M270 vs Smerch | ATCAMS vs Iskander

The American answer to the Iskander

The American Army is very worried that the opponents riveted (and continue to rivet) many, many cruise and ballistic missiles, primarily operational-tactical assignments (well, of course, for SSC-8 too).

They say that they can shoot down everything, only the anti-missiles are more expensive and will end sooner than the ground-ground from the enemy.
Moreover, they say that one must seriously puzzle who will answer for both the interception and the retaliatory strikes (including the FBD) -the land-keepers or the air force.

In the meantime, the production of long-range high-precision missiles for its MLRS is being pumped (by 2020 it is promised to increase from current 6,000 to 10,000 per year), and most importantly, they loaded Raytheron with $ 116.4 million to develop Long-Range High-Precision Fire Means (Long Range Precision Fires, LRPF).

The DeepStrike project assumes a system with two missiles (although, judging by the infographics, there may be an option with four), earth-land with a range of up to 499 km (just so, we all believe ) capable of hitting targets with the utmost precision.

Fire tests are planned by the end of 2019.



Many people ask about ATACMS, I will say why this system is not enough:
A) range up to 300 km;
B) number, incl. Directly on the starting;
C) cost - there was even an episode with the termination of production for financial reasons.

http://bmpd.livejournal.com/2673687.html

M270 is a jack of all trades and master of none. ATACMS is inferior to Iskander, and as rocket artillery its inferior to Tornado-S. When you can't make stuff which borrows best from both worlds just don't make it.

The problem with Russia I think is that we think too much about NATO. For instance, Tornado-S outguns any western artillery and we are fine about it. Meanwhile, there are Chinese systems which already has range of up to 300-400 km and we do not make anything to surpass them. I think we should buy Polonez from Belarus at least.

Ives wrote:The problem with Russia I think is that we think too much about NATO. For instance, Tornado-S outguns any western artillery and we are fine about it. Meanwhile, there are Chinese systems which already has range of up to 300-400 km and we do not make anything to surpass them. I think we should buy Polonez from Belarus at least.

Long range is an advantage when you know where to fire. When you don't you just use multi million missile against dust and rocks.

Russian buk and s-300V4 system that protect ground forces can deal with any chinese or nato tactical missile right now. And pantsir and tor will take care of any recon drone trying to find them. Su35 and su-57 will take care of any other flying object bigger than that.

Cheap simple artillery rockets are targets than any SAM system that has been designed to shoot down ballistic targets could easily deal with... PAC-3 and THAAD could easily deal with such threats.... that is in fact what they are for.

In terms of Russian SAMs pretty much all of them except MANPADS could engage such ballistic weapons and they have greater numbers than would be needed to deal with that problem.

From an economic perspective and a military perspective there is no free lunch. Having artillery rockets with a range of 300-400km means they will need a very large and very powerful rocket motor and it will necessarily reduce the payload performance of the weapon.

The warhead is a fraction of the weight of the rocket, so for example a Smerch rocket weighs 815kgs with a range of 90km and a warhead weight of 100kgs means a warhead fraction of about 10% or so.

To get it to 300km it is going to need to be much heavier... perhaps 1,6 tons, and with a lighter warhead... perhaps 70kgs, so while it can reach much further it will be less effective against anything it manages to hit... it will also cost significantly more to make in terms of materials and will be more difficult and expensive to move around and to buy.

The obvious question is how good is your C4IR and how often would you detect targets more than 100km away and how often would you concentrate fire on such targets while ignoring targets much closer to you and your forces?

A group of enemy armour 400km away would be better attacked using two Iskanders with cluster munition warheads than trying to launch ballistic rockets.... the manouvering Iskanders will be much more likely to get to the target area, and to be honest most artillery batteries wont be looking for targets that far away anyway so the extra rocket fuel in each rocket will actually make the rockets less accurate because rocket artillery is fixed, so launching to max range means angling them at about 45 degrees to reach max range (actually a slightly higher angle is often better because rockets travel more efficiently in the thin cold high altitude air so lofting them higher means they end up moving faster and further)... the point is that with 400km range rockets if the target is 30km away in a valley between two hills you might have to go for very high elevations and very long flight times up and down which of course increases the amount of flight time in cross winds and reduces accuracy.

A gun has the same problem... the traditional solution is reducing the propellent with a reduced propellent load using a Howitzer so the round does not go up so high and comes down on target after a much shorter flight path making it rather more accurate...

In terms of rockets a lot of the time you can make them more effective by slightly reducing range and increasing the warhead size...

Anything more than enough is a waste.

To get it to 300km it is going to need to be much heavier... perhaps 1,6 tons, and with a lighter warhead... perhaps 70kgs, so while it can reach much further it will be less effective against anything it manages to hit... it will also cost significantly more to make in terms of materials and will be more difficult and expensive to move around and to buy.

