S-350 "Vityaz" SAM System

You are wrong. On the gorshkov, there is no enough deapth to allow bigger, or should I say longer, missile inside te redut VLS. That's why UKSK are mounted higher on the deck and closer to mid-ship where there is more deapth inside the ship.

Since the begining they knew very well the redut launcher would be limited to smaller missiles only.

That will also be a huge issue for implementing UKSK-M as it will need to carry the longest missiles in their inventory so they will be very limited to where they can place it on the ships. Especially for smaller frigates and corvettes. Uksk and redut had more flexibility as the second one is smaller and could go where uksk couldn't.

You are not understanding what I am saying.

The Redut system is a SAM launcher for S-350 and S-400 missiles and it is the same across the different sized ships.

The only reason the hatch covers for them are 1m square is so that the old Rif and Rif-M and therefore also the new big missiles of S-400 with 250km and 400km flight range could be loaded in to them.

On smaller boats they might not have the depth to load those big missiles, so what are they going to do?

Create a special Redut launcher that only takes small missiles that is totally different from the Redut fitted to bigger vessels that is not compatible in any way shape or form, or are they going to develop a shallow depth Redut that is otherwise the same as the ones of the bigger vessels.

I would suggest the latter makes the most sense... the current long range SAMs for the Russian Navy at the moment is the Rif and Rif-M which are very old model S-300PMU missiles and currently the 9M96 in the two sizes and the 9M100 missiles are so far the only missiles they have for Redut. They are expanding that to include the new S-400 large missiles with a 250km and 400km range but I rather doubt they would fit them to anything smaller than a Frigate at best simply because a ship that is smaller wont have the air search radar range to detect targets at such distances.

But if they are not going to put big missiles on small ships why standardise the tubes to the big missiles... and the key word there is standardise.

The Redut launchers on smaller boats might never carry the big SAMs because they might not fit them that deep in the hull... 9M96 missiles are about 4.8m long while S-300 and the big S-400 missiles are about 7.5m long.

The point is that the redut launcher is designed to fit on all their new and upgraded ships and to take their entire range of new missiles... and if the 7.5m long S-300 Rif missiles wont fit then the UKSK-M system wont fit either because it will need to carry rather bigger cruise and ballistic missiles as well as likely the S-500 system as well.

So if the smaller boats have Redut then why have a 1 square metre launch area under each hatch when 9M96 missiles fit 0.47m tubes, and for that matter the other missile they carry... the 9M100 has been confirmed to fit four into each 0.47m 9M96 tube.

If the 9M100 fits four to a 9M96 tube, then why not put four 9M96 tubes in each Redut tube because the space is there that is why the 9M96 was designed to be the size it is... so each launch space on a land based S-300 or S-400 could carry four of the smaller missiles.

What eventually happened is that they decided to go for a whole separate system called S-350 but that does not change the size and shaping design of these missiles.

A land based 12 tube launcher on each S-350 TEL can hold 12 9M96 missiles because the tubes are 0.47m across and are 9M96 launch tubes.

The Redut sea based vertical launch system is designed to carry Rif and replacement missiles at sea... the land based S-300 is called V for the Army, P for the Air Force, and the sea based system is called F, so the Redut system is designed to carry the S-300F and the S-350F and the S-400F... its main failing will probably be that it wont be able to fit the S-500F, so the UKSK-M will be needed.

But the UKSK-M would make no sense if it can only carry one missile per tube so even it will likely carry 4 9M96 missiles or 16 9M100 missiles per tube... due to its length perhaps being 10-12 metres it might even allow stacking of missiles.

That will also be a huge issue for implementing UKSK-M as it will need to carry the longest missiles in their inventory so they will be very limited to where they can place it on the ships. Especially for smaller frigates and corvettes. Uksk and redut had more flexibility as the second one is smaller and could go where uksk couldn't.

Without multi missile packing a UKSK-M launch tube makes no sense, and neither does the redut.

If you think for a second that the Redut system on a small ship does not have the depth for larger missiles, but the tube and hatch size is dictated by the size of the biggest missile it can potentially take, which on larger vessels would be the S-400 for the moment but could be bigger with the S-500, then you either throw standardisation out the door and split the Redut tubes by a quarter to make each hatch a single hatch for a 0.47m square S-350 9M96 and redesign it with four times more hatches and hatch mechanisms, or you leave it the way it is and confuse the western experts who will assume the tube capacity is a quarter of what it will actually normally carry and a further quarter less that it actually could carry (with 9M100 missiles).

The vast majority of air defence needs can be met with the Redut system with 5-15km range 9M100 missiles for CIWS defence, and with 60km and 150km 9M96 missiles. Very occasionally a target will present itself further away and they have said they have two other missiles developed for the Redut (which is a naval system that could carry 1m square missile tubes unlike the land based S-350 which has 9M96 diameter tubes) and they mentioned those bigger missiles had a range of 250km and 400km... now as the S-500 has a range of 600km this then sounds like the standard and long range S-400 big missiles... which suggests Redut can carry the big missiles.

