North Korea Armes Forces: News

d_taddei2 wrote:

I remember the Oka it was great at the time. And most likely would still be useful today. Gorby if I remember did it as a goodwill gesture it wasn't a must. So Russia could easily bring it back with a few minor upgrades they have the blueprints

Also I would imagine Iran would also have missiles for such role they seem to have loads of types but I am not fully up to speed on all their systems.

Oka wasn't even touched by the treaty being sub500km.
It was Gorby stupidity, not the first one actually.

The same was the liquidation od MRBM missiles, which forced the Soviets to make a new silo bases well into the territory, because the big missiles had a dead range of some 1500-2000 km making them unable to strike targets in Europe. Plus you had to keep an expensive missiles for hitting close targets that could be attacked with medium ranged missiles easily.

And Russkie brought it back - Iskander is a project carried out directly from Oka-U, and Volga.

The case with Iskander is that it was compromised due to INF either.
This missile should do some 1kkm.
And I guess we will see that pretty soon, assisted by two stage piece - Volga style - working in 1500+ radious.

It was Gorby stupidity, not the first one actually.

Well I think there were liberals in the Soviet Union that thought the west was good and the west winning the cold war would actually be good for Russia and the Soviet countries that made up the former Soviet Union, but they learned in the 1990s that the west is a special sort of monster that has made the third world remain the third world all these centuries... they are not interested in helping anyone but themselves and they really don't even try to hide that.

Gorby thought if he was nice then they would be nice in return and Russia would get the respect it deserved and everyone would live happily ever after.

We now realise after Putin has spent the last 20 odd years trying the cement good relations with partners in the west that it is really a lost cause because the west lie and cheat and steal and call everyone else the monsters while they uphold human dignity and ethics and morals...

Well the INF treaty is gone now so Russia can make anything it pleases.

Now with the INF Treaty long gone we may well see a revived Volga in the form of a "Iskander M2"?

Actually I suspect they will shift gears with the solid rocket propelled Iskander being replaced by a scramjet powered weapon with a vastly increased range and probably a low flying cruise missile partner missile to operate together.

People talk about super expensive cruise missiles... a cruise missile is an airframe with a tiny jet engine, which these days can be 3D printed with jet fuel and an aluminium or carbon fibre shell... it has always been the guidance system that was expensive but modern INS navigation systems these missiles should actually be very very cheap and easy to produce in volume.

The case with Iskander is that it was compromised due to INF either.
This missile should do some 1kkm.

To do that you would need a third stage solid rocket fuel like they were talking about for their AAMs. High energy high thrust solid rocket fuel to launch the rocket off the ground and accelerate and climb high up into the air and then a slower burning lower energy fuel that blows high speed airflow through the rocket engine so the rocket exhaust deflectors can manouver the missile to coast towards the target and then during the final dive perhaps a third stage that can be started when needed that accelerates the missile for the dive down onto the target and also provides excess energy for manouvering as it goes in to evade interception.

It you want to use it like a ballistic rocket that just falls on the target like a Grad rocket you need to add aerodynamic control surfaces so it can fly and correct its flight path to hit something with precision (ie counter errors and crosswind etc etc). It could then fly much further but would not maintain speed as well.

@garryb Thanks for finally seeing my point of the argument as u said maybe they could produce a version of iskander that's less sophisticated and cheaper and without the bells and whistles. Now u see this the point I never said it had to buy from someone else but to produce something cheaper less sophisticated and fills the gap.

Well a few members seemed to think Russia should just buy Belarussian or North Korean rockets to replace the Smerch but their descriptions seemed to sound like they would be using these longer ranged rockets to hit point targets much the same way Russia uses the Iskander and used to use Tochka.

As I kept mentioning... that is like trying to replace sniper rifles with machine guns... the bullets for a machine gun might be cheaper but you don't use them against point targets.

But initially u were saying no iskander is the suitable for every job and smerch too. Which is completely wrong.

I don't think I was... I was saying Smerch is like TOS... it hits group targets where there might be 50 to 400 men in a field or an area or a large group of vehicles that a single heavy missile like Iskander or even a very long range version of Hermes couldn't deal with because they are really designed to hit point targets... they are sniper rifles. TOS at short range and Smerch out to 150km can deal with such groups of targets because they will be fired in groups that spread out over the area where the enemy troops or vehicles are and give good coverage with HE and fragments and fire.

These bigger heavier rockets will hit deep into the enemy rear but are enemy forces going to bunch together like that deep in their own rear?

They will form up near the front to attack you but doing it anywhere else is just asking to be hit by enemy air power.

The Iskander was designed to hit a heavily defended high priority target like an HQ that has a heavy SAM system defending it... these Iskanders will get through because of their speed and manouver as well as their jammers and decoys etc.

Iskander replaced Tochka, or should I say Tochka was withdrawn without replacement because everything it could do Iskander can already do.

