Tu-22M3: News

KEPD 350 Taurus, Storm Shadow,SCALP, Delilah, SOM cruise missile etc. A lot of precise equipment with a range of several hundred kilometers.

Russia has air defence missiles with effective ranges of 400km at the moment, and soon 600km with the S-500, therefore in terms of stand off range you would need the weapons to have standoff ranges of these distances at the minimum to reach the actual targets and not just penetrate the borders of Russian airspace...

Russian equivalents really don't have similar problems...

I knew you could do that Very Happy that's why I said built from scratch, KH-50 has a flattened profile, KH-55SM doesn't, I think that even if they are the same length TU-22M3M couldn't launch kh-55SM, obviously KH-50 has a stealth profile that KH -55SM doesn't have, and in subsonic cruise missiles that's important.

The Kh-50 is not supposed to be a strategic cruise missile.... it is not supposed to be carried on strategic missions... it is supposed to be the sort of missile they would fire at Syria or other similar conventional attacks from aircraft like the Backfire, but also the Blackjack and Bear on such non strategic missions.

The Kh-59MKK2 was not really designed from scratch... it just has a reprofiled shell for internal carriage... they could easily do that with the Kh-555 if all they wanted was a stealthy weapon.

I really really doubt that...the export version has a range of 290 km...from Tass: Russia to develop cruise missiles capable of striking targets at 1,000km range
The missiles will be developed before 2020

Have you not followed the family history of the weapon?

The original Kh-59 was a rocket powered weapon with a 150kg warhead and a range of about 40km and an all up weight of about 750kgs.

It had inertial flight to the target area and then TV command guidance for terminal attack.

This was replaced by the upgraded Kh-59M which added a complicated propulsion system... instead of a solid rocket booster and a rocket sustainer, it has a solid rocket booster to rapidly accelerate the missile to out in front of the aircraft so it can be captured by the guidance pod and then a turbojet engine sustainer starts up and powers it to 115km range... limited by the range of the datalink... the warhead is doubled but the all up weight of the weapon goes up to about 930kgs.

The Kh-59MK has the MMW radar seeker of the Kh-35 fitted and is an anti ship missile and because it does not use a datalink its flight range is not restricted to 115km. Its range of course is restricted by the size of the target... a small boat it has a range of about 145km, while a large boat (5,000 sq metres) it has a range of about 285km. The Kh-59MK doesn't need the solid rocket booster to launch it rapidly ahead of the aircraft to gather with a datalink pod so the solid rocket booster is replaced with more fuel for the turbofan engine extending the range.

The point is that the Kh-59MK has a body diameter of about 38cm, while the Kh-59MKK2 is a square 40cm by 40cm... so there is more room for fuel.

I think KH-59MK2 is the 1000km range, Mindstorm said that the former concedes to JASSM-ER, that's probably, But Jassm-er has a lot more than over 925km.

But the Kh-59MKK2 is wider than the older models it is also shorter... it is only 4.2m long while the Kh-59MK is about 5.6m long, so I would think even guessing at a range of 500km for the Kh-59MKK2 is already being rather generous.

I would suspect if they have a family of weapons with ranges of 200km 400km, 600km, and 1,000km, that they will likely be either a scaled group of missiles... all the same but of different sizes and weights of fuel, or perhaps a single size that has a different mix of warhead and fuel weight, so the 200km missile might be with a 1 ton warhead and the rest fuel, while the 400km range missile might have a 750kg warhead and the rest fuel, while the 600km range missile might have a 400kg warhead, and the 1,000km range missile might have a 200kg warhead perhaps... or they might all have scaled weights and sizes so the 1,000km range weapon might be carried by Blackjacks and Bears and possibly the Su-34, while the Tu-22M3 might carry the 600km range models, and the Su-35 and MiG-35 and Su-57 might carry the 200km and 400km models....

But I don't think it has, the stealth shape will reduce the range, the diameter looks small than KH-101, it all depends on the weight of the warhead, but I won't be surprised if it has more than 3000km range with a conventional warhead.

A stealthy shape is generally very low drag with all its sharp angles so I really don't think it would reduce range on its own. Nuclear warheads are much more compact and lighter than conventional warheads... HE is not very dense so to carry 200kgs means it takes up a lot of space. The Kh-101 conventional missile is supposed to have a 400kg warhead and 4,500km range, while the Kh-102 with a nuclear warhead will have a range of 5,000km or more depending on the flight profile... A strategic missile can often fly at medium to high altitude without using high throttle settings for hours to greatly extending flight range...