It would be inefficient to design it for big missiles but only load small missiles in it... especially one 0.47m square missiles in a 1 sq metre tube under a 1 sq metre hatch.

For small boats it wont matter much they can have shallow Redut that can only carry the smaller 9M96 and 9M100 missiles, but for really big vessels they will want all UKSK-M launchers so they can have big SAMs including S-500... but they will still want small SAMs too.

The naval SAM system is pretty much unified with the land based systems...

https://sputniknews.com/military/201704241052925186-air-defense-systems/

And now that they are making bigger ships the needs of the Poliment-Redut move from protecting the ship the missiles are on (ie 9M100 CIWS and 9M96 60km and 150km range missiles) to much longer ranged missiles to protect the group of surface ships operating together based on S-400 and S-500.

Now do you think they will develop a new Poliment-Redut system for these bigger missiles or will they simply use the full capacity of space underneath each existing Redut hatch and just mount them on bigger ships with more depth for longer missiles?

https://sputniknews.com/military/201703121051499457-russia-advanced-guided-missile/

I mean I could be making all this stuff up because clearly I was wrong about their wanting multirole modular vessels... I mean taking the extra time to get a complicated multi function system like the Gorshkov Frigate right to then basically scale it up to make it a destroyer at 7K ton and a cruiser at 20K ton was probably just a lucky guess right?

If you understand the terms multi role, universal cruise missile launcher (UKSK), and modular, and what such things actually mean to a design and warship family of vessels then it is pretty obvious.

Looking forward to the same collective western revelation when more types of armata appear rather than just the tank they think it is.

Uksk-m is suppose to be able to hold all the missiles.

UKSK-M wont fit on frigates or Corvettes unless you put submarine sails on them and mount the UKSK-M launcher in the sail like old Golf class SSBKs did...

Equally a Redut system only able to fit 9M96 sized missiles and smaller is fine for small ships that only need to worry about defending themselves.

The same system can be fitted to much bigger vessels to allow bigger missiles to be fitted to protect the group of ships the larger ship is operating with.

Most of the time 150km is plenty of range for smaller ships... only bigger ships would carry radar or aircraft with the radar range to use 400km range SAMs anyway.

Of course keep in mind that a Gorshkov frigate could operate a Ka-52K with an AESA nose mounted radar that could detect targets several hundreds of kms away... especially an MPA like a Poseidon, that could be shot down at extended ranges by a ship based SAM...

In English:

https://tass.com/defense/1102327

True, but their priority will be to mass produce it to replace all the old model S-300 systems still around the place... and then they will likely start replacing the upgraded PMU1 and PMU2 models too I suspect.

4 to 8 TEL's per division. Not very much when the original plan was for 38 divisions.

Also keep in mind that this is the Aerospace forces order... they will likely just be replacing all their S-300 batteries which probably are not that many because they are a well funded branch of the Russian military.

The Russian Air Force will likely want some too and they will likely have rather more units with S-300s to be replaced, and of course the Russian Navy will want large numbers of missiles for their new and upgraded ships too.

The Russian Army uses BUK M3 so it probably wont buy any but other organisations might buy some like Strategic Rocket forces to defend silos and mobile protection for truck mounted ICBMs and other important strategic locations.

After the obsolete S-300s are replaced then they will likely start to order systems to fill other gaps in capability.

As pointed out these missiles are optimised for cruise missile interception and to be clear the old model S-300s these weapons are replacing were not that great against such threats... effective range for aircraft being 75-90km depending on the model of S-300, these missiles were first in service in the late 1970s and early 80s... so it is well worth replacing them.

Boosting defences in other areas can be the next focus which should lead to more orders and of course these missiles can also be fielded with S-400 batteries so in actual fact the number of S-350 batteries being bought is not an accurate indicator of the number of missiles they will have on hand... we have seen photos of S-400 batteries with quad launchers taking the place of a tube on an S-400 launcher so adding x number of S-350 batteries is not the whole story... right now an S-350 launcher can carry up to 12 missiles of the 9M96 type, but the S-400 quad missile launcher could in theory carry 16... effectively making an S-400 launcher into a S-350 launcher with room for either another four missiles or 16 missiles if you go for 9M100 missiles instead, or a single large 250km or 400km range large S-400 missile per launcher...

Russian Aerospace Forces is the renamed Russian Air Force

I find it all confusing... before they had the AF split into bits like transport and strategic long range aviation, naval aviation, frontal aviation and the PVO air defence forces, but then PVO were part of but also separate from the Air Force, but then they merged the space forces and the air force so does that mean it is all now one force or does it now have an extra space related division, or has the space component joined the PVO...

GarryB wrote:

Russian Aerospace Forces is the renamed Russian Air Force

I find it all confusing... before they had the AF split into bits like transport and strategic long range aviation, naval aviation, frontal aviation and the PVO air defence forces, but then PVO were part of but also separate from the Air Force, but then they merged the space forces and the air force so does that mean it is all now one force or does it now have an extra space related division, or has the space component joined the PVO...

Russian Aerospace Forces comprises 3 commands:

- Air Force
- Air Defense
- Space