By the same token they might reduce the number of 220mm Uragan rockets they make because the 300mm Smerch has longer range and heavier payload while the 122mm Grad offers smaller more lightweight rockets... Uragan is sort of in the middle and if it wasn't the same calibre as the TOS I would wonder why it is still in production.

I would want to know rather more information however... having rockets that can hit targets at 300km range... how often would you find such targets and have time to hit them... I would argue that the majority of targets the Russians want to hit that deep behind enemy lines will be SAM launchers and artillery vehicles and other things that can move so something like an enlarged Hermes would make more sense in my opinion because you don't need 100kg plus warheads to hit such targets... in fact Lancet shows you can kill them with a 3kg HEAT warhead.

Hermes can't replace it as it doesn't have the range or payload and I think that point is put to bed, yes u can say they might make a longer range bigger warhead but they haven't.

The modest payload will make it much cheaper than these big rockets you seem so fond of.

Precision means payloads can be reduced and remain effective.

More importantly HERMES is basically the SAM used on the Tunguska and the Pantsir so actually having a powered missile that has a scramjet motor to accelerate to high speeds and very long ranges would be useful across the board in a variety of different roles.

Do you think the Pantsir missile is too expensive to mass produce?

Smerch hasn't replaced tochka and it's has a completely different role hopefully u understand this, and u can spin it any other way.

That is what I am saying... Smerch is essentially a rocket artillery system... the 80mm and 122mm rocket pods on an attack helicopter. Iskander is LMUR and Hermes and Vikhr are shorter ranged anti vehicle weapons taht also get used to hit a range of point targets down to Metis at 1.5km.

But Smerch has GLONASS guided rockets just like HIMARS and such rockets can hit point targets of known coordinates out to 150km which is the sort of thing they used Tochka for.

Smerch can also carry Sensor fused top attack submunitions that can take out tanks and armoured vehicles and a large group of armoured vehicles crossing a field would be better engaged by Smerch rockets aimed in a string down the road... releasing submunitions as it goes in a line instead of a cluster than an Iskander or Tochka could.

the west messed up with Afghanistan only having the options of very expensive systems to do what a simple cheap system could have done prime example is javelin being used on mud huts.

Don't project.

There are no gold plated white elephants that the Russians use... even Iskanders are not that expensive for what they do and what they can achieve.

All their guided anti tank missiles are a fraction of the cost of most western weapons... in fact Kornet is actually cheaper than NLAW... Kornets have been sold at about $5K per missile... compared to over $15K per NLAW... and that is not the only example.

Their new glide kits are making their dumb bombs cheap and effective too.

Warfare these days needs to have the best of both worlds high tech bells and whistles equipment for facing off against high tech forces in most cases this will a deterrent, while the other end of the spectrum is fighting in low tech environments where you don't need highly sophisticated systems to get the job done.

Russia already has that...

Tochka was replaced mainly due to its age, range, and accuracy. When they replaced it they decided to go all bells and whistles which is great. However what this recent conflict has shown us at times there were gaps in it's inventory Geran and Lancet drones have been a great asset cheap and effective it has its role, and cheaper than just using smerch, cruise missiles, iskander, Lumur missiles, etc etc.

When they withdrew the Tochka rather than upgrading it, they did so because they felt a missile with that range was becoming redundant as rocket artillery was reaching such distances. It was not an unreasonable decision. They used to have a wide range of ballistic rockets in service with a variety of ranges but the INF treaty put paid to them.

And your point saying that I have no evidence that Russia would find targets more than 250km in enemy territory that would justify a missile attack other than Iskander must be the dumbest comment you have made. As you have already stated not every target needs a iskander and smerch can't reach that far or carry a warhead heavy enough u already disproved your own argument.

Iskander hits fixed targets of known coordinates. Are you saying that 100 percent certain the Russian Army can receive information that a target 200km behind the front line is at a particular location but is moving that they can get eyes on that target and track its movements so that the nearest rocket artillery battery can be alerted and fed the target data needed to then engage that specific target with a suitable rocket with a suitable warhead and can launch that weapon and that weapon will arrive where it is supposed to be and the target will still be there and get hit...

Well if that is the case then you must have plenty of drones operating deep inside enemy territory... why not fit a larger higher flying drone with a Kornet and when they spot a target like long range artillery or a tank or BMP they can hit it straight away.

You talk about saving money but you want to burn rocket fuel to carry a 100kg plus payload 300kms plus to a target area... that is not saving money, that is pissing money away.

Belarus and North Korea do it because they can't rely on air power working for them.

Russia has air power.

If the enemy air defence is so weak even ballistic rockets can reach their targets without worries then surely drones can operate in such airspace instead... or as I said a smaller lighter faster scramjet powered Hermes missile could reach enormous distances... ramjets and scramjets are very fuel efficient... just like most jet engines when compared with rockets.

