S-300/400/500 News [Russian Strategic Air Defense] #1

Actually Mach 12 is about 3.8km per second so even S-400 can intercept it... along with its naval equivalent... there is no need for exotic technologies like Lasers yet.

Obviously this weapon is not ballistic, but it is not travelling at 4.8km a second either so it should be able to compute intercept courses and launch a few missiles in the incoming missiles field of manoeuvre capability so one missile should hit it.

The point is that such a weapon would be the equivalent of a very slow and short ranged ICBM.

The fact that it can manouver is fairly immaterial because its use will result in a full scale nuclear retaliation anyway.

Its capacity to manouver will be restricted over a warhead of a weapon like a MARV, because a MARV is basically a manouvering warhead, so it is small and can be made strong. There will be no large cavities in a MARV for large volumes of fuel because it is basically a falling vehicle.

This new glide weapon would be very much like a space shuttle... sure it will probably manouver, but over what range... we are not talking fighter jet manouver capability... more like bomber... 2gs or so.

Outside the atmosphere its capacity to manouver will be restricted by the power of its side thrusters or its manouvering jets. Inside the atmosphere its ability to turn will be greatly effected by its structural strength and the cooling capacity of the aircraft.

The Space shuttle for example has heat tiles in very specific areas which requires a single re-entry profile. The results of damaged or missing tiles give you an idea of the result of coming in at the wrong angle.

Of course I am not suggesting speed and manouver capability are useless, Russia and India are working on Brahmos II, which when mature should perfect technologies like scramjet engines and fuels and high temperature materials that should allow much much higher speeds to be achieved... and this of course will influence the propulsion choices and designs of future SAMs too.

Today a similar weapon, therefore, would represent a true nightmare for Russian Aerospace Defence structure, but luckily no such weapon is near to introduction in any NATO nation and with enough time the situation will change.

You mean like TOPOL-M represents a true nightmare to the US and NATO?

Such a weapon has a range of 2,000miles and therefore violates the INF treaty and cannot enter full scale development and testing while that treaty is in effect.

If the US wants to withdraw from the INF treaty then they must realise that in the short term Iskander will be able to immediately grow into a system with much greater range and performance in both the semi ballistic and cruise missile models.

And its use would be an act of war... and considering there is no way to tell if it has a nuclear warhead or not till it explodes... it is pretty safe to say that a single launch in the direction of Russia would likely lead to a full nuclear retaliation, so as a weapon system is is not really any more or less useful than something like an SS-20.

While it is outside the atmosphere there will be no plasma protection and inside the atmosphere its thermal signature will be pretty significant.

If they can solve the heat and propulsion problems I will be impressed, but I don't think they are that far ahead in propulsion... remember they also had lots and lots of concept ideas for Star Wars in the 1980s and shock horror... most of it didn't actually work!

I rather suspect the issue is that these missiles are primarily anti aircraft missiles, and the design requirements to hit targets above about 30km would compromise performance against lower altitude targets.

It is a bit like the problem of a boat. It can be used over 2/3rds of the worlds surface area. If its primary job was to sink boats then there is no need to convert it into a hovercraft that can operate on land as well as on the water.

If they did convert it to a hovercraft then there will be changes in the speed it can move it, the weights it could carry, and of course its operational range.

They clearly think that a 30km interception altitude is good enough.

I rather doubt it is accuracy or lack of resolution in altitude because distance is distance... tracking and guiding 30km straight up would be much easier than 200km sideways through the densest part of the atmosphere.

I rather suspect there was no requirement to intercept at higher altitudes.

S-300V and S-300VM are not dedicated ABM systems. They are not PAC-3 Patriots or THAAD.

They are the standard long range SAM for the Army, just like the S-300P is the long range SAM for the Air Force, and the S-300S is the long range SAM for the Navy.

