Russian special military operation in Ukraine #14

They should tell Poland and Bulgaria that their long term contracts and pricing are now null and void. If they wish to reinstate gas supply they will have to purchase at considerably higher spot market prices.

When Poland and Bulgaria have not purchased the amount of gas they agreed to buy from Russia it will be them breaking the contract.

In the mean time the gas they get will be reverse flow from Germany... which is Russian gas anyway, so even if they totally cancel their gas contracts with Russia they will still be buying Russian gas but will be paying Germany for transit fees too.

this is most likely a speech about the topic "Calibr-M". From the known characteristics, the weight of the warhead will approach a ton, while the range will increase to 4,500 km.

I don't know what RTN is thinking... I suspect he thinks they think they need a new missile because they can't afford to keep using current missiles at this rate, but the facts of the matter are that they are looking at the success of the current missiles and talking about what their next generation of missiles might be able to do... they probably want longer range and bigger warheads for certain targets that are not so close as Ukraine, but they likely will also want smaller lighter missiles with smaller warheads and much shorter ranges that can be made and carried in even larger numbers yet still be effective at taking out a wide range of targets.

They might even be planning a custom designed bunker buster version of Kinzhal and Zircon because their flight speed makes them very very efficient in such roles where kinetic energy is very very useful.

Replacing a 300kg warhead with a 150kg cone shaped piece of strong metal as a penetrator with a 150kg charge of HE behind it (metal is dense and so 150kgs of metal takes up a lot less warhead space than 150kgs of HE so a 300kg HE penetrating warhead can be much smaller than a 300kg HE blast warhead where the penetrating warhead has 150kgs of steel and 150kgs of HE and the HE blast warehead is just 300kgs of HE.

A penetrating warhead coming in at very high speed can penetrate into buildings or bunkers before exploding inside to devastating effect.

Yep, I would love to see them try!

I can't believe how fucking dumb they are.... it is mind blowing...

They are looking back through history to find things that really scared Russia.... what the **** for.... Russia has already invaded the Ukraine and is fighting a war it does not want to fight... Russia is not the US or the west and only fights wars it absolutely has to... it is fighting in Syria because it knows if it didn't and US backed forces won there that taking the caliphate to Russia would be the next step so if there has to be a war it makes sense for Russia to fight it in Syria and it also helps them out too and prevents them enduring what Libya is going through. In the Ukraine, it was nazis, bio weapons, tactical nuclear weapons in the hands of a nazi jewish clown and the fact that they were going to invade anyway to take back Crimea.

The US doesn't understand it has already pushed Russias buttons... Russia is never going to back down... it makes more sense for them to kill everyone with WWIII than to surrender to the west... they understand there is no winning WWIII but nuclear weapons have been mentioned.

Sometimes suicide is the best option.

If the US wants to test that then they have to understand Russia is going to take you with them and even now with you fucking over all your friends and pushing countries away from the west and towards alternative global systems you still have things much better than you will after WWIII is over... and with Thunderbird and Poseidon who knows when the nukes will stop exploding in the US...

Both Kalibre and Iskander have proved to be quite effective so far. So it would be interesting to find out on what basis Russia is choosing these missiles. IOW, why not use Iskander or Kaliber exclusively?

Different missiles have different advantages and capabilities.

Iskander is fast and difficult to intercept... Kalibre is low flying and difficult to spot or track or engage with air defences... flying at about 800km/h it is flying at a significant fraction of the speed of sound so by the time you hear it it is very very close and moving at 800km/h it blows past very quickly... probably too fast to follow with a shoulder launched missile and as it is flying away you try to get a lock and it might already be behind buildings and trees.

Various weapons like Kh-35 are light weight and have decent range and good accuracy and a smaller warhead but with precision a huge warhead is only useful against a few types of targets.

Deep bunkers or strongly built buildings then Iskander and Kinzhal and Zircon make sense because of their impact speed, but a fuel dump and a Kh-35 would be fine.

Another factor is different weapons have different launch platforms so they can come from anywhere and in mixes of types and potentially in enormous numbers too.

There are lots of anti ship missile types that wouldn't be good for hitting a modern british destroyer because that is defended and has SAMs ready to shoot down low flying supersonic missiles, but against a fuel depot in the Ukraine it is as good as any other missile... why not use some of the old missiles up?

More importantly you could launch some SS-N-2 Styx subsonic anti ship missiles at targets... if the Ukrainian air defence want to shoot it down then they will need to use BUK or S-300 because it will fly too high for MANPADS or OSA so using up a SAM and revealing their position to Russian forces means even if they do shoot it down it is an obsolete missile that would only be good for hitting civilian shipping. If they don't shoot it down then when it lands on its target it 750kg warhead is going to do some damage to fortifications or groups of vehicles or an HQ or comms centre or whatever they hit with it.

Iskander is nice. But rather than Kalibr I have been more surprised with the Kh-101.
They just keep pummeling targets regardless of the air defenses the Ukrainians have.

Not really surprising... this is what Kh-101 is for. Kh-102 with the nuclear payload and slightly longer range is for HATO and WWIII.

Kh-101 and kalibr are very long range weapons designed to fight NATO. They need more tactical cruise missiles like kh-59 and kh-35 which can have >500km ranges with modern tech which are cheaper and better against a lonely country.

This is what Kh-101 and Kalibr were designed for... current model Kalibr (export name Club) is a 2,500-3,000km range missile... the next versions are going to be increased in size to better fit the UKSK launch tubes and match the Kh-101 in range at about 5K km.

They have mentioned the Kh-50 with a range of 1,500km but half the size of the Kh-55 so they can be carried in much larger numbers.

And if Russia puts on its pants and deepens its alliance with Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, China, etc.
That is, if she brings technology, weapons and such to these countries. In particular the smallest, to achieve a truly multipolar world.

An important part of the west cutting ties with Russia is also greatly diminishing their influence as well... Russia is not going to consider western interests any more... so the west might start to realise how good they have had things for the last 30 odd years.

The west are actively supporting ISIS and the Kurds against Russian forces in Syria and Georgia in the SO conflict and now nazis in Ukraine... where has Russia