Do you seriously thing certain targets only present themselves at certain distances

But that is the advantage of Hermes... it can use about four or five different already designed and used solid fuelled booster rockets... they use them for sounding rockets and have done for more than 50 years. You can pick the booster rocket size you need to get to the range you want and not spend more money than you need.

but it's overkill as target doesn't need 800kg warhead or surrounded by dense AD systems, but it's within range of smerch but you would need to fired 3-5 times more rockets or you have the option of a single BM that can deliver the warhead size u need in a single hit and it costs cheaper than 3-5 smerchs.

Being cost effective is important, but at the end of that soldiers use Javelins that cost more than their own houses to take out a pile of logs and sticks that the enemy is shooting from. Warheads come in lots of different types and purposes... do you think a Smerch battery sits there with no rockets loaded waiting for target information to decide what type of rockets to load?

Smerch came with about 6 different warhead type options 20 years ago... the 95kg separable HE warhead, the cluster warhead fragmentation anti personel warhead with 72 anti personel cluster munitions, the sensor fused anti armour top attack munitions... 5 to a rocket...,  the cluster warhead with anti tank mines... 25 per rocket, the anti tank free fall HEAT submunitions... 646 munitions per rocket..., and the thermobaric warhead equipped rocket with 100kg of thermobaric material ready to go boom.

Knowing what your enemy has and where it is and where your artillery is located means you can guess what sort of ammo each battery might be loading up with, but you don't stop a tank charge with fragmentation submunitions and you don't stop an infantry charge with anti tank mines... or even single HE bombs.

Enemy forces hiding in buildings could be hit with HE warheads to knock the buildings down and then fragment warheads to kill anything trying to run away...

They have an extensive range of warhead types for every possible use and what they can hit and when comes down to what is loaded and ready to engage targets and where the launcher are and where the targets are.

It is not like a machine gun with belts loaded with different rounds you can swap out in 10 seconds or so.

The enemy targets might need to be hit within a time frame... perhaps an HQ has a lot of people in it so it makes sense to hit it before they leave, or an artillery vehicle that needs to be hit before it disappears into buildings or trees...

The point is that artillery is like air defence and to manage it everyone needs to be connected and list their assets and weapons and the management looks at that to decide what fires at what.

If you have a few batteries of heavy rockets then they will have a certain level of mobility and performance with certain warheads with rockets with specific speeds and specific ranges.

A vehicle with Hermes can be tiny... smaller and lighter than a Grad and with scramjet propulsion it could be the fastest missile you have that can reach enormous distances depending on the version... in fact with a scramjet engine you can use the smaller lighter cheaper solid rocket motors to just get it airborne and moving and the scramjet can get it to climb and accelerate to enormous speeds... the fuel on the scramjet being four times more powerful than solid rocket fuel because most rocket fuel is used to generate oxygen for the actual fuel to burn, while the scramjet just scoops it up from the air as it moves.

Being small and light weight means it wont be powerful enough for some targets but Iskander could simply be made in a simple ballistic rocket version of perhaps one and a half to two tons that does not evade air defences and with no jammers and decoys for enemies without decent air defence. You could take out the air defence radars with a normal Iskander and then take out the launchers and electronics vehicles with cheap simple iskanders.

Against point targets like artillery or SAM vehicles then Hermes makes the most sense... even against TELs for missiles where a big warhead is not needed to set off the missiles on the launchers or artillery shells in the self propelled gun.

Like I have always said each system has its place and role

I agree, but I think this conflict and conflicts in Syria has highlighted the fact that C4ISTAR can detect targets almost anywhere and your ability to launch something to destroy that is currently limited by the INF treaty restrictions which until recently stopped exploration into precision targeting things at extended ranges beyond normal artillery these days, and the fact that their C4ISTAR was probably not good enough to find targets that deep behind enemy lines and if you did what you normally did was plan an air strike.

What we are talking about is something that equates to an airstrike at the cost or near cost of an enlarged Grad or Smerch rocket, which is what some members appear to be suggesting these weapons from Belarus and North Korea and indeed China are... which I find difficult to believe.

First of all I think targets you want to hit with mass rocket artillery wont be 200 or 300km away, and as it gets further away the price for each rocket starts to massively increase.

There is no free lunch... if you want a big payload then you need more and more rocket fuel to reach any particular distance... to the point where it is not efficient to use rockets to deliver the payload and a low flying cruise missile would make more sense.

The cruise missile component of Iskander for example can carry quite a large warhead that at the moment is limited by the INF treaty but now that has gone they should be able to fill it with extra fuel and give it vastly better reach and with a very low flying weapon it is actually rather likely to get through most of the time.

Scramjet powered models moving much faster would be an obvious extension of the concept... and having Hermes batteries attached to the Iskander battery also makes sense... because they are both artillery reaching deep into enemy territory with precision.

when I was training at int school they use to tell us that large artillery had no place on battlefield they used 2S7 and tulpan as examples, and to a certain point they dont in the context of run of the mill artillery systems however they have their role even though it's a niche role it's a role that they are good at. Russia in my eyes has almost got every aspect, every role covered, and we know a few more systems will come, they will have ticked off every box, while the west will do as it always does and blanket covers every role with over the top highly expensive systems.

