Russian MRLS: Grad, Uragan, Smerch, Tornado-G/S

You're talking COTS components, but if you want truly capable weapons you're going to have to push the envelope and the vast majority of civilian parts are just not up to spec. Then youre back to producing bespoke parts and the cost goes up once again.

Also I highly doubt the Russians would want to experience what they're cooking for HIMARS and introduce weapons with a known and exploitable vulnerability to GPS signal jamming.

Russia is not in the habit of fighting low tech opponents after all. There's no room for dicking around, all weapons must be cost-effective against all kinds of threats, not just sanctioned to hell and back impoverished third world shitholes.

ALAMO wrote:
You clearly see how many pure civilian products are being used in this war.
That won't change bro.

That's not what I'm saying. My point is if you can use COTS stuff and it doesn't limit your design then fantastic. But if not - and the more bleeding edge you go the higher the tendency it becomes, then you have no choice but to bite the bullet and go for the expensive option.

lancelot wrote:Of course it is cheaper than Iskander if you can destroy the target with one 300mm rocket. Each Iskander launcher can carry 2x Iskander missiles at most, and the Polonez launcher carries 8x 300mm rockets. That is 4x more targets you can hit from one launch platform. The Polonez uses a smaller missile, and needs much less expense in rocket propellant to deliver the also smaller warhead to the target.

Or the target is well-defended and your Polonez fails to even land a single hit. Did you ever consider that?

lancelot wrote:The Turks have the TRG-230. This is a 230mm rocket system which can either use a 70km range missile with laser guidance at the terminal stage. Ukraine has the Buran which is an upgrade of the Uragan on a Tatra launcher chassis with 65 km range.

Russia does the same with Orlans lasing for Krasnopols and nobody bats an eyelash. Turkey replicates the feat with expensive Bayraktars and long range MLRS and people lose their minds.

lancelot wrote:
Krasnopol has like 25 km range. This is like three times as much. I assume it uses inertial or GPS guidance until it gets close to the target and then locks onto the laser for guidance to the target. As valuable as Krasnopol is, this allows extending attacks further behind the front where the opposing long range modern conventional artillery or mid range MLRS are.

You're assuming an observer is already operating deep in the enemy's tactical depth, close to his operational rear.

I don't know about you but I'm not going to burn an asset that has made it that far by having it lase singular targets.

ALAMO wrote:I would say they lack a 100-300 km tier. Belarussian/Chinese Polonez fits the niche perfectly because with A300 (Typ2) missile, its minimal firing distance is more than 100 km. What you get, is 8 ps of ready to fire missiles where every single one targets a separate target in 20x20km square. It has a 120-130 TNT equivalent warhead. Or you can use a new toy - it is a Chinese M20 missile that retains the 300 km range, but with more than half a tone warhead. The missile number will be reduced to 3, still it is certainly a potent and interesting platform. Last but not least, soon there will be one more option for the system, with a new cruise missile with 500 km range. This piece is extremely versatile I would say ...

That is a firecracker. Ukraine has shown that you need much heavier warheads, at least 500 kg, but preferably 1000 kg. The Soviets built shit tough.

About the only thing you can reliably take out with the smaller guided rockets are unhardened point targets like individual vehicles. Like, why even bother?

The-thing-next-door wrote:
How many targets in gato territory are even moderately defended?

Very few. But its not a very good idea to rely on the enemy being trash. That's how you get blindsided.

They are attacking Odessa/Nikolayev based targets with Ch-101, for Gods sake... It is 150 km straight line ...
They seriously need a sub-500 km systems. MLRS artillery would be perfect.

Except the Kh-101 carries a 450kg payload... what sort of MLRS with a 500km range will have a 450kg payload?

Smerch already has a 150km range, but do you think firing 12 rockets will compensate for the smaller payload?

It might, but very much depends on the target.

If that is true then I guess all you need to defeat an Abrams tank is about a 10,000 5.45mm rounds, because that would weigh even more than an APFSDS round in 125mm wont it?

They do not need to weaken anything. Just look at the specs of the Grad vs the Tornado-G rockets. They put more modern high density propellant in it and replaced the steel casing with composite casing. Old 9M28F rocket has 21 kg warhead and 15 km range. New 9M51 rocket has 21 kg warhead and 40 km range.

