of rounds loaded was fed up.

Now I just wonder if a fired pallet is lowered down into an empty space and then the under deck mag rotates to a full pallet of rockets and loads them or if the fired rocket pallets are ejected off the ship. I suspect the former.

One of three original Buyan gunboats

Useful for a gunboat, but the UKSK would be better for a sea going vessel.

That is a good point.... it is certainly a step above a rifle calibre machine gun burst into the water in front of a ship, or even an RPG or ATGM.

Not sure HEAT would be much good... on a tank or APC then HEAT penetrates thick armour and then sets fire to the contents that include fuel and ammo and people... generally space is at a premium so most places you penetrate you will have a good chance of hitting crew or ammo or fuel.

With a ship the armour is almost non existent and there will be enormous cavities where there is nothing that will readily burn.

In this case just standard HE rockets would do... remember these are not just 80mm aircraft rockets... these are 122mm rockets based on the grad land based rocket system with very decent HE payloads per rocket. (not to be confused with the Ogon system used on Hovercraft like the Aist class that are 140mm rockets that are generally thermobaric/incendiary rockets).

I rather suspect these grad rockets will likely be incendiary as well as the smoke is fairly toxic too... but there should be quite a variety of rockets from a very wide selection of options.

So Answer is Otvet... which seems to be the replacement for the 91RE1... a mach 2.5 ballistic rocket that delivers a torpedo to the vicinity of a detected submarine, so the first warning the enemy sub has that its under attack will be a torpedo splashing down into the water within a few kms of its position...

Note I have been miss-spelling it Ovtet... apologies...

Not really... it probably has an upgraded newer torpedo because it mentioned it has a 20km range around the position it splashes down.

The 91ER1/2 were designed to be launched from torpedo tubes and are both 533mm calibre, so this new missile might be a larger calibre weapon designed specifically for the UKSK and UKSK-M launchers to take advantage of their greater depth and width...

Just looking at the launches they appear to use a solid rocket booster, but whether that is a small one to get a cruise missile carrier into the air with a turbojet engine and wings to fly 1,000km and then release the torpedo, or just a big solid rocket booster to deliver the torpedo at supersonic speeds to 50 to 60km away I don't know.

With improved rocket motor performance perhaps a 150km range mach 2.5 rocket delivery would be useful because it would mean your anti sub helicopters would not need to fly around with the heavy payload of anti sub torpedoes and could just look for subs... when it finds one it can retreat from the area and call in these torpedoes from the sky... It would improve the endurance and range of the helicopters if they carry extra fuel instead of having to tote around torpedos.

Your average anti sub torpedoes would be about 500kg each. The Helix normally carries two anti sub torpedoes in tandem in its belly weapons bay.

Both the 91ER1/2s are 533mm calibre and essentially replace what was called SS-N-16, which had replaced the earlier SS-N-15 from the cold war which were both rocket delivered torpedoes.

Well the SS-N-15 was a torpedo tube launched 533mm ballistic rocket launched weapon that was launched from both subs and from surface ships from deck mounted torpedo tubes, or a 650mm sub launched weapon from a 650mm torpedo tube. Either one could deliver either a torpedo, a normal depth charge or a nuclear depth charge. The depth charge was semi guided as it descended... the nuclear depth charge did not bother.

This was developed in the 1960s, and was replaced in the late 70s early 80s with the SS-N-16, which could reach 100km compared with about 45km for the SS-N-15.

The 91ER1/2 was to replace both systems, which all use supersonic solid rocket motors to launch the torpedo payload towards the target... AFAIK there are only torpedo payload models of the newer system as the torpedo is actually rather good.

Excellent... shots of the missile in flight are rather rare... in that image the wings seem to still be folded up, so it has just been launched...

Nice shot of OSA as well...

Actually just thinking about it... the Metel with its IR guidance with autopilot to take it to the vicinity of the target... it was an NSM equivalent really... except it was IR against ships and could also engage subs as well.

Nice... main wings deployed but tail not up yet...

Thanks for posting.

That video that was posted said the new ballistic rocket has a range of 50km, which is similar to the 91er1/2 missiles that were 40-50km range missiles.

I remember in the 80s or 90s the US had a replacement for SUBROC and ASROC that was called Sea Lance... they ended up cancelling the programme because its extra flight range was deemed useless because new Soviet subs were so quiet they couldn't be detected at ranges greater than ASROC and SUBROC so Sea Lance was seen as a bit of a waste of money.

Thing is though that with a networked system the launch platform does not need to be able to detect the target it is attacking, and landing the torpedo close to the target gives the target sub very little time to react.

For coastal patrol craft like Corvettes and Frigates it is an ideal weapon as while they or their helicopters might not detect a sub local sea bed arrays might detect them....