Well anyone knows that a heavy machine gun will punch through brick walls that will stop small arms fire and you can't compensate for the light assault rifle calibre just by firing more shots... it is the same with artillery, 120mm and 125mm tank gun HE shells are useful on a battlefield, as are 120mm mortars which deliver quite a punch while for some targets you need more and the 152/155mm shells really do deliver more punch at about 40-50kgs per shell, but it has to be said the 110kg shell of a 203mm shell does more damage than two or three 152/155mm shells against hard targets, and the 130kg shells of 240mm Tulip used against trenches has to be seen to be believed.

A 130kg HE bomb coming down nearly vertically does not have to land in a trench... in fact it is more effective if it punches into the ground next to a trench.... the shockwave passes through the dirt so it becomes soil suspended in air... it effectively liquifies and any bunkers or trenches collapse and bury those inside like an avalanche of snow... within seconds the shockwave is gone and all the material settles and it hardens like concrete. You can't move a centimetre... it is terrifying... if you are alone and there is no one there to dig you out you suffocate and die....

Smaller calibres can do that but over a smaller area...

In some situations where the enemy have hardened concrete buildings and basements and bunkers then having some heavy calibre guns is very useful... and more reliable than air support which is what the west expects to save them.

I remember when the Soviets were in Afghanistan and the western reporters would cry about the Soviets destroying villages with bombs because they were monsters. Roll forward a few decades and western forces moving near an afghan village come under fire and within ten minutes some HATO aircraft roll in and drop 2,000 lb bombs on the village... no mention of monsters... just of difficult to find terrorists.

Anyway I digress somewhat.

Digress as much as you please...

The west does rely on air power and they will think all this talk of needing all these artillery shells is nonsense because instead of firing 30,000 artillery shells a day they will deliver 500 air delivered bombs, but those bombs will be much more powerful and of course accurately delivered... from aircraft that wont get shot down.

I think smerch in its current form and size would most likely get up to 150-200km range max, but this might impact on warhead weight.

My understanding is that they already have 150km range rockets. The old rockets that used to reach 70km were 800kgs, while the improved rockets that reached 90km were 815kgs, and they have 220mm rockets and 122mm rockets for shorter ranges but I really don't think they need to stretch them to fire a lot more than 150km because they are intended for hitting groups of things and area targets like troops and armour that are specially trained not to bunch up even though they often do.

I think targets beyond 150km will be point targets and moving small targets... Smerch is good for up to 150km already and for more than that I would say a combination of Iskander and dumb cheap simple Iskander with external control surfaces and a short burn rocket motor... perhaps 2 tons total, but also Hermes... and something like Hermes with a scramjet motor... maybe with the LMUR seeker to find targets for itself in flight...

Some countries might not need iskander or be able to afford such, or may e you simply don't want them to have the shiny stuff. And with tochka getting old those countries who already have it might want a replacement.

The cheap Iskander would need external control surfaces so it does not need to carry enough rocket fuel to fly all the way to the target so it can essentially just fall onto the target with the control surfaces ensuring a hit.

Of course like everything else with Iran secrecy and claims are to be taken with a wee bit salt. But they can't be that far out. If Iran can produce such Russia would have no issues either.

The price per rocket would be interesting... and the total rocket weight would also be interesting too... but the core problem is that these are ballistic rockets so they follow a very predictable path... essentially the rocket lights up and lifts the rocket off the launcher and accelerates and climbs to speed and altitude and then burns out and the rocket continues on its path with small aerodynamic corrections by the navigation and targeting system...

imagine a bullet with control fins.... you aim and fire at the target and the bullet is able to turn a few degrees in flight to adjust its tragectory to hit a target if there is a crosswind or the target is moving... the fins are not used to pull barrel rolls and turn 90 degrees to go round corners... they just slightly adjust the flight path to ensure it hits the target... this makes it flight very predictable and rather easy to intercept.

And yes I understand you could save them for when the enemy air defence has been depleted and I agree that after their AD has been damaged then cheaper attack weapons can be used in huge numbers to continue the destruction.

Two stage iskander without all the expensive stuff is what they need.

I suspect they are already working on a two stage Iskander... but an expensive one and a cheaper one certainly make sense. I think the new version will be a Scramjet powered missile with a solid rocket boost stage... might even be a three stage missile where the rocket booster gets it into the air and moving and the second stage is just all fuel tank that can be dropped when it is empty and then the remaining missile powered by a scramjet can do the work.

Losses in that shipyard in Crimea proves it.

That was a repair yard for goodness sake.... if an enemy state launched decoys and ballistic missiles and stealthy cruise missiles at a western naval port and all they hit was an old sub and an old transport ship that were already in dry dock you would laugh yourself silly at how pathetic the damage was compared with the effort.

