Kurganets & Boomerang Discussions Thread #2

Any plan to equip the boomerang with a 125mm gun ?

We see in Syria that they send only wheeled vehicles instead of tracked one. It would be easier to deploy a boomerang with a 125mm gun than a t-90. In term of operational cost it's better too. And in terms of effectivness, they face terrorists so there is no need for a t-90 or a t14. A boomerang with APS will do the job.

The original plan was for three complete families of vehicles, so all the vehicles in a current division based on three different vehicle platform types.

Boomerang should be able to handle the 125mm gun... it is a 25 ton weight class vehicle which makes it 7 tons heavier than a Sprut... the only real problem would be its high centre of gravity, but they could modify that by reducing its height by quite a bit to remove troop transport capacity... front mounted engine with driver beside the engine, and gunner and commander behind the engine and driver... then the turret and then a second behind the turret with spare ammo perhaps with a greatly reduced turret basket depth with a lowered roof... maybe even some side arm stabilisers with wheels like trainer wheels that can be deployed out at 90 degrees to prevent the vehicle rolling over... would be useful in rough country too.

The Typhoon family are probably too light for a 125mm gun but these 57mm guns are going to be pretty potent anyway...

Nice link TheArmenian... looks like Bulat has a top row of 5 missiles and a lower row of 3 so a total of 8 missiles... wonder if there are reloads?

Those Bulat missiles look tiny and very compact... and probably man portable... perhaps a launcher like the RPG-32 with a clip on scope, but it would need a laser beam guidance system which wont be tiny and compact... perhaps a modified RPO-M launcher?

What are those small missiles they added on top?

Bulat ATGMs... basically medium to short range missiles with laser beam riding design intended to hit IFVs and bunkers and other light targets... probably including drones that are not worth wasting full sized Kornet missiles intended for use against tanks.

Wonder if they add something more than a 57mm or 30mm shell. They seem very small. Could have been a little bit bigger.

Each vehicle armed with 8 mini ATGMs able to take out most enemy vehicles except MBTs, plus four Kornet ATGMs able to take out MBTs, plus a 57mm grenade launcher with HE shells equivalent to about 6-7kgs of HE... I think they are pretty well set to be honest.

This armament is probably for BTR (APC), while the BMP (IFV) will have pretty much the same loadout but with a high velocity 57mm gun able to fire APFSDS rounds for use against enemy light armour and guided and airburst rounds for use against air targets or point targets out to extended ranges.

A platoon with these two types mixed together will be rather potent and be able to engage a wide range of enemy targets.

On paper being able to take out 8 bradleys and four Abrams tanks just with missiles alone means it is far better equipped than previous BMPs... the BMP-3 generally carried 8 guided missiles able to take on enemy armour but not guaranteed to penetrate an enemy tank, plus about 32 x 100mm HE frag rounds with a range of 7km.

With a 57mm grenade launcher they probably carry at least 120 rounds in the auto loader, while the 57mm high velocity gun probably has about the same number of ready to fire shells plus both have 12 guided missiles each.

Plenty of fire power.

The grenade round has likely gotten it's parent shell case from the AA round, but it's unlikely to be telescopic like a velocity round, but instead like a typical grenade round the case is uniformly cylindrical with minimized space for propellant and maximized space for warhead.

There are drawings of the 57mm grenade with a large shell body and a small stub propellent case. Talk of the grenade suggests a HE payload in the 6-8kg range as it is described as having the HE capacity of a 76.2mm gun.

But the size makes the firepower of that small missile rather pathetic. I understand they want something smaller and cheaper than kornet but this small missile has an engine, fuel for engine, electronics which makes its warhead very small.

Knowing the Kornet internal design it likely has two warheads... one in the nose and one in the tail... probably both full sized 57mm calibre HEAT warheads designed to maximise penetration by both directing their beams at the same point on the target. With the Kornet the front warhead is small and is designed to set off ERA, but this small missile would need the extra penetration of two full calibre warheads... it should be able to penetrate 400-500mm of armour which should be fine for non MBT types of enemy armour or softer targets on the battlefield. I would expect the missiles will be dual purpose with fragmentation effect as well as armour piercing capacity... and they will likely be supersonic as they wont be dragging wires.

Then if the range is the same as the effective ranges of the 57mm or 30mm guns or grenade launchers then it adds nothing valuable to the vehicles carrying it.

They are laser beam guided missiles so moving targets would be what you would use these missiles for... on the ground and in the air most likely.

It may be more precise but it will also be more expensive. In that case I would prefere a gun with 100 rounds and a gun FCS than 5 small missiles.

It has both the gun and 8 small missiles... and four big missiles for MBT targets too.