Your info is kinda outdated... Read about new Polonez rocket with Google translate here for instance:

https://topwar.ru/116318-perspektivnaya-raketa-m20-dlya-kompleksa-polonez-belarus-kitay.html

Jerina 1 400mm is rocket with correctable trajectory with warhead weight of 200 kg. Warhead is HE/fragmented with possible in future development thermobaric warhead would be on offer. Rocket weight is about 1550 kg and two rocket in one module weight 4200 kg. Rocket uses modern composite fuel. It is placed in container module made of steel

This is the rocket from Serbian Sumadija MLRS. It can carry 4 of them with max range of 285km.

Pretty good system. But such systel have no use for Russia. They need missiles with 1500-2000 km range to threaten big NATO or Chinese bases.

Iran also for exemple has not a lot of use for such system even if they have a lot of short range missiles/rockets. Their main enemy are US in Saydi arabi and UAE. So they also need plenty of 1000-2000km range class missiles.


However smaller countries that have tensions with other smaller neighbour countries would be safer with such weapons. For exemple this Serbian system in the hands of Egypt or Syria would cover most of Israeli air bases, fuel depot, army storage or navy in port. With 100 launchers sthat's 400 ready to fire rockets each filled with 200kg warheads. Not bad.

Your info is kinda outdated... Read about new Polonez rocket with Google translate here for instance:

From the page you linked:

The missile has a length of slightly less than 8 m and a launch weight of about 4 tons Used high-explosive warhead with a mass of 560 kg. firing Range of the missile is determined by the M20 280 km Used on-Board control system and target-seeking type which Belarusian enterprises has not yet been revealed.

An 8m long 4 ton missile with a 560kg payload and a range of 280km is not a Smerch equivalent... it is an Iskander equivalent... but with half the range.

The article hints at a 500km range, but that could not be exported due to international weapons agreements.

Also the weapon uses GPS guidance, which is problematic... the only countries that would not care about this are the ones that are sure the US would not turn off GPS in places where they might need to use it... which means a very close US ally... who would never buy a weapon made by Belarus and China in the first place.

For every other customer this means it is nice on paper but you would be better off with Iskander because Russia is less likely to turn off GLONASS when you are defending yourself...

Now everybody using GPS in tgeir hardware add Glonass. Even the american just ordered some watch with gloanass, chinese GPS and european Galileo to have a back up navigation tool for their pilot in case GPS is jammed.

Good to have backups, but not good to rely on the good will of America...

Plenty of Russian soldiers had civilian signal GPS hand held devices, but the US turned off civilian GPS in the region for the period of the conflict rendering them useless... having a missile system that relied presumably on the civilian GPS signal is short sighted and bad practise... it wont work when you need it.

flamming_python wrote:

Ives wrote:The problem with Russia I think is that we think too much about NATO. For instance, Tornado-S outguns any western artillery and we are fine about it. Meanwhile, there are Chinese systems which already has range of up to 300-400 km and we do not make anything to surpass them. I think we should buy Polonez from Belarus at least.

Why?

Russia has the hardware that it needs for its requirements and doctrine

For that matter so does the US

Very true. Russia is one of the leading countries when it comes to artillery and rocketry in a whole. Chinese needs to get know-how from ex Soviet countries to this day. Russian army has all the right equipment to contest China. In every department. Also, China is trade partner and not a rival, why would they fight Russia for low quality lands that wouldn't feed chinese or provide them with resources.

It is a bit like rifles... I remember in the 80s when the SA80 British rifle was introduced but had not been used in combat yet, so their experience is on the shooting range and in exercises... a British magazine called it the best rifle in the world and talked about its effectiveness out to 600m...

Of course after some experience in real combat and they realise that while you might hit a stationary paper target at 600m or even 800m with an M16 with a scope, the effect on target is pathetic except on paper targets.

The 5.56mm isn't reliably lethal enough to such ranges and at such ranges a hit is what you are trying for and if you get one it will be random as to the location where the bullet hits... which makes it a very unreliable weapon for kills.

In real combat most engagements are 100m or less... most soldiers can't hit real targets at more than 75m most of the time with iron sights in normal combat situations, but they are talking about accuracy to 600m.

Russians talk about accuracy to about 300m which is much more reasonable and sensible... the AK-47 has a point blank setting of 300m... basically if you zero the rifle to 300m and aim centre chest you will hit an enemy soldier whether they are 10m away you will hit the chest... at 150m away you will hit them in the face because of the trajectory of the bullet, and of course at 300m you will hit in the centre of the chest or about 350m away you will probably hit them just below their belt buckle.

It means you don't need to worry about the distance to the target... just aim and shoot... of course you can modify it so if they are clearly a long way away you might aim for their head so bullet drop might give you a chest or gut hit...

Anyway... the Chinese introducing an assault rifle with a 2km range is no reason for Russia to start doing the same. Sniper rifles with that range are fine... and by all means make them (Russias long range snipers use Iskander which has accuracy instead of volume of fire). Having assault rifles fire at targets 2km away makes them bigger and heavier and unlikely to be used effectively at shorter ranges because of recoil and also cost per round.