Grad has been in service for more than 40 years, and the Smerch is not a huge amount younger, the 40km range 122mm rockets are not new and were developed in the 1990s... the old 9M521 has a 21kg warhead and a 40km range, while the 9M522 can reach 37.5km with a 25kg payload, both advertised in 2000 (over 20 years ago...)

There are plenty of things they can put new high density propellent in but I would think giving Smerch rockets more range is not a huge priority at the moment... I would say a HERMES with a better booster would be vastly more cost effective and also more likely to actually hit a target than a ballistic rocket even if it had terminal guidance.

Russia has clearly found it difficult to destroy the HIMARS launchers properly.

Well to be fair the Orcs are trying to keep them hidden.

The real point is that HIMARS is a nuisance weapon rather than an artillery system the Soviet systems are on the battlefield.

No surprise, because of the cost of the HIMARS it was never going to be an effective artillery system.

Otherwise they would not be spending precious SAMs like the ones in the Tor to intercept HIMARS missiles.

TOR was designed specifically to deal with such threats... that is its reason for being... either in the field with armoured units or with heavy SAMs protecting them from attack.

At 90 km GMLRS range the HIMARS launcher would have to be destroyed with the Smerch or Iskander.

Destroying their rocket stores is much easier... blowing up warehouses in western ukraine and stopping the grain deal will reduce the amount of ammo getting to the front line.

BTW wanting to convert an excellent tool like Smerch into a one trick white elephant for defeating a missile that is not that big a problem is classic western design screwing things up.

Smerch and Uragan and Grad are doing excellent work... as is TOS, but still you are not happy... stop production of working weapons to make the pie in the sky weapon.

Even if you could destroy every single HIMARS that is only a tiny fraction of the work these rocket launchers do for which most of the time the extra range is added cost and would actually reduce performance at closer range targets.

There are probably not enough GLONASS guided Smerch rounds available right now for whatever reason and the kill chain just isn't quick enough to work on time on most cases.

Thanks... you claim there are not enough guided rounds but you still want more bloody range...

You want to extend the range of the rockets... to what end... are you saying the Russians can detect and destroy HIMARS launchers but the only thing stopping them is lack of a weapon that reaches that far...

So lets say they make some new 400mm rockets with 300km range with a guided warhead... they already have Iskander with 500km range if there was a HIMARS they detected and wanted to hit.

The problem is not a lack of range for their Smerch rockets, HIMARS type weapons will always be a problem in a largely wide spread urban/rural area... that was the whole bloody point in mobile artillery.

You need to expend the whole rack in a Tor or Pantsir to defend against a volley of GMLRS from a single HIMARS launcher.

Against military targets they have just been jamming them and HIMARS carries 6 rockets... TOR carried 16 missiles and Pantsir carries 12.

And I can bet what is cheaper at least in terms of man hours to produce.

HIMARS rockets are costing Kiev its soul.

You need at least 2 SAMs per GMLRS round and that is if the Tor or Pantsir have the latest upgrades. Without them it is more like 4 SAMs per GMLRS round.

Hahahahaha... why not 100 missiles or 1,000? Before upgrades two missiles might be fired to assure a hit, but after upgrades only one is fired and one hits.

Like I said, GMLRS ER will have basically the same range as Smerch, when it enters production. And has much cheaper HIMARS truck launcher platforms.

And yet they are still losing.

When it enters production.

HIMARS was supposed to be a game changer that will turn the tide and the Orcs will win.

Russia is not jamming GPS across the whole depth. This is done just over a specific area of the front. That is quite clear.

Of course, they are only jamming when and where they need to.

It is one thing to lose a D-20 or D-30, another to lose the Malva with a BAZ truck.

So D-20s and D-30s are carried in backpacks?

The Malva's vehicle is too expensive to operate at that kind of distance to the front.

It is a truck. Its operational costs will make it way cheaper than any tracked chassis like the one used for the previous example the 2S5.

Of course it is cheaper than Iskander if you can destroy the target with one 300mm rocket. Each Iskander launcher can carry 2x Iskander missiles at most, and the Polonez launcher carries 8x 300mm rockets. That is 4x more targets you can hit from one launch platform. The Polonez uses a smaller missile, and needs much less expense in rocket propellant to deliver the also smaller warhead to the target.

Iskander hits its targets... Polonez will be shot down. Iskander has a warhead five times heavier so two warheads would be the equivalent of 10 rockets.

A single 550kg warhead can do more damage to hard targets than 5 x 100kg warheads can. And for soft area targets the Iskander can use cluster munition warheads.

