Kalibr missile system

Each launcher seems to be two missiles by two missiles... but I wonder if they could be stacked... ie two four missile launchers mounted side by side would be 8 missiles, but could they stack another set of launchers on top so they are 4 missile wide and also 4 missiles high... making each position 16 missiles for a big ship like a Slava class.

The Slava class could have two missiles in each angled launch position so it could carry 8 x 2 = 16 ready to launch missiles, but these quad launch tubes mounted two for each of the 8 launch positions would mean 32 missiles, but if they could stack three wide and/or two high, you would have 12 or 24 missiles for each of the 8 launch positions... that would be 96 or 192 missiles ready to fire which is a much more useful load...

Of course this is just a stopgap ship till bigger ships are produced so you probably don't need too many missiles... some sort of support ship with a few deck cranes that can load the tubes at sea would be a good force multiplier though.

GarryB wrote:The Slava class could have two missiles in each angled launch position so it could carry 8 x 2 = 16 ready to launch missiles, but these quad launch tubes mounted two for each of the 8 launch positions would mean 32 missiles, but if they could stack three wide and/or two high, you would have 12 or 24 missiles for each of the 8 launch positions... that would be 96 or 192 missiles ready to fire which is a much more useful load...

Nice, but take a care about vessel stability.  A P-500/1000 is approx 4.8 T, while an Oniks is 3.0 T and a Kalibre can be up to 2.3 T depending on variant (quoting wiki).  Assuming launcher tube mass is proportional to that of its missile (?) I don't think you will be able to pile 6x new missiles for each pair of old Bazalts/Vulcans without compromising her sea keeping.

With the talk about upgraded Oniks (faster, longer ranged) courtesy of new technology fuels, maybe a re-tooling of the Slavas to carry Oniks tubes would be a better upgrade path?  Bazalt/Vulcan is an older aerodynamic design going all the way back to the old P-3 Shaddock (IOC in 1959) and its potential for upgrade must be just about exhausted by now?  Modernised Oniks with a big performance boost might be a relatively low cost upgrade if the RuN intends to keep her 1164s in service for another decade or so?

Here's a question from left field... how do we know the modernised Marshall Ustinov is still carrying Vulcans?  Have post-refit firing tests been observed? I would have thought it would be relatively straightforward to fit out the P-1000 tubes with liners to carry modernised Oniks. No evidence of course, pure conjecture, but such a conversion could be done with little more than mechanical installation of the liner canister, replacement of the firing console & electronics plus probably new cabling (not sure about systems integration of course, making new electronics function with the old).  I'd trade Vulcans (no longer manufactured?) for enhanced Oniks any day of the week.

Launch of Kalibr cruise missile from a diesel-electric submarine




Launch of Kalibr cruise missile from a small rocket ship




Launch of Kalibr cruise missile from a nuclear submarine

Replace the supporting framework with jacks and pop it in a shipping container. Sound familiar?