Introducing assault rifles with a 2km range means you will need powerful telescopic sights for them which will be expensive... the ammo will need to be high quality to get the accuracy needed to be effective at that range... but combat experience shows most targets are detected at shorter ranges and to find targets at such ranges means enormous improvements in C4IR which will also be expensive and not necessarily effective... you might have drones that can find targets 2km away but fitting those drones with hand grenades that can be released on target means you don't need to engage them with your rifles anyway... especially if the targets you find are not line of sight to any of your soldiers with these long range rifles....

What I am talking about is point blank range.

Unfortunately it is generally believed that point blank range means pushing your pistol muzzle into the face of the target and pulling the trigger without needing to aim... ie it has come to mean shooting from so close you can't miss and therefore have no need to aim properly.

In actual fact that is the correct meaning except it refers to bullet trajectory.

The point blank range for the AK bullet is about 320m or something which means if you zero the rifle to that range and aim centre of target at no distance from the muzzle out to 320m will the bullet miss the target by going over their head.

If you zeroed your AK and set the iron sight to 1,000m you will be firing up into the air to lob the round up so that when it slows down and falls by the time it has travelled 1,000m it will fall back down to hit the target. The point is that at 200m away from the rifle the bullet might be 10 or 15 metres up in the air so you will only be killing someone in your line of sight perhaps between 950m and 1,020m.

Using the trajectory of the round you can zero the rifle and set the iron sights to 300m and therefore any human standing target that appears between 0m and about 350m you can place the front iron sight on their centre chest and get a hit somewhere on them without thinking how far away they are or adjusting the sights or doing any calculations... once you hit them with a round you can follow up with more hits to ensure the kill and then move on to the next target.

With the smaller lighter 5.45mm round the point blank range is about 450m or so which means targets within about 450m should be hittable with a 400m iron sight setting without adjustment or calculation.

From memory, the killing range of the AK-74 (the point at which the bullet technically still has enough energy to kill) is something like 1350m, although the effective range is a lot lower.

The energy of a bullet can be calculated quite accurately and drops off at a known rate, but accuracy generally falls off much faster and is much more critical in getting a kill...

A .22 calibre pistol bullet can kill when directed through the brain, while a 50 cal can remove your fingertip but otherwise leave you unharmed... unless you happened to be picking your nose at the time of course...

Officially the effective range of the 223 bullet from an M4 rifle or an FN Minimi with the short commando barrel they liked to use in Afghanistan was 200m.

Their other 223 calibre rifles were not much better despite longer barrel lengths.

They decided that a larger calibre rifle was needed in each platoon... you know... like the Soviets put SVD rifles in platoons over 60 years ago did...

Also after decades of criticising the Hind for moving all the time... often claiming because it was underpowered and couldn't hover properly, they now instruct their Apache crews to fly around more because a hovering helicopter is horribly vulnerable... even an RPG-7 will take it out and hovering behind a tree wont protect you from machine gun fire going through the branches...

Interesting posts.

By the way, Hind can hover and this was seen done by Ukrainians when they were using them as AT platforms. The problem is that it can choke on munition fumes. I think it's similiar to what early AH-1 experienced.

Also, it's not safe to hover if enemy is close and gun runs in figure similiar to 8s, like IL-2s were doing in WW2, proved to be very efficient even if risky.

Mi-28, KA-52 do hover alot and it seems Russians in Syria do hovering or slow creeping when engaging targets. But then again they engage targets at great distances and they have clear thermal vision of surroundings.

Yes, of course the Hind can hover... there was a big explanation about how the big wing of the Hind reduces lift in the hover making it inefficient... which is of course total hogwash... the fact of the matter is that the large wing of the Hind offloads the main rotor disk and makes flight are reasonable speeds much more efficient.

In Afghanistan the Hind didn't have much more than fair weather daylight only optics and pretty limited at that, so it was operated more like an Il-2 than something like a western helicopter like the Cobra or Apache.

Of course both helicopters suffer from weapon exhaust fumes ingestion in the hover so it is a bit of a catch 22.

For those not familiar with the problem... attack helos these days have jet engines so these engines suck in fresh oxygen rich air and fuel is added and burned to generate rotational energy that is directed through gearboxes and transmissions and drive shafts to the main and tail rotor... the problem is that if you are hovering and launching lots of unguided rockets... like attack helos often do... those exhaust fumes go in the engine intake and the fuel wont burn properly because of a lack of oxygen so you get a sudden loss of power which is of course not good when you are hovering only a few metres above the ground.

The Yak-141 had the same problem with its own engines... where hot oxygen depleted air went in the engine intake and stalled it or them...

Forward flight provides oxygen rich air for the engines and allows more energy to recover if the engines lose a bit of power... it also makes the aircraft a more difficult target for ground fire.