BTW are we talking about Polonez with a warhead of 100kgs and range of 200km or the Polonez-M with a warhead of 50kgs and a 280km range?

The Turks have the TRG-230. This is a 230mm rocket system which can either use a 70km range missile with laser guidance at the terminal stage. Ukraine has the Buran which is an upgrade of the Uragan on a Tatra launcher chassis with 65 km range.

And the Russians have 300mm Smerch rockets to hit targets 150km away so what is your problem?

Krasnopol has like 25 km range.

The GLONASS guided Krasnopol rounds reach 43km... plus it is rather unfair comparing laser guided artillery shells with laser guided rockets... the g acceleration on an artillery shell limits its range when it needs delicate optics for a laser detector, which is not an issue for a rocket.

Those amazing Turkish rockets wouldn't work against Russian forces because their drones wouldn't last long enough to lase the targets and Russian air defence will shoot down any rockets they do fire.

Can you say the same for a SMERCH volley for a HATO side?

I would say they lack a 100-300 km tier. Belarussian/Chinese Polonez fits the niche perfectly because with A300 (Typ2) missile, its minimal firing distance is more than 100 km. What you get, is 8 ps of ready to fire missiles where every single one targets a separate target in 20x20km square. It has a 120-130 TNT equivalent warhead. Or you can use a new toy - it is a Chinese M20 missile that retains the 300 km range, but with more than half a tone warhead. The missile number will be reduced to 3, still it is certainly a potent and interesting platform. Last but not least, soon there will be one more option for the system, with a new cruise missile with 500 km range. This piece is extremely versatile I would say ...

You are missing the point and confusing MLRS with guided missiles.

If you want a counter battery weapon with 100-400km range that can hit artillery vehicles when they fire with a missile that is supersonic it does not make sense to **** up your Smerch and Uragan and Grad batteries when they are already developing the HERMES in ground launched form with a booster to launch it to the vicinity of the target for it to glide down and attack point targets... currently delayed while they add propulsion so it can manouver and evade enemy air defence systems to ensure it hits its target. A bigger booster that lofts it up higher and further and a scramjet motor to really get it flying fast and it could extend its range from 100-150km to rather more quite easily.

How many targets in gato territory are even moderately defended?

The Americans are working on the same tiny short range self defence SAMs that the Russians are working on.

This conflict should be a real wake up call... you can't always expect your enemies to be this stupid... they have been lucky so far and right now they still have issues with Orc air defences... mainly the ones of Soviet origin.

There is Crotale and Aspide. But they are dated like heck and also not available in any great numbers.

And how many of them have 40 ready to fire missiles to deal with a single Grad vehicle volley, or 16 missiles for Uragan or 12 for Smerch?

About the only thing you can reliably take out with the smaller guided rockets are unhardened point targets like individual vehicles. Like, why even bother?

Which means a modified HERMES is the best solution rather than screwing up Smerch.

For counter battery fire to destroy individual enemy artillery vehicles the 30kg warhead of the HERMES would be just fine with direct hits.

I would say a combination of drones and HERMES and they really don't need to change anything at all.

New subcalibre guided HE rounds for 152mm and perhaps also 203mm guns would be very useful too.

Having a system that can hit targets with 50-500 km distance, with several different rocket types, with multiple warhead sizes and type selection is a gain.

Having an artillery rocket system trying to do what Tochka and Iskander do is moronic...

It is the equivalent of trying to make a belt fed machine gun into a sniper rifle by loading sniper rounds into it and putting a powerful optical scope on it to shoot at distances it was never intended to be firing at, requiring special ammo that makes the whole system expensive and clumsy.

Leave the Smerch to hammer enemy troops on or near the front line and develop and extend HERMES to the role of Tochka replacement as it wont be so easy to intercept as a ballistic rocket and will be easy to make effective to extended ranges with improved solid rocket booster motors and propulsion added to the terminal attack portion of the missile.

Tornado is about rocket barrages and they don't want rocket barrages out to 500km, they want counter battery point targets engaged and much of the time drones would be cheaper and more effective for that job.

Firstly the lighter version of Smerch/Tornado-S with 6 rockets/missiles will propably take over from the old Uragan.
Which means longer range and likely more mobility. Less rockets but that will either be offset by more systems or
more versatile payloads (plus guidance in instances where it is appropriate).

With the rocket pods shown the Tornado seems to be keeping the three calibre tubes option with 122mm and 220mm and 300mm.

