So the concept for the future is S-350 against cruise missiles and saturation attacks, S-500 as a replacement for S-400 and S-300 in long term and S-550 for ABM defense. Sounds valid!
I am not convinced.
I think even the big S-400 missiles will be smaller and cheaper and able to be carried in larger numbers than the S-500 and S-550, and while they are four times bigger than the S-350 missiles they can also reach 250km and 400km range targets too, and for bigger heavier targets the bigger missiles with their bigger warheads would be more effective too while being cheaper than the S-500.
I suspect the S-350, S-400, S-500, and S-550 will be used together or separately for different roles... there will be enormous numbers of S-350 because it is smaller and lighter and cheaper, there will likely be more S-400s than S-500s and S-550s because I think they will be smaller and lighter and cheaper and quite often most aerial targets will be within 250km let alone 400km except perhaps high up in the arctic or far east.
S-550 might be deployed to major cities and naval ports and air fields... the latter two not necessarily only in Russia...
Another point...the interception MUST be in the upper parts of atmosphere or exospheric, because the warhead detonates at a height of 1-3 km to maximize the damage from a nuclear explosion.
That is very true except however an S-550 located near a Russian ICBM field of silos... Russian missile silos are very strong and need almost direct hits to ensure they will be taken out so that means ground impacts with penetrator warheads... which means S-550 could be effective down to very low altitudes...
S-300V4 and S-500 have missiles optimized against ballistic missiles.
S-300V4 is the Army S-300 system, so they have S-300V4s above their BUKs, with no S-350s or S-300s for other targets.
S-500 is not a replacement for the S-300/400. It is just another layer of an already formidable air defence system.
Yes... it is an ABM cap on top that could engage very long range targets in the same way that S-300 could engage cruise missiles... but as it would detect them only at about 12km because of their operational height it makes more sense to use Pantsir or TOR.
How many layer of air defence you need? I doubt 10 or 20 layers of air defence are necessary.
The different sizes have different costs.... do you want to use both S-500 missiles from a single TEL launcher against drones?
S-500 adds a new distance targets can be engaged in... beyond 400km range and above 40km altitude... it is optimised for ballistic targets but if it detects a B-2 or an F-22 or AWACS aircraft then of course they will take the shot because they are high value targets that would seriously damage an enemy to lose in terms of cost and performance. They wont have enough S-500s to be shooting down F-35s if they end up with 3,500 of them, and I doubt they would want to waste them on them anyway.
The ranges are expanding all the time, but S-350 replaces S-300 for shorter ranged targets, while for longer ranged targets the S-400 has more missiles that are likely cheaper than S-500 missiles.
The S-550 seems to be optimised specifically for ballistic and satellite and hypersonic manouvering targets... it probably has thrust vectoring control rocket motor that can be stopped and started multiple times to enable manouver performance inside and outside the atmosphere...
Officially the S-500 should slowly replacing older S-300 systems (and A-135 too?!).
Not really. The S-300s were based in all the important places being their best long range missile, so the places where long range were important they tended to get replaced with S-400s first, while in more backwater areas the S-300s are being replaced with S-350s which in many ways match the performance of older S-300s anyway.
A-135 was only based around Moscow and will likely be getting replaced with Nudol because they are both silo launched... S-550 would be a good supplement and eventual replacement for A-135 and compliment for Nudol... the silos are already built and keeping missiles in there does not cost extra money and they are well protected from surprise attacks, while a few batteries of S-550 around Moscow would enable a surprise attack... say a FOBS attack attempting to destroy the silos could be defeated. Nudol and S-550 would compliment each other and could be expanded to be based around Leningrad and perhaps Vladivostok and perhaps Sevastopol and the Pacific fleet and large air force bases etc etc.
In theory S-500 could replace both S-300 and S-400. So in future only S-400 and S-500 should exist and S-300 phased out (I'm speaking not of army).
Agree the air force and navy S-300 (P and F respectively) will be phased out, replaced by S-400 and S-350... S-500 can do things S-400 can't, and while S-500 can do things S-400 can't the S-400 is smaller and lighter and cheaper and can be carried in larger numbers than the S-500 so it makes sense to keep S-400 and S-500 and S-350 in service.
This means the gap of outphasing older S-300 wil be filled with the combination of S-500 and S-400.
S-300P and F will be replaced on land and at sea by a combination of S-350, S-400 and a few S-500s... as mentioned there will be no naval S-550, which is a specialist ABM/ASAT missile.
The S-500 will work together with S-400, S-350, Buk, Pantsir etc...in a combined air defense network.
Yes, very much so. The S-500 will provide extended range over reach for very specific high value targets, while the smaller missiles in progressively larger numbers are used to fill out the defence against a range of threats.
But to be true...so many information spread...no one outside the government and the forces knows what S-500 should do or S-550. That's why I'm confused.
And additional there is A-135 and A-235...
S-500 are in a sense bigger heavier longer ranged S-400s able to engage longer range ballistic missiles and satellites in orbit, but also aircraft inside the atmosphere at enormous horizontal range.
The A-135 and A-235 are silo launched optimised ABM missiles... think of them as GBIs that work.