Operating in one environment is cheaper and simpler. Below about 60km altitude is "air"... above 100km is pretty much space. The design requirements for operating in both environments is like designing a missile that will work both underwater and in the air. Certainly not impossible, and in the case of a sub launched missile it is more effective to launch the missile out of the water and have it cruise at high speed to the target area through the air than through the water, but in the different environments you need different controls and sensors and indeed warheads. A blast fragmentation warhead is very effective in air, but in water a pure blast warhead is more efficient as the fragments would be inefficient in the water and just add dead weight. 10kgs of fragments makes thousands of lethal bullets that can scatter widely and be effective at extended ranges in air, but in water even large fragments will rapidly lose their effect, so it would make more sense to replace that 10kgs of metal with a few kgs more of HE. (obviously removing 10kgs of metal will not free up enough space for 10kgs of HE which is much lighter and would need a much bigger warhead compartment to fit that much more explosive.)

Think of it as adapting a naval SAM to be able to operate underwater so it can intercept a Tomahawk as it is launched from a Submarine.

The collision energy of an interception would shatter most incoming threats and those very small pieces would lose their velocity very rapidly, so there would be no enormous advantage to intercepting targets at 100km vs 30km except in the sense that intercepting at 100km will mean you know slightly earlier that you have defeated the target or not.

Unless the incoming warhead is heading straight for the ABM system the chance of a second shot against a target travelling at speeds of 4-5km/s means that by the time you can analyse the telemetry to see if you actually hit the target it might be 10 seconds, which means it is already at 50km, which means you need a fraction of a second to recalculate its new flight path if there was any deflection or effect on the target and then you need to launch another interceptor missile which will take likely another 5-10 seconds to launch and actually manouver to an intercept point... and if the target is nuclear armed it might detonate 5km above the ground.

I rather suspect a more realistic interception would involve the launch of several missiles at once, in which case the lower interception ceiling is no great disadvantage as several missiles will be launched to intercept the incoming threat anyway... so they also get several chances to intercept the threat.

The point is that the missiles are not complicated by a need to be able to manouver in the absence of air for the flight controls to push against to manouver for the intercept.

In other words it makes the system lighter, simpler and cheaper to not need to work above the atmosphere.

BTW every time a progress cargo ship docks with the ISS they are performing "interceptions" outside the atmosphere, so they clearly have the capacity to do it.

Likely the issue is that the Russian military has not made such a requirement... I am sure if the S-300V was able to intercept targets at 185km altitude the US would demand it was withdrawn because it was an anti satellite weapon in disguise.

I didn't say it wasn't useful.

If your ABM systems are not based directly on the target then being able to intercept to 200km means you can intercept a ballistic missile bound for another target.

the very high flight speed means that even a small control surface will be effective in directing the missile in flight, but as you get higher and the air gets thinner then those small control surfaces start to have less effect.

They keep them small to minimise drag and weight, so making them bigger would be a bad thing and would not extend the effective altitude that much.

Side thruster rockets would be used in the terminal phase to adjust the path of the interceptor missile rapidly enough to make a difference, but in a near vacuum there is little air flowing over the missile body so a side thruster could just as easily start the missile tumbling which would obviously present a problem if the seeker in the nose can't see the incoming target.

The ISS operates at about 300-400km and of course it is not alone so being able to hit ballistic missiles at 200km is getting very close to being able to easily hit stuff in orbit.

I suspect the S-300P and S-300V and S-400 series got a limit of 30 km is because they probaby found that to be the right balance for air breathing targets and BM.

Like I said, the S-300V was developed in the 1970s and hitting satellites would have been counter productive for the Russian Army.

The S-400 is based on the S-300 and therefore has its features and limitations as well, except in this case they are not really limitations.

Complaining that the S-300 and S-400 can't hit targets above 30km is like complaining that my assault rifle can't reliably hit targets at 1,000m.

S-300 and S-400 are air defence missiles that defend potential targets from everything from cruise missiles and high flying supersonic recon aircraft to ballistic missiles.

If you want a dedicated ABM system that only shoots down BMs then that is S-500, which will be almost of no use to the Army or Navy or Air Force, except defending strategic assets like ports and cities and major airfields and strategic weapon sites.

S-500 is a SV-338 and will likely be accurate to 1,500m but it is no substitute for an assault rifle.