[Official] 'Peter The Great' News Thread:

You can see from the hatches of the Rif system the spacing... from top to bottom the rotary launcher is above the line of the top row of hatches and also above the second row of hatches creating the space between the top two rows, and then the bottom row of launch hatches has the rotary launchers below the line of the hatches.

That means if you rip that all out the entire front internal space could carry rather more than 96 missiles because with all those rotary launchers there is a lot of empty unused and unusable space. A VLS like UKSK-M filled with SAMs could carry an enormous number of actual missiles in that volume of space... but they are clearly not ready yet.

Well can pine on about how many extra missiles we can squeeze in, but the honest truth is that it is about quality as well as quantity.... and 80 Zircons, or 40 Zircons and 20 anti sub missiles and 20 land attack Kalibres will be plenty for most missions... would be nice to see them take off those 130mm guns and put on a single 152mm twin barrel gun mount....

S-300F from "down under".

I wonder if Peter will be modernized the same way to carry all those armaments.

Will likely depend on how this one works out... they might decide it is a success and a cheap way to get a useful large ship into operation, or they might end up thinking it is a waste and new ships are what they need...

I would think this will be a useful ship upgrade and replacing most of the old stuff with new stuff should make it more flexible and capable without costing too much.

Even if it is terrible and they decide it has been ruined with the upgrade, brand new cruisers wont be laid down till after 2025 at the very earliest and wont hit the water till at the very earliest 2032, so the two Kirov class ships and the four odd Slava class ships will have to be good enough for at least 10-15 years as the centres of surface action groups... and they should be fine... Russia might want to visit places but I don't see them trying to land armour up the Thames river any time soon...

It is a combined rocket ramjet powered missile... as you can see the nose mounted fairing is ejected immediately, but the solid rocket motor would burn for a bit longer than that... essentially when the solid rocket motor has burned out the empty space left behind becomes the air flow tube for the ramjet, so air from the nose mounted intake will flow through the weapon with the tube getting narrower to compress the air and then fuel is added and ignited... no propeller shafts or turbine blades... essentially an air breathing rocket motor.

Onyx does the same but is of a much more modern design and is closer to 3 tons that the 7.5 tons this missile weighs.

Zircon has a much more sophisticated fuel burning mechanism that allows the fuel to be burned at supersonic speed so the air intake does not need to narrow at high speed to reduce the amount of air going in to the engine to slow it to subsonic speeds for combustion... which means vastly more thrust at high speeds.

They have been out of production for quite some time, which I suspect is a partial driver for upgrading them to take the newer smaller lighter faster longer ranged missiles...

The Vulcans the Slava class ships carry continued production longer than the Granit AFAIK, which are rather similar, so they likely have a few of both, but I suspect they will be using them up in exercises and for testing air defence systems on land and at sea...

Just rereading this thread I noticed the discussion about hot launch and cold launch.

To be clear they are not literal a cold launch can involve flames.

Cold launch means the missile or weapon being launched is ejected without firing its main propulsion or engine yet, so S-300 missiles and TOR missiles get thrown up into the air before they light up their rocket motors and accelerate away and are cold launch. Pantsir on the other hand is hot launch as its main solid rocket booster is ignited to launch the missile out of the tube towards the target.

However sometimes the charge or propulsion system used to eject the weapon and throw it clear of the launcher uses an explosive charge that creates fire and smoke and looks hot... the defining feature is usually to check the end of the missile as it leaves the tube... if it is burning then it is a hot launch, if it is not then it is a cold launch.

Several cases of missiles using cold launch with failures have been filmed... and I have seen at least one video of an S-300 missile being launched into the air by the cold launch system and the S-300s rocket motor failing to fire so it just falls back down onto the launcher. It did not explode or burn BTW.

I have seen a Pantsir missile explode violently just after launch... it was 10-20m away from the launch tube and the solid rocket booster exploded spectacularly... it was quite a sight...

The point is that cold launch reduces the damage done to the launch tube and reduces the chance of the weapon exploding inside the launch tube or inside the ship... which is a good thing.

Often rocket motors that explode will explode on startup or near to start up... a hot launched S-300 that fails and perhaps explodes on launching would detonate like a bomb inside a ship... a cold launched missile that falls back on the deck is much less of a danger... the hatches will protect the other missiles and on deck fire suppression systems should minimise any damage.

They did have a serious fire incident with an SS-N-20 SLBM which was dropped while loading... it broke open and the solid rocket fuel ignited on contact with the sea water. The rubber coating of the sub was badly damaged and that sub was known as red october after the incident.

Liquid fuels and solid fuels are very volatile, though liquid fuels get the bad rap most of the time... but while accidents can happen at any time being able to load an empty missile into a silo and then fill it with fuel in place makes things easier and safer, though most liquid fuelled missiles use storable liquid propellent that remains in the missile all the time.

With the cold launch you are not sure that the main engine will start.

Not true.

Generally you test the missiles electronics, batteries and systems before you cold launch it... if there is a fault that might prevent the main engine from firing it will be detected and the launch process wont start.

One risk of engine start is catastrophic failure and main engine detonation... with a hot launch that happens inside the launch container inside the ship which results in a serious explosion and damage and fire. A main engine failure on cold launch results in a large explosion above the launcher where the material spreads over a wide area and is much less damaging to the vessel itself... or in the case of an S-300 failure the missile will just fall back down to the deck.

Even 2 second late the missile will start falling and turn on itself and probably go in the wrong direction when the engine starts leading to hit the ground.

Have never seen that happen.

With hot launch you can test the engine and start the launch. If it fails you just stop it.

With a hot launch if it fails it wont launch, or it explodes in the tube... with solid propellent rockets you can't stop it once it is started.

One of the problems with the huge solid rocket boosters on the US Space Shuttle is once they are running you can't shut them down.

Missiles have now in-build test equipepent but with the cold launch you have to have your main engine working as expected or you loose it.

In hot launch you can save the missile if the engine doesn't work but you probably have a shorter service life for your launcher.

Cold or hot launch failures you dispose of the missile... you don't pick it up and put it back in the bottle and light the fuse again.

Explosion is a catastrophic failure. You can't do anything.

I have seen video of two failed S-300 launches... this one and another one where the missile did not explode and burn.

At the end of the day shit happens and these things are all effectively bombs... ships have fire suppression systems and for land based launchers there is no one in the vehicle cabin for a reason...