If S-500 is not intended to replace S-300, so why introducing S-550 for ABM defense and not just upgrading S-500?
S-500 is going to be a missile bigger than the S-400... it would be like saying why does the An-124 not replace the Il-476... because it would not be cost effective to do so. S-500 has a reach... reportedly up to 600km, but could be more, but for many targets a missile located closer to the target could be used instead saving the S-500s for targets those closer shorter ranged missiles can't deal with.
S-400 can deal with target moving at 4.8km/s, S-500 7km/s... S-550 would need to be able to deal with 11km/s or faster to deal with targets in higher earth orbits and ICBMs/SLBMs.
For me S-500 is not specialized enough and more generalist like S-300 and S-400. But see above...I'm not sure. And shouldn't a naval variant of S-500 appear? Why a naval variant if it's specialized system and not a generalist?
S-500 is fully capable of dealing with aerodynamic threats like the S-300V4, but being a very big heavy missile it is not particularly efficient for shooting down cruise missiles or drones... if the US or HATO develop a ballistic anti ship missile similar to that Chinese missile then that is exactly what the Russian Navy would carry S-500s for... S-500s making more sense than S-550 because they can be used against a range of targets.
If the naval S-500 is carried in a UKSK-M launch tube then you might load a few on a corvette and sail it close to a US carrier group from an unexpected direction to try to take down the AWACS aircraft from 600km away perhaps...
Of course S-350 can hit any target, but it's optimized against saturation attacks with CM...that's why the TEL has so many missiles.
It certainly is a numbers missile but shooting down F-35s at 100km range makes more sense that waiting till they launch their stand off munitions and have to engage each weapon one at a time...
S-350 with 15km, 60mk, and 150km range missiles is actually very good in terms of range and performance compared with older model S-300s and likely be used in conjunction with S-400s and S-500s too so they don't have to waste big expensive missiles defending against cruise missile attacks.
The big missile can be used against the launch platform 400km or 600-800km away... before they launch their missiles if possible.
S-300V4 is just a modernized S-300 (and of course brand new produced S-300V4 exits too) with many new components nearly at same level with a brand new S-400. It has capabilities against BM but it's a jack of all trades too.
S-300V is a separate family of missiles. It is an upgraded S-300, but an upgraded S-300V... not related to S-300P or S-300F of the airforce and navy respectively.
Being a larger missile there was more growth potential and already being multistage meant its performance could be dramatically increased too.... much the same way the Pantsir missile went from the 8km range of the SA-19 to the 40+km range of the newer missiles.
In turn the S-550 was developed from the S-500. The only confusing thing here is that both these missiles seems to be mobile, but the S-550 is claimed to be the first mobile ABM?
The S-300V and S-300P and S-300F and S-400 are all ATBMs... or Anti Theatre range ballistic missile systems, the S-550 are ABM/ASAT... the S-500 clearly is not able to intercept ICBMs and SLBMs of any kind so it is being lumped with the ATBMs despite being at the upper end.
With the INF treaty there were only short range ballistic missiles and intercontinental ballistic missiles in the Russian/Soviet and US inventories, the missiles with ranges from 500km to 5,500km or Medium Range Ballistic and Intermediate Range Ballistic missiles, or MRBM and IRBM missiles were banned, so theatre range ballistic missiles were short range missiles only. The S-500 with a performance of 7km/s target speed would be counted as an ABM system under the ABM treaty, but they clearly only want the S-500 for intercepting hypersonic manouvering weapons and up to IRBMs, while the S-550 is probably an ABM/ASAT system.
The S-500 should be able to intercept targets in low earth orbit too... so would be an ATBM/ASAT system.
If you are American you probably won't need so many layers, but if you're Russian you'll need all the layers you can get!
Americans only want AWACS and F-35.
There is a possibility that Nudol may former into the S-550 or combining capabilities to reduce overall costs while still being just as effective.
A theory
The truck carrying Nudol looks very similar to the truck that carries A-235 which is a silo based missile.
Those complexes are meant to engane all types of aerial targets. S-500 is capability over them. It could engage aerial targets, but main focus will be on ballistic missiles with greater speed and range and hypersonic targets and together with S-550, they will more step in space defense with anti-sat capabilities.
Agreed, the S-500 would have better range and altitude and target speed, but would also be rather bigger and heavier and more expensive so it needs to be specialised.... like an An-225... you would not use it for any old target...
Yes but a HGV is already travelling at mach 20, and can evade targeting radar bubbles,
If the target of the HGV is deep inside an enormous 2,500km radius radar bubble then it is going to have to take the risk and enter... the simple fact is that Russia is a labyrinth of overlapping radar bubbles.... there can be no flying around...
And with an IADS the location of the radar bubbles will not necessarily have anything to do with where the missiles are located... they could be on ships or barges... if they spend a lot on their navy in the near future they might have Redut Ashore with land based UKSK-M too...
Is there a physical limit for energy density in solid propellants, just like with Gun propellants, the speed of sound in working fluid I believe?
For maximum horizontal range they could replace their solid rocket propellents with high energy fuel with air scooped up as it travels at mach 20 plus inside the atmosphere with a scramjet motor.
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