P-500 Bazalt / P-1000 Vulcan

P-500/700/1000 are easy targets for modern air defences. They are huge and their speed are not enough to go through anymore. Mach 2 isn't that good anymore.

They were never intended to be fired one at a time at anything... and their physical size means they actually are the size of small fighter aircraft... the amount of active and passive jammers that can be fitted to them has probably only massively increased.

Obviously they are not good enough to be the standard AShW for the Russian Navy, but they aren't...

Shows how big they are.

Even the soviets back in the 90s didn't expect them to go through unless they fire a huge number.

But it is like the old saying that it took 4-5 Shermans to get a Tiger... that does not mean for every Tiger destroyed 4-5 Shermans were destroyed.... it means that 4-5 Shermans could harrass a Tiger and also at the same time flank it and get a decent shot from the side to kill it... they might not lose any Shermans and the Americans built about 20 Shermans for every Tiger on the western front.

The Soviets were expecting to go up against US carrier groups with F-14s and Phoenix missiles and the various air defence systems of the time.

Their solution was mass attack with missiles that worked together to defeat the air defences.

That has not changed and against lessor targets they should still be more than effective.

Now there is 1 kirov, 3 Slava not even in the same fleet, 1 carrier and some Oscar left.

Now there is also the UKSK launcher mounted on Corvettes and Frigates at the moment but going on other ships in upgrades and new builds that carry Onyx which is much smaller and much lighter and much faster and much more sophisticated and capable.

They also already have Kh-32 with double the range and speed of the older Kh-22M and operating at an altitude of 40km actually out of reach of most US air defences... and also now the MiG-31K and Kinzhal too.

Soon to be supplemented with Zircon.

Modern AD on US ships are far better than in the 90s. Those missiles will never go through IMO. The ships are spead over 3 different fleets and are more for showing the flag than anything else.

I have not seen any evidence that the US Navy could handle a full scale war against a peer adversary, and I would not credit them with the ability to stop Onyx let alone Kh-32 or the supersonic Klub missile.

With uksk instead of them thry can multiply by 3 or 4 the total number of missiles and they could use a family of missiles rather than those huge ones. It should be rather easy to put uksk on them since thry can fit in the place taken by old missiles easily contrary to the Udaloy where they needed to dig in the structure.

The Vulcan was on the Slava class ships and there is no real under deck space to fit UKSK launchers.

Personally I think the Slavas will be fine keeping Vulcan... replace the Rif with Redut and keep the naval TOR but with double the number of missiles in fixed cell launchers.

UKSK launchers for both Kirovs because they would fit easily enough.

With new fuel those Vulcans might get a new lease of life...

One of the problems for the USN air defences is target identification. They really have to down these big bastards but can they spot them in the flock of incoming missiles?

A bit like trying to get the Mig-31K amongst the Mig-31BM protectors.

I was talking about p-700/800. Number of kh22 isn't also the same since they lost a lot of long range bombers.

Oniks will be better because they can carry 8 of them instead of 1 or 2 old p-800. So real overwhelming attack with it.

Against every navy except the US and even then only a fully formed carrier battle group even a single P-700 or P-800 or P-1000 would be a serious challenge.

Ships have been sunk but vastly less capable missiles over the past few years.

We are not suggesting all platforms carrying anti ship weapons stop and that the Russians just have some upgraded Slava class ships that keep their P-1000 Vulcans and everything will be fine... they wont be keeping the Slavas till 2040 or beyond... these are just available big ships that can fill the role of the cruiser with long range heavy SAMs and big radars and lots of space for new electronics and communications systems etc etc.

I doubt they will sail anywhere on their own... hopefully the days of a single Kirov and a single Sovremeny destroyer going to Venezuela with a few support ships are coming to an end.... they could send four or five actual war ships as more vessels become available while Corvettes and Frigates enter service to fill the roles needed for home waters.

They will have helicopter carriers soon which will also need decent escorts and form carrier groups too... the fact that the Slava class ships have Vulcan and not UKSK launchers wont be the end of the world... later down the track some angled UKSK launchers could be fitted but it wont be urgent.

They have angled UKSK. They showed arecent pic of it. I shared it here already.

They do, and eventually they might fit them, but there is no urgency... it is a stopgap cruiser that can escort other Russian ships and subs around the world... because of its size and endurance. If it can support a carrier landing force attacking Florida and landing Russian Naval Infantry on Miami beach then that is OK.

The UKSK concept is excellent but limits the size of the missiles... imagine a P-1000 sized scramjet anti ship missile... instead of 2.5 tons of missile it could be an 8 ton missile with all that extra weight being fuel... a mach 6-7 missile that flys 10,000km at 40km altitude would be rather interesting...

There won't be a lot of flying objects where the carriers operate so they will shoot at everything coming at them.