A new Russian air-launched cruise missile 6 mt long, a completely new design engine, build with different materials that the Kh-55 family, the best solid fuel available, and it has 1500km range

If it is subsonic then high energy fuel does not help unless you can get it to super cruise at supersonic speed... the Kh-55SM used large saddle fuel tanks to get a flight range of 3,000km, and the motor it used wasn't a bad motor... You add range by adding fuel, which adds weight... you can't double a fighter jets flight range by adding external fuel tanks.... the extra weight and drag means the extra fuel doens't directly add to flight range... the extra fuel reduces fuel efficiency and increases drag and reduces thrust to weight ratio and slows you down.

The easiest solution is to make the missile longer which allows a serious increase in weight without a huge increase in drag because you have the same cross section. Larger heavier missiles need bigger wings which means higher drag too...

It will, KH-50 and GZUR were built especially for the Backfire.

Well it would make more sense to make them short enough to be carried internally on the Backfire... so either make the missiles less than 5m long or make the Backfire internal weapon bay able to take 6m long missiles.

I can see the shitstorm from the US now because an enlarged internal weapon bay makes it a strategic bomber, so making the missiles smaller I think makes much more sense all round.

Now we are talking attack and what a great replacement! They could have 6 GZUR and 6 Kh-101/2.

But Gzur uses a ramjet so it does not need to be 6m long to travel 1,500km to its target... it will be moving at mach 6... which is about 1.9km/s... that means it will be covering 1,500km in about 781 seconds or about 13 minutes... in comparison at subsonic speeds flying that distance would take 4687 seconds or one and a half hours... now for a missile intended to clear the way ahead of a strategic bomber having your clearing away missile move at a speed very close to the speed of your bomber makes very little sense. It is likely easier to fit fuel to run a ramjet for 13 minutes into a 4.8m long missile than to fit the fuel to run a turbojet for an hour an a half in a 6m long missile.

If Gzur is 4.78m long you can have the same loadout as with Kh-15 on both the Backfire and Blackjack... the Backfire could carry 10 (four externally and 6 internally) and the Blackjack could carry 24 though normally it would carry 12 Kickbacks and 6 long range cruise missiles.

If the 1,000km range weapon in that new family is 6m long then the Blackjack could carry 6 in each weapon bay (total 12 weapons) plus 6 x 4.8m Gzur self defence missiles in each weapon bay too... which means 12 precision land attack 1,000km range missiles and 12 x 1,500km range ramjet powered self defence missiles... of course by default Gzur would be nuclear armed like the Kickback missile so perhaps 12 x 1,000km range weapons plus 12 Kh-50s if they were 4.8m long for a totally conventional load out of precision guided cheap weapons.

Since France has OTH radar, they see air traffic in quite a large part of European Russia.

Do they see drones... do they see stealthy aircraft... what exactly do they see?

The entire F-22 fleet is a powerful force

It could be a powerful force... so do you think it will be deployed to Europe to defend their European allies, or will they be held back to confront the Blackjack and Bear launched land attack cruise missiles that will be on their way?

In addition, the F-22 has better parameters than the F-35 and the has supercruise capabilities. Su-57 has better characteristics? but there will be much less of them all the time. The only hope is to destroy the F-22 at base with a hypersonic missile. Slow subsonic missiles will be quickly detected by the French OTH radar. There will be time to react?

Well when will the F-22s be deployed... and when they are wont they be a fairly obvious target for their new hypersonic ground and air launched missiles?

Do they see drones... do they see stealthy aircraft... what exactly do they see?

French OTH radar tracked a f-117 or B2 through France when they send it bombed somewhere in the ME or Yougoslavia. I don't remember the story but it is a very capable radar.

The thing is that french air defence can't protect it against cruise missiles flying low btw mountains and France is not really a flat terrain. Plenty of routes to stay undetected.

French OTH radar tracked a f-117 or B2 through France when they send it bombed somewhere in the ME or Yougoslavia. I don't remember the story but it is a very capable radar.

I don't doubt that it is a good radar, but there will be hard limits as to how many targets it can track and within its field of view there could be millions of drones right now flying about the place let alone low flying cruise missiles weaving between trees and hills... not to mention thousands of civilian and military aircraft...

The thing is that french air defence can't protect it against cruise missiles flying low btw mountains and France is not really a flat terrain. Plenty of routes to stay undetected.

And that is what makes cruise missiles so valuable and dangerous, and why enormous investment in IADS and air defence systems has been so valuable to Russia.

I sincerely don't understand why you doubt even the 500km range of the KH-59MK2, look at the improvement of the KH-59MK2 export version from the MAKS-2015 vs the missile with the same name http://roe.ru/eng/catalog/aerospace-systems/air-to-air-missile/kh-59mk2/ obviously the improvement was not using more fuel, but the materials used in the new missile, the new engine, and probably better solid fuel, they made all this effort to export.