For the shaped charge variant, I would guess it will be good only against unarmoured vehicles and even against them you will need to hit precise part to destroy it because the warehead is small. Against armoured vehicle I doubt it would go through modern armors even in the sides.

It is intended for use against lighter armoured vehicles, so I would expect with two 57mm calibre warheads it should do a decent job against most targets...

The theromobaric will not be effective. 57mm is very small.

Thermobaric warheads would be ineffective in penetrating armour.

IMO it's for operation like in Syria where precision matters but no need to destroy tank, only vivilian vehicles.

90% of vehicles in a tank division are not tanks and have nothing like the protection a tank has... these 8 missiles would be effective against those lighter vehicles including IFVs.

The original Metis had a 93mm warhead and had 2km range with 1970's technology, and we saw the vehicle version of Kornet double in range (probably benefiting from heavier and denser propellant), so with modern technology and being vehicle based, a 93mm Bulat could have 4-5km range which is plenty.

Bulat appears to be a scaled down Kornet missile... it is likely a 55-65mm calibre missile and is intended for use over shorter ranges and against vehicles and positions more lightly protected than a MBT.

Ypu must be right. They wouldn't have put it in service if it wasn't providing something more over the canon and the kornet.

They had a 73mm rocket launcher in the BMP-1 and a 30mm high velocity auto cannon in the BMP-2... one vehicle did not replace the other... they used them both because their fire power complimented each other.

The BMP-3 had both HE fire power with a 100mm rifled gun and an auto cannon...

The 30mm cannon does not have good enough AP performance to take on enemy IFVs which are getting heavier than the T-34 tank of WWII.

An APFSDS round in 57mm high velocity should get the job done however and it is large enough calibre that it can carry a decent HE round as well.

The problem is that in some conflicts the enemy has no armour so a good HE gun makes more sense than an AP gun, so a combination of HE intensive grenade launcher and 57mm high velocity gun actually makes sense.

Note at the start of WWII the T-34 was armed with a medium velocity 76.2mm gun. They fitted it with longer barrel versions with higher muzzle velocity, but it was never the high velocity tank killer that the german panther carried in their 75mm gun.

There was a 57mm Soviet gun that would have given their tanks excellent anti armour performance out to about 1,500m but they only fitted a few T-34s with that gun because the 76.2mm gun had a much better HE round and they used the HE round a lot more than they used the anti armour round.

Of the 70,000 odd T-34s they made there were about 5,000 Panthers and about 1,500 Tigers for them to deal with... and some of them were on the western front anyway...

The better HE gun was more useful. Still is.

Bulats could be designed where their HE-Frag warheads are programmed before flight to shift their explosion pattern into one direction to effectively quadruple their performance, or they could be designed with 1/4th the size warhead with significantly greater propellant for a greater max range.

Not a huge amount is known about the Bulat, but in the photo we have seen it appears to be a scaled down Kornet... scaled down so it can be carried in larger numbers. The launcher in the turret displayed shows 8 Bulat missiles in a launcher mount that looks very similar to the launcher mount in the Tigr with all the Kornet missiles. The difference being the Bulat is carrying twice as many missiles in the same launcher... the Kornet launcher on the Tigr has four missiles while the Bulat has 8 missiles.

I would suggest this doubling of missiles it to allow more targets to be engaged that don't require the range or penetration power of the full sized Kornet missiles.

Keep in mind the Kornet reaches 8.5km and penetrates 1.3m of armour, while the HEFrag equipped model reaches 10km... which are useful figures but that is a lot of missile to be using at 3-4km against a Humvee.

A Kornet unit... whether a team of men with a launcher mount moving around in a jeep type vehicle, or a Tigr vehicle with onboard missiles ready to fire, or one of these IFVs or APCs... having this smaller missile means you can carry more ready to fire missiles and engage a wider range of targets... the man portable team would likely appreciate the lighter missiles for closer less well protected targets, while the Tigr might use one launcher with four Kornets to engage targets at max range but have 8 missiles in the other launcher for self defence if it is surprised...

it adds flexibility to existing and new units... the small missiles would be useful for helicopters and drones... it is likely these missiles are supersonic like the Kornet so they will hit targets quicker than many cannon shells which don't have sustainer rocket motors maintaining speed...

Actually thinking about it for a bit I remember a model of the RPO-A thermobaric rocket, they had a few different types of rocket and one of the types had a precursor charge to blow a hole through a structure like an APC or the wall of a building and then blow into the cavity behind that structure the thermobaric mixture which detonated as it spread inside.

