GarryB on Sun Jul 07, 2013 12:09 pm
Nice Graphic presentation of Klub Missile at IMDS 2013 , Its interesting to see how the supersonic missile just drops from subsonic cover and how the torpedo falls from missile ....very nice concept .......Klub I feel has a lot of ingenuity and few firsts to its credits.
All the missiles are based on the Granat... known in the west as SS-N-21 Sampson, which was a 2,500km range cruise missile with a nuclear warhead only.
They have taken that design and pretty much expanded the family to include something that could have replaced Moskit (ie supersonic anti ship), Styx (subsonic anti ship) and SS-N-15 ( ballistic rocket to deliver torpedo to area of detected enemy submarine) or SS-N-14 which also delivered torpedos to submerged targets or surface targets with a subsonic winged missile.
The UKSK unified launcher means one ship with one UKSK launcher can be a Sovremmeny (ie 8 Moskits), or a Udaloy (ie 8 SS-N-14), but they took it a step further and added Onyx/Yakhont/Brahmos capability for supersonic anti ship and land attack capability but they also have Kalibr which is a modern equivalent of Granat and is a 2,500km range missile with new guidance to allow conventional and nuclear warheads to be used.
For all we know the granat subsonic cruise missile might have had the same improvements made to it that the Kh-101 and Kh-102 have had which means they might actually be the 5,000km range cruise missiles they are talking about in some articles on new Russian ships.
Of course it is also possible they might be unifying the Kh-101/102 design at sea and in the air.
Note the UKSK launcher can be fitted to ships and Subs and the two different ballistic anti sub missiles that deliver torpedoes are for the two different types of launcher (Sub and Ship).
Very clever system and as the ships get larger the armament combinations become more flexible... a Corvette might have some anti ship missiles and some anti sub missiles, while much larger vessels might carry a few long range cruise missiles on a longer voyage...