The solid fuel is irrelevant... on the first few models that used it it was only used to fly the missile out to 1km ahead of the launch platform quickly so it could be gathered by the datalink pod so communication could be established... it would only burn for a few seconds and didn't accelerate the missile faster than high subsonic speed.

The limits on the early models was datalink range, while the later models added extra fuel in the place of the solid rocket booster to reach almost 300km range... the export model wasn't allowed to reach further than that anyway so any extra potential would be used up making the warhead bigger most likely.

The point is that the domestic model has a range of about 550km... which I have no huge problem believing... but suddenly turning that into 1,000km plus range is not likely... the turbofan engine used was rather fuel efficient already, and even if you replaced the entire missile with composite material that weighed nothing you still wouldn't increase range by that much...

If the KH-59MK2 for SU-57 has only 500km range, or even less, they are giving away advanced technology...for me try aren't.

The Kh-59MK2 is smaller and lighter than previous missiles that had ranges of just over half its reported range... the export model of the Kh-59MK2 is described as being a 290km range missile... which makes sense because export limits its range to 300km max anyway, but with a 310kg warhead and a total weight of 770kg and a length of 4.2m it is actually smaller and similar in weight to the AS-13 or Kh-59 which has a 147kg warhead, a 40km range, and weighs 760kgs and is about 5.4m long.

I appreciate its range is not limited by its potential, but by international export agreement, but 550km sounds a reasonable distance for a weapon to carry on their new stealth fighter... at 4.2m it could also be carried internally by the Backfire which has a 5m weapon bay for weapons up to about 4.8m long like the Kickback.

I don't think they could do anything to magically make such a weapon reach 1,000km...

Remember these are subsonic cruise missiles and the altitude they operate at is going to effect their flight range and speed too... the Kh-59MK2 can operate at altitudes from 200m to 11,000m over land... it flys at 10-15m over water till it gets close to its target and then descends to 4-7m depending on the sea state.

At low altitude its flight speed will be about 700km/h and range will probably be 250-300km, while at 11,000m altitude it will fly at 1,000km/h and reach full range of 550km or so.

The KH-55 family is obsolete, their improvements were "only" from different engines and conformal tanks(more and/or better fuel) KH-101 with only more 1.45 mt achieved more 50% range... better composite materials, aerodynamic, engine, fuel.

First of all the Kh-55 and family is no where near obsolete. Second the Kh-101 is longer, but it is also a ton heavier... the standard Kh-55 is a 1,210kg missile with a flight range of 2,500km... the Kh-55SM with saddle tanks is heavier at 1,500kg and wider because of the external conformal tanks and with the extra weight basically being extra fuel its range is 3,000km.

The Kh-101 is longer and as wide as the Kh-55SM with its external tanks and weighs one ton more than the heavier Kh-55SM and that extra ton is basically extra fuel... which gives it better range. The Kh-102 is about 200kgs lighter because the nuclear warhead is about 200kgs lighter than the conventional HE warhead of the Kh-101, but because it has the same fuel weight it gets a longer flight range of about 5,000km instead of the Kh-101s 4,500km flight range.

All down to increased fuel weight and extra length meaning less drag in flight.

I think KH-102 has a lot more than 5000km range. It could have the double of the KH-101, in my opinion.

If they flew at 12km altitude all the way to the target at a low thrust setting to improve fuel consumption they might both fly much further, but for their roles they need to fly faster and they need to follow way points to take them around danger areas... they might need to drop down to 20m altitude and fly through mountain passes to get to their targets in secret... all of which will effect range and performance.

GarryB do you have any source that the weapons bay of the TU-22M3M aren't 6+ mt long?

Information about the Tu-22M3M is vague... they did mention extending the weapon bay but no hard details...

If they had made GZUR and kh-50 4.78 mt long for me that would be a big mistake, they would have a bad missiles for TU-22M3M ( compared with what they could achieve if it is 6 mt long) and a not so important missiles for a platform (TU-160) that they only had 16, and is the more important air force strategic plane.

Actually being 6m long missiles means having 6 weapons in each weapon bay on the Blackjack... a 6 metre missile sitting on a rotary launcher 11.35m long... if they had another 4.78m missile they could load that on there too in tandem but the only missiles I have read about that is that length or less in that category is the Kh-59MK2 and the Kh-15 which has been withdrawn from service.

By making them shorter they can be deployed in much greater numbers by a much wider variety of aircraft... mounting a 4.8m long missile on an Su-34 or Su-35 or even a MiG-35 would be easier than mounting a 6m long missile... and having say 65 Tu-160M2s in service eventually means a potential for 1,560 Gzur near hypersonic 1,500km range land attack missiles, with another 10 per Backfire you are operating. At 6m long those 65 Blackjacks could only carry 780.

Making them smaller makes them more flexible and increases the number that can be carried.