A dedicated anti armour Bulat could have two 57mm HEAT warheads... one at the nose tip and one at the rear of the missile just like on the Kornet it was developed from, but the anti material version (the equivalent HE Frag model 10km range Kornet EM model) could replace the rear HEAT charge with a thermobaric warhead so the front warhead punches a hole through light protection like a wall or sandbags on a bunker or the light armour of an MRAP or APC and then the main charge is a thermobaric warhead that explodes inside the room or vehicle sucking all the O2 out and heating the interior to furnace levels with a blast wave less high speed than high explosive, but lasting longer...

It would be devastating to most targets.

The source is both right and wrong...

The Armata is a family of vehicles and will likely have 28 different types when it is fully ready, but there are four vehicle families in different weight and armour classes.

The Russians have created four vehicle families to replace all existing vehicle types... they have the heavy tracked Armata family, the medium tracked Kurganets family, the medium wheeled Boomerang and the light wheeled Typhoon families.

Right now they use vehicle families... the 152mm MSTA uses a modified T-80 chassis with a T-72 engine... the BMP 1 and BMP 2 and BMP 3 chassis are widely used in a large range of vehicles from engineer and elint and other roles, while the BTR based vehicles and of course the MTLBu is also widely used in Soviet/Russian divisions... but they are all mixed together so it reduces the vehicle types but assuming the 28 types is accurate it means instead of having 28 different vehicle types in a division they might have 8-10 different types at the moment.

The point of the new families is to reduce the different vehicle types in one division to one.

The expectation is that they are going to split role and vehicle types and create a suite of turrets and weapons and sensors and use them across the vehicle types.

For instance the turrets shown above with 57mm high velocity guns and missiles and other turrets with 57mm grenade launchers and missiles are not for one vehicle... they will be for all the vehicles and likely be the IFV turrets.

The T-14 turret is the tank turret so there will be a Boomerang with a similar turret and a Kurganets with a similar turret and sensors and systems.

The Typhoon is a four and six wheel class light vehicle so may not use a 125mm gun armed tank type vehicle... it might just use speed and light weight and a 57mm gun and missiles to deal with targets in a high speed mobile high fire power force...

The point is that there will be heavy tracked divisions equipped only with Armatas... for use against enemies well equipped with anti armour weapons in difficult environments like forests and cities where ambushes are easy and close... it will be heavy and relatively slow but mobile because of a short logistics tail and very well armed and protected... it will also be expensive and use a bit of fuel.

Having just one type of vehicle within a force means the logistics chain is shorter and simpler... one engine type, one transmission type, one wheel type, one track link type...

They have gone from about four tank calibres (100mm smoothbore (MT-12), 100mm rifled (T-54/55), 115mm smoothbore (T-62), and 125mm smoothbore) to one... and a second if needed... (152mm smoothbore).

In a current tank division there are different engines for tanks for BMPs for BTRs and MTLBs and all the other types of platforms and of course different wheels and different track types different transmissions different APUs etc etc (the Tunguska and air defence vehicles all use different types of vehicles chassis and of course rocket artillery vehicles...).

It is looking like the Typhoon family will be a light recon family that wont be formed in to divisions and might be a VDV/Naval Infantry type light mobile force that is perhaps air mobile and may be used for peacekeeping duties or COIN type ops and also in real conflicts as recon forces...

The Armata and Kurganets are in different weight classes and could not share the same chassis or engines.

The Kurganets and Boomerang are in the same weight class and as far as I know share the same engine family... and each type of vehicle has a standard set of sensors and weapons and equipment/turrets.

All the tank models have the same tank turret with the same sensors and the same weapons and systems, all the BMPs have the same turrets and weapons and sensors and systems, all the BTRs have the same turrets and weapons and sensors and systems etc etc.

That means they develop one tank loadout and fit that same loadout and turret and vehicle layout on all the tanks... the Armata has a rear mounted engine for the tank model but the other three tank vehicles have front mounted engines. All the BMP and BTR types have front mounted engines including the Armata...

The Armata family are 45 to 65 ton capacity vehicles... Kurganets family is a 25-40 ton capacity vehicle... the Boomerang family is also a 25-40 ton capacity vehicle family... it makes sense for the Kurganets and Boomerang to share an engine type, but the Armata needs a more powerful engine and more engine growth.

Unfortunately many in the west see the Armata as the tank and the Kurganets as the BMP and the Boomerang as the BTR, while the Typhoon is the BRDM... but they are not individual vehicle types... if the Kurganets really is the BMP then what is the T-15 (the T-15 is the IFV version of the Armata chassis if you don't know).

We have seen the T-14 tank model of the Armata... what we have not seen yet is the Kurganets and Boomerang with that tank turret as the tank models of those vehicles... the Typhoon tank model might end up being fitted with the Sprut 125mm gun turret fitted to it as the tank model perhaps.