10 Storm shadow cruise missiles probably cost more than a Kilo class SSK let alone an old transport ship.

Iskander is useless.

Ukraine has Patriot PAC-3 and also IRS-T and all sorts of other western wonder air defence systems, plus they have old model BUK and also S-200 and S-300 and they have admitted they have not shot down a single Iskander or Kinzhal or Onyx or Kh-22M or Kh-32 for that matter... and most importantly they seem to be hitting their targets effectively enough.

It must be admitted that Iran has very accurate and fast ballistic missiles.

A ballistic missile gets faster with greater range, but i agree, they seem to have very accurate and useful missiles... I would not underestimate any of these countries we are talking about... China, Belarus, North Korea, and Iran... forged by the same enemy Russia currently has.

First off you said you don't believe that targets beyond 200km are fixed and would be moving around then you contradicted yourself in your smerch part saying targets beyond 150km would be either point targets or moving.

No, more like I said targets more than 200km away are fixed or they are probably not worth trying to strike because the coordination needed to synchronise an attack with a target marker on site to mark the target might lose the target before ordinance can arrive... even very fast moving ordinance.

For stationary targets at more than 200km unless it is tiny even including individual vehicles like an artillery vehicle that does not need more than a few kgs of warhead to defeat I would say Iskander or cheap Iskander would be fine... lets call them Is and CIs.

Aren't all targets either stationary or moving irrespective of range?

You also stated that I talked about a 100kg warhead with a range of 300km plus I never said or mentioned anything of the sort. I did mention a much heavier warhead then 100kg. Smerch and Hermes have their place but can't fulfill this role, and iskander is overkill.

The problem is that these systems will be used for a variety of targets and if you want cheap then one way to make a weapon cheaper is a smaller warhead because the lighter a rocket is the easier it is to make it reach further without just adding more rocket fuel.

Smerch has a 100kg warhead or thereabouts and several members complained that Smerch should be reaching 200-300km... ignoring the fact that to reach such distances most rockets either increase in calibre or get a bigger rocket to launch them or have their warhead reduced.

As I keep mentioning Smerch is not HIMARS... Smerch is an artillery rocket system that is a cheap way of blunting an attack or attacking large groups or small groups of enemy forces... like a machine gun... you don't aim at each individual target, you rely on rate of fire and spread of fire to hit targets without aiming for heads or chests.

In comparison the HIMARs is a fucked up American corruption project to turn Honest John II super expensive artillery rocket into a much smaller but still very expensive system for hitting individual targets with... it is a sniper rifle.

Each vehicle operates on its own and they had to make a truck based 6 shot model because the 12 shot Bradley tracked vehicle version was too expensive for the US and her allies to actually use.

The Soviets have been using trucks for their rocket artillery because it is more effective if it is cheap and you have more of it.

They have evolved all the fancy ammo the Americans have but rarely use it as a sniper weapon.

You talk about using a BM system to target something that requires such that isn't in a heavily defended areas as a waste of money, but yet you would rather use iskander which is even more expensive as the solution.

No. I think ballistic missiles are easy to spot and easy to shoot down because their trajectory means they are visible from enormous distances from launch to impact and even an enemy as inept as a HATO supported enemy will see it coming and could defend itself... even if at enormous cost because of the price of THAAD and PAC-3 Patriot and the amazing versions of Aster we keep hearing about.

Just being cheaper is not actually cheaper if it doesn't hit the target.

The US and the west spent enormous amounts of money on cheap recon drones and we now can see they are sitting ducks that would be totally useless in a shooting war and despite them actually being enormously expensive they are not survivable and would not be any cheaper than better equipped and better defended manned alternatives.

You say one thing in your post then later on in your post you contradict what u wrote earlier.

Maybe different posts are about different situations and conditions and you are not noticing the effects the differences make?

And your point on Pantsir and cost Pantsir serves a different purpose also Pantsir was designed for a certain role

Pantsir is a surface to air missile that was designed to be cheap and affordable but also accurate and effective... they already have Hermes based upon it that will be performing some of the roles you talk about... they could fit the system the LMUR is equipped with so it could fly deep over enemy territory (remember ballistic launch profile is high and fast so magnification improvements should allow an excellent view of the battlefield as it moves towards its target area) while passively scanning for targets in its field of view.

but if we apply your logic that iskander is far better and cheaper than using a BM to target the same target that does require something so sophisticated then why do t they just use S-400 to take out helicopters and drones after all it's better than Pantsir

No, I am actually saying the opposite of that... S-400 is big and expensive and would not be used against short range targets.... in fact the 9M96 missiles were developed to fill the gap below the S-400 missile because such a big expensive missile was not needed for shorter range engagements S-300s used to be used for.

In this example Is and S-400 are the big expensive missiles, but a cheap ballistic version of Is... we are calling CIs for Iskander would be a good idea for less well defended targets, either against a weak enemy or for use against a strong enemy after their air defence has been weakened, or to add numbers of targets to overwhelm the defences.