If they want greatly extended range missiles and I mean missiles because beyond 50km the groupings of rockets is going to be problematic to say the least... even at 90km the original Smerch used a gyroscope method of keeping the rocket groupings closer together to avoid rocket spread to the point of being useless...

At 100km or more you need terminal guidance to make it worth launching, which means you are launching missiles anyway so HERMES makes more sense than a larger calibre rocket that will no longer be cheap and able to be produced in large enough numbers to actually be useful.

Ballistic one is expensive, it is a real tool of doom. With all the maneuvering, multiple scanning, decoys ... It costs fortune.

If it cost a fortune they wouldn't have any. I agree it would be enormously expensive if the west made it... but they have them in large numbers and the reason for its sophistication is because it would be used to destroy western major SAM batteries and high value targets that are heavily defended by SAM batteries.

Russkie really lack 100-500 tier.

The west lacks air defence... which gap will be filled first?

The longer you look for the other tools they have, how versatile and complementary those are, the more it gets clear.

Ruining a perfectly good system to try to fit non existent problems is a dumb thing to do.

Listen to yourself... China and Belarus have 200km and 300km range MLRS systems so Russia needs them too...

Ridiculous... but then before Russia started using Lancet Russia didn't have any suicide drones and they are 30 years behind the west in drone technology blah blah blah...

Wanting long range sniper rifles four counter battery use makes sense, but you don't do that by starting with the PKM and make it a larger calibre (338 Lapua) and then fit super scopes and other shit. You say... hey... we have custom designed sniper rifles in development (HERMES) that wont have the problems these rockets from Belarus and China and HIMARS from America wont have (ie they keep getting shot down when we try to use them), and the solution is already on its way... not the time to panic.

They still have Tochka systems but not in service anymore. They are valuable missiles with pretty good precision but lack a good range.

With the INF treaty gone it would be easy to attach a solid rocket booster to a Tochka to boost its range... its grid fins means it doesn't need its rocket motor to be running to be able to manouver like the Iskander does, so it could glide for a bit before diving down on its targets.

Why waste time with 500km... why not 2,500km and you can launch them from deep in Russian territory... these missiles could be designed to be cheap and easy to mass produce in enormous numbers... they could make a quarter that are sophisticated and slightly more expensive and use those together with the cheap ones to hit any SAMs that try to engage the missiles during the attack.

Simple radar homing models could also help deal with enemy air defences while the other missiles destroy artillery vehicles and ammo dumps etc etc.

Always liked the ALARM missile from the UK so a version with a parachute that is launched to very high altitude first and deploys a parachute and if an enemy radar lights up it can chase it down while alerting the other missiles in the attack of the danger and they could manouver to avoid the radar signal source while the parachute equipped missiles dive down with ramjet or scramjet motors at very high speed onto the radar sources.

The original HERMES ground launched model had a range of 100km so a version with a more powerful booster and onboard propulsion could easily reach much much further and with rocket and ramjet/scramjet propulsion the flight speed should actually be rather better than a conventional rocket.

Both systems were developed, ending up with 120 km Tochka-U and Volna, being a two-stage Oka, and adding actually one more tier to the forces structure.
Follow up would have been even more ranged Tochka, some sources refer it to 200+ km, and Iskander.

Tochka was a shorter ranged Iskander with the same seeker head and the same warhead but smaller rocket motor shorter range and grid fins for manouvering instead of thrust vectoring of the rocket exhaust.

The different in price was not that great so they cancelled the Tochka and just use more Iskander instead... there was no longer ranged missiles because the INF treaty banned such weapons.

The INF treaty is now gone but if you guys listen to what you are saying they don't need multiple rocket launch systems that reach up to 1,000km or so, they want a cheap guided rocket that can hit point targets out to extended ranges that can engage enemy artillery when it is detected... you don't need a whole Smerch vehicle with 12 rockets to engage such a target, a single guided rocket would do the job most of the time.

Longer range rockets are used by countries that don't have Iskander.

Russia does not need longer ranged rockets, they need a cheaper longer ranged Hermes that can evade enemy air defences and actually hit point targets.

And probably Iskander-U with a second stage, to get 1500 km and say hello to both London and Paris.

Why not just an SS-20 replacement... those talking about longer ranged rocket systems are not talking about using them as rocket systems, but as very long range counter battery fire platforms that can hit targets at extended ranges... which is why a MLRS system does not make sense but a guided missile system does.