Their really big missiles weren't big because they are stupid and can't design high speed missiles.... these weapons are from the 1970s and 1980s.... not the 1950s.

Not only did they have communication datalinks and they cooperated together, but they also detected EM signals from the target... they would detect AWACS radar and radar from ARH incoming missiles, and they would certainly have chaff and flare dispensors and likely ejectable decoys.

The imagination is the limit... imagine the lead missile is fitted with a ring of corner reflectors in its nose around its own radar that gives it a RCS of 500 square metres, and is intended to allow the other missiles with it to hide inside its radar return.... most air defence systems detecting an incoming weapon at mach 2.5 with a RCS of 500m as being jamming or chaff or decoy and might even ignore it as a false return...

Mig-29K doesn't need escort. Kinzhal has a range of more than 2000km so they will always be out of range of US defences.

The US has enormous numbers of ships, why not locate ships ahead of the carrier group as radar pickets... are you going to take the time to take all those ships out to get to the carriers?

Plus the obvious problem... in the Pacific fleet a US carrier group 3,000km away from land means the MiG has to fly out 1,000km from its land base to get a shot which means inflight refuelling aircraft... but what if fighters from Alaska or Japan arrive?

The MiG-31BMs are not there for decoration.

(I am assuming you meant MiG-31K).

What they should create is dummy targets like US TALD. US air defence would suffer a lot against them, naval or ground systems.

The state of US air defence and HATO air defence their chosen solution seems to be Kinzhal and Iskander directly attacking air defence systems with manouvering weapons that evade interception during the attack.

It stands to reason that while the airframe and engines havn't changed much (if at all) the guidance and control systems will have been enhanced over the last 30 years.

My understanding is that the rush to replace Granit is because it is no longer produced, but I have not heard the same regarding Vulcan.

Even still the Granits were modified to also attack land targets so you can be sure they get updates and upgrades and are not the same missile that first entered service... and the same for Vulcan... new fuel types and improvements in ramjet design could easily improve performance and keep them useful.

Keep in mind they were developed to penetrate the very strong air defences of a US carrier group and it was expected that the attack would be detected very early on so speed and numbers and the missiles working together to hide their strength was all part of the plan to penetrate the Strongest IADS the west ever produced.

For attacking other targets like just a group of frigates or other much lessor targets they are overkill and perfectly viable weapons.

Hell even a low flying subsonic missile can still be effective against some targets... some targets are just poorly defended...

Very few modern ships sail around blasing radar signals out to search continuously for targets so the chances of these missiles being detected early on is actually rather low... these missiles can be launched based on target data from their satellite network which would mean the target has very little idea the attack is taking place and the speed of the missile seriously cuts down the available time the target has to defend itself.

If it does not expect an air attack its main SAM systems might not even be turned on... which often means 10-15 minutes to power up... which means you are dead.

When the US AEGIS class cruiser shot down that Iranian Airbus they had a missile launch failure with Standard and there was a 90 second delay where they could not fire their missile... if it had been a Granit they would be dead.

These big missiles would also be naturally effective at sinking cargo ships and tankers... which smaller slower missiles have serious trouble sinking simply because it is like taking a bathtub plug out of a swimming pool and expecting it to empty...

The upgraded Slava class Cruisers are a stopgap and their upgrade potential is not as good as it is for the Kirovs... there is no need to spend too much on upgrading them considering the enlarged frigates and standard frigates they will have soon enough to cover them (along with support ships).... and later on Destroyers and new Cruisers.

A carrier 3000km away is useless. A single destroyer or frigate can only launch cruise missiles which can be tracked easily by Russia, both the ships and the missiles.

Which is why discussions about carriers needs to be different... A Russian carrier 3,000km away from the much weaker air defences of the US is supporting ships and subs soon to have 5,000km range cruise missiles...

But of course that is not what Russian carriers are for... Russian carriers are to support Russian surface ships and give them early warning they are under attack and also to add a large powerful ring of protection with Su-57 and MiG-35 naval fighters.

Even a Ka-52K with R-73s could shoot down subsonic and low supersonic anti ship missiles easily enough.

Anyway it will be targeted by kh-31 from su-34 if it is alone.

Only good for targets within range of Russian ground based air power... but of course Corvettes can extend that range with surface launched Onyx missiles.

Mig-31K will wait for the carrier to get closer if it has survived tzirkons from Yasen subs.

They could spend the time shredding the Japanese fleet or any radar picket ships the US or her allies might want to send to within 2,750km of its airbase.

The concept that Russia keeps old missile systems because it can't for whatever reason replace them and is thus falling
into obsolescence and weakness is nonsense.

Vulcans and Granits would be as potent now as they ever were and with upgraded systems and equipment I would think they are much better now because ramjet technology and materials and fuel has improved dramatically... as has electronics...