Even the Russians went a step further than Pantsir and designed SOSNA-R similar but cheaper to deal with less sophisticated targets.

They did and it is essentially based on Pantsir and used over shorter distances against smaller targets that don't warrant such a big missile as Pantsir.

It uses the same large solid rocket booster with long slim low drag missile design to maximise speed and performance at the cost of length and the requirement to be aimed rather than being able to be launched vertically like TOR.

There are very small Pantsir missiles designed specially to hit drones that are quarter size... there is even a missile that is a drone that can be used for recon or as a target for practice.

Grad, Uragan, Smerch, ........, iskander have their uses but that gap is where this new system comes into play.

The real question is what is in that gap... does it need a barrage of lighter payloads, or single light payloads will do, or does it need a big heavy payload from one missile at a time?

A cheap ballistic Iskander could fill the gap, but Iskander is not just a single missile, there are cruise missile models as well to approach a target with a bit less warning even if they are slower.

The point I am making and have made is do they want to waste time on mach 4 or mach 5 rockets, or is it time to look at mach 10 plus scramjet powered cruise missiles which also fly high and can be spotted but don't require sensors to detect enemy radar and incoming SAMs and wont need decoys and jammers etc... they just need to fly very fast on an indirect route with a bit of manouvering on the way... and the extreme kinetic force of impact would obliterate a lot of very solid targets without needing hundreds of kilos of payload...  meaning the missiles can be lighter and cheaper too.

Another example would be kinzhal being great for all targets but using a glide bomb is good enough especially when enemy AD is weak. It's cost effective.

That is another factor... they have quite a broad range of affordable air launched weapons that can hit targets too... does the Army actually have to fill such gaps?

Hermes and smerch has their role, yes you could extend their range and reduce payload but then you would have to fire three times as many, a d it would get to the point if you kept extending it it would become useless due to too small a payload.

Hermes is still very new and I doubt they have fully decided on what it will or wont be doing.

With precision guidance and a terminal seeker direct hits will be normal which minimises the need for an extra heavy warhead.

WWII bomber attacks on cities required several tons of bombs in each bomber with thousands of bombers to hit one factory in a city and often the raid would have to be repeated because the results showed the factory was not hit... you can have tens of thousands of tons of payload but if it misses the target it is a waste... the only way to ensure destroying that factory was to destroy the whole city with a nuclear warhead.

Even in the 70s and 80s there were laser guided bombs that could be dropped from one aircraft to hit and destroy a good part of that factory... improved precision means huge warheads are no longer required. Russia has showed it can destroy targets with HE payloads precision delivered by bombs and rockets and missiles and even drones... they really do seem to know what they are doing.

This includes testing Iranian drones and finding some they like to the point where they made them from their own components and built them in Russia in enormous numbers... does anyone doubt they would ignore long range artillery rockets used by China and North Korea and Belarus?

Of course they will test them and evaluate them compared with their experience and decide if they want to produce them for themselves, but as I keep saying the Hermes is on its way and its role is to hit point enemy targets deep behind enemy lines... it is not a barrage rocket system, there are only 6 missile tubes on the truck launch vehicle, so it is more like Iskander than Smerch, but because of that fucking annoying HIMARS things get blurred and people seem to think that American shit is normal and even quite good... despite proving to be useful as a terror weapon to kill civilians because military targets are generally too well protected most of the time.

Hermes has 57kg, even if you extended this to 200km what sort of warhead would be have even smaller

No it doesn't and here is one of those contradictions you love from me. Hermes was designed as a missile to be accelerated to high speed and to then coast to the target, so the focus was for the missile to be slim and low drag to maximise its reach. They have stated that a gliding missile is too easy to shoot down and if it manouvers to evade being shot down its  effective range is dramatically reduced and will still likely be shot down anyway.

Remember Hermes is based on a SAM which would fly to an intercept point to shoot down incoming threats so lots of manouvers to evade is the opposite of what it was used for.

Hermes, the attack missile could be redesigned to have its own onboard ramjet or even scramjet motor meaning it is not just much faster but can also manouver and evade while trying to get to its target. The 100km range Hermes already uses a much bigger solid rocket booster which is a larger calibre than Pantsir so the tube is bigger so there is plenty of room in the tube at the front to make the missile fatter and as long as you like... you could even make it a three stage missile with a solid rocket motor launching the missile and a large fuel tank which the missile can use as fuel on its flight to decent high altitude and range... the extra fuel tank can be dropped leaving the missile with full fuel and a full sized warhead to fall at hypersonic speed on its target from a great height... most SAMs would struggle to hit targets above 30km altitude and scramjets and ramjets work well at such altitudes and above.

Before you claim scramjets are expensive, they are complex to design so that they work but in terms of components they have not drive shafts not spinning blades and no disk blades or blisks. the concept is simple... air goes in and is compressed and heated and fuel is added and it comes out the rear generating thrust. There is no need for it to be expensive.

even smaller which means multiple missiles which as u said is more expensive.