It is like Granit vs Zircon.... Granit is a 7.5 ton enormous missile only carried on Oscar and Oscar II class subs, Kirov class cruisers and the Kuznetsov CV. Zircon is about 5 times faster, with more than double its range and 1/3rd its weight and can be carried by any Russian ship fitted with a UKSK launcher which includes corvettes and subs.

As for reduced performance... the Gzur is replacing an already withdrawn rocket powered missile with a speed of mach 5 and a range of about 250km. A shortened Gzur should be able to match the mach 6 speed and might perhaps reach 1,000km instead of 1,500km which is fine... put a slightly smaller nuke warhead in it...

For the Product 715 it is supposed to be a short range tactical cruise missile with a range of at most 2,000km... having a range of 1,500km is not a big problem.

Being able to be carried internally on the Tu-22M3 greatly improves the flight performance of that aircraft by reducing drag.

The question is the 2 missiles above were developed with TU-22M3M or Tu-160 in mind?
Their development begun before the decision to produce more Blackjacks.

The two missiles are for two specific and different jobs... GZUR is a short range attack missile to help a strategic bomber penetrate enemy air defences... so the Blackjack would use it but likely not all of them... perhaps one in a flight would have one internal bay with 12 missiles and the rest would have long range cruise missiles. The Backfire would use the Kickback and therefore also the Gzur to penetrate hostile enemy airspace protected by air defence systems like Patriot and THAAD and AEGIS Ashore, but they would also use it like Kinzhal.... ie against ships which have their own IADS. GZUR II will be a mach 12 missile with strategic features and will likely be carried in the Blackjacks internal weapon bays... 6 per bay....

The Kh-50, sometimes called Product 715 and occasionally called Kh-SD is a reduced size reduced range stealthy cruise missiles for theatre operations for a similar role to JASSM-ER, and as such could be carried by the Backfire or the Blackjack or Bear or PAK DA.

In fact if the Kh-50 and Gzur are both less than 5m long then you could carry them in tandem in a Blackjacks bay... 12 air defence targets is a lot for a penetration, but also having them all in the same plane is a risk... perhaps having every plane in each flight with four Gzur missiles and the other 8 missiles on that rotary launcher could be 1,500km range cruise missiles... so the loadout for the Blackjack would be 4 x Gzur, 8 x Kh-50, and 6 x Kh-102... so they can penetrate air defences... which could include AEGIS cruisers in the Arctic ocean for instance... A loadout for an attack on Europe could be 4 Gzur and all the rest Kh-50... ie 4 x Gzur and 20 x Kh-50...

They could step it up... a subsonic cruise missile is a tricky little bugger... but imagine replacing the turbofan with a ramjet and making it a supercruising mach 1.8 target that does not have an AB and therefore uses dry thrust, so you get long range and a missile that an F-35 can't chase down...

If they want 24 subsonic cruise missiles to be launched from inside the Tu-160 they have the kh-59mk2, if they want the same number but supersonic they have KH-58USHKE, if they want the same number but Hypersonic they have the missile from the SU-57, all with ~4.2mt, they probably just need to adapt, or develop a new revolver.

Kh-59MK2 has a range of 550km... not really enough. The Kh-58 has half that range...

Point four is an utter and complete BS.

It was the US intention to replace all existing 4th gen fighters with the F-35... you can call it BS, but only because it is clearly nonsense... you see that and I see that but who is going to tell Trump... or the next US president to drop a 1.5 trillion dollar programme...

Deploying more than a group of F-22 in Europe would mean leave continental US defenseless against long range bombers.

Which suggests he is right and the primary fighter in Europe will be American F-35s that are ineffectual in defending the US so Europe can have them... how generous...

Gzur, Kinzhal, and Kh-32 are the missiles we are discussing here and are in that article.

Do you think the news of China starting licence producing Tu-22M3s will be revealed by an oil price website?

And it would take years for China to set up production of Tu-22M3s... how hard do you think Israel and the US would work to prevent China from producing such aircraft and then selling them to Iran?

Iran would at best buy some Tu-22M3 aircraft from Russia, but why would they consider a Chinese upgrade on such an aircraft... China has no experience or knowledge of the Backfire to base any potential upgrades on.

Russia on the other hand has decades of operational experience with the aircraft and has their own upgrade in progress right now...

Unless they were talking about Iran buying Chinese Tu-16s which is a rather different kettle of fish...

But even then if they were looking at bomber aircraft in that category the Tu-22M3 is vastly superior in performance to the Tu-16, so why buy the latter instead of the former?

Neither aircraft would be a huge amount of use to Iran anyway... Su-30s and MiG-29M2s and Su-25SM3s would be valuable buys and perhaps Gefest & T upgrades for their Su-24s, and indeed their new light fighters...