Keep in mind that does not apply to everything. A vehicle on a battlefield that is 5km away could be hit by 80mm rocket... a laser guided rocket might cost $2.5K while unguided rockets might be $500 each so if you can hit that vehicle and destroy it with one $2,500 rocket,  but it takes a volley of 10 $500 rockets to make sure you hit it then the choice is either $2,500 with the laser guided rocket, $5,000 with a Kornet ATGM or $5,000 with a volley of unguided rockets then obviously the laser guided rocket makes the most sense... especially if the 10 unguided rockets would need to be launched from 3km which would put your helicopter at much more risk in terms of return fire.

But if the target is a group of enemy troops advancing across an open field and they are all spacing so that one rocket is not going to land amongst them and kill them all with one shot the a volley of unguided rockets actually is the best choice because the alternative is 4 or 5 Kornets or 4 or 5 laser guided rockets all aimed with a laser that rapidly moves as each impact happens to create a spread using accurate rockets... you can just use those 10 $500 rockets and you can loft them from 5km because that will help spread the rockets out and make the more effective at covering that field with fragments.

Against a group target $25K for ATGMs and $12,5K for laser guided rockets, and $5K for unguided rockets doing what they were intended to do all along.

With Smerch, whether the target is a staging point for armour with hundreds of top attack HEAT submunitions per rocket, or troops forming up in a forest for an attack with thousands of anti personel fragmentation submunitions per rocket... firing a large number of rockets to blanket the entire target area with death is the weapon of choice... like I keep saying... machine gun rather than sniper rifle.

So what happens if you have a target that 200km-500km that requires a warhead around 250kg-500kg? And doesn't need sophisticated decoys etc?

How do you know what air defences the enemy has there? An Is will definitely get through... is that worth the extra money... is that target dangerous and worth destroying or are your accountants going to go to HQs and discuss if targets are worth hitting or not?

A soldier will launch a Javelin at a tree if he thinks an enemy soldier is in there...

Of course I also acknowledge that cheap weapons that are effective should be made available... but what if Iskander is all you have.

When the only tool you have is a hammer then treat every problem like it is a nail... except they have a range of air launched tools as well...

They are actually spoiled for choice in terms of what they could use most of the time... and now they have drone types as well.

They are only just introducing long range cruise missiles that will include subsonic low flying cheap weapons but also high flying very very fast weapons... all of which are designed to be cheap enough to buy and use in large numbers.

Oh wait you would still use iskander in your eyes, so using this system with it's warhead of 800kg could be double to what you need and more expensive with the bells and whistles.

If the target is important then why not if that is all you have available? I agree a cheaper simpler missile makes sense that can be mass produced and used when a more capable more expensive missile is not required, but they don't have that ATM and wont have one for a while... they will be working on new longer ranged missiles now the INF treaty has untied their hands... a missile to blow the shit out of the arseholes in Brussels direction is probably more value to them in the near future than a cheap way to kill Ukrainians... because they are already doing that.

There clearly is a gap in that range, warhead weight, and something in a lower threat environment which can be cheaper and still effective. Hence the idea. Drones can't fulfill the role either do to warhead weight.

Well they will know better than anyone about targets that they didn't end up engaging because they didn't have a suitable ground launched weapon to hit it and the Air Force took too long to be ready to attack the target... though in the latter case I would say time sensitive targets like moving targets would be more of an issue than a fixed target like in ammo dump or fuel store.

And I never said Russia to buy foreign made systems for this role. I merely said that they could use foreign made systems and take the good bits and bad bits as experience to design their own.

I have no problems with them testing weapons and if they find something they like they should licence produce a version of that in Russia... they did it with Iranian drones and lets be fair they did it with Israeli drones too... Forepost-R is the Russian component model they produce these days too.

So not sure where u got the idea that there NK systems would be fully adopted by Russia.

When they find something they like they have no problems putting it into service... look at the light training planes they used from Austria and the engines for the light trainers (Yak-152) made in Germany.

But obviously these days with western sanctions local production from local parts is essential.

As I said a four rocket system with decent accuracy, speed, range, warhead weight is all. And it fills that gap.

And then the enemy starts moving things from further back... where is the limit. Hypersonic scramjet powered missiles like Hermes can be scaled from a 100km range unpowered weapon with a double warhead (60kg), through to 500km+ range hypersonic scramjet powered missile or more...

And if we take the cost per systems iskander around $3m

Where did that figure come from?

obviously the cost per rocket we will never know exactly but it's confidently safe to say that iskander is more expensive than an Iranian BM rocket which has had the accuracy speed range warhead weight but no bells and whistles.

Rocket propelled weapons were used to achieve the speed that could not be attained with ramjets alone. Scramjets offer even higher speeds than can be achieved with solid propellent rocket fuel because of the fuel weight advantages and in terms of cost new rocket propellants are not cheap.

One of the reasons the US Space Shuttle cost $600 million dollars per launch was the high cost of those solid rocket boosters it used.

And I would say in relation to the the Ukrainian and Syrian conflict that would have easily gotten away with such a cheaper system.

Such conclusions are not so valuable after the event... Russia will be looking at its options, not just artillery but also essentially drone swarms... which could be hypersonic scramjet based weapons that are ultra cheap to make, but also difficult to deal with... sort of the best of both worlds compared with Iskander.

Syrian enemies have next to no AD systems, and Ukraine has very limited AD systems.

Hey, no... lets keep some perspective... Ukraine has some of the best air defence systems HATO has, they just have not been performing to the level that the Soviet Air defence systems they operated at the start of the war have been achieving.

And those systems are on par with Russian systems either..the good stuff is reserved for Kiev.

Actually clearly they are not. They are too expensive and too vulnerable to be effective for anything but the occasional hit.

That's where kinzhal iskander come in. Everything else Geran 2, kalibr, KH-22, and you could use this idea of a system.

Ukrainian claims don't stack up... I would say they are not really hitting a lot of anything and that most things are getting through to their targets.

The handy thing about BM systems is the reaction time the enemy has, and cheaper operating costs verses aircraft as a platform

So we can agree that no matter what the actual cost of Iskander it is still cheaper than mounting an air attack and risking aircraft?

Like I have always said everything has its role, aircraft, drones, grad, smerch, Hermes, iskander etc but let's find a system suitable for the threat, task in hand, and cost-effectiveness.

I agree, but I question whether an rocket system is justified if it is not going to be used as a barrage weapon at extended ranges and is just going to be used as an attack missile from an aircraft might be used.

Anyway happy to agreed not everyone is going to agree with such.

These are very complex issues and problems and we really don't have enough concrete information to decide what is what.

I mean you can claim these Iranian missiles only cost 1/10th of an Iskander but does that include the cost of setting up production in Russia, and how many will they need to produce before the price drops down to that level?

And even if it does is there another system that could achieve the same coverage for less money?

A dumber and cheaper variant can do the job. As such it's a overcostly solution.

You mean like Rafale?

Iskander destroys the target every time, and expensive for a Russian weapon means super cheap HATO weapon that actually bloody works... half of Europe would have it in service if they didn't have a US stick up their butts.

For hard to hit target they have the better kinzhal.

They are essentially the same missile with the air launched Kinzhal reaching further and flying slightly faster.

Iskander falls inbetween and has no real use. Just get ride of them for a cheaper and mass produceable missile.

It has been repeatedly used effectively by Russia in this conflict and the enemy admits there is nothing they can do to stop them.

Hardly a failure at all.

In fact if you are looking for overhyped weapons that totally fail, I would say a certain Storm Shadow and its cousins would be serious candidates for that because they are not cheap and when 70% of them never reach their targets then you have to ask what sort of value for money they achieve...

NK News published a rather interesting material (https://www.nknews.org/pro/north-korea-converting-cargo-plane-into-military-aircraft-imagery-suggests/), including satellite images of North Korean aircraft and airfields. One of them shows an Il-76 at Pyongyang airport, undergoing some kind of modernization.

Based on its appearance, an AWACS aircraft is being created on the basis of the Il-76. It is likely that an aircraft with similar functionality could be useful both in the country’s air defense system and during missile testing, for careful and detailed monitoring of missiles in flight.

Military Informant (https://t.me/milinfolive)

Construction of warships at the North Korean shipbuilding plant in Nampo

The original was taken from a colleague imp_navigator on Kim Jong-un's visit to the shipyard in Nampo Another Amnok-class patrol ship is being completed, it seems they have replaced the artillery mount with a copy of the 76-mm OTO Melara, like the Iranian light frigates.






https://bmpd.livejournal.com/4798740.html

Firing of a North Korean coastal missile system with new Padasuri-6 anti-ship missiles





https://bmpd.livejournal.com/4802186.html

It is Bal... the ground launched Kh-35 Uran.

Looking at the intake it appears different and the solid rocket booster shows it is not the Ukrainian version they call Neptune.

Well, because it was Ukraine that supplied Kim with missile technologies, I would seriously reconsider your opinion
This KN23 missile for example is not Iskander as it is being presented, but more Oka-U that was constructed at the end of the Soviet era.
Sure, it was developed into Iskander in Russia, but the other was not provided to the Koreans. Oka was.

This is rooted in Ch-35, a Soviet development Ukrs had on their hands and developed into Neptune.
It is simply forbidden to remember that Ukraine was breaking the UN embargo on missile technology for decades and would do everything for money. All that shit must be blamed on Russkie now.
Just like in one of the latest movies with Stanton, when "Ukrainian mafia" was a cause of issues and the film had to be delayed, revoiced and "Ukrainian" was changed to "Russian".
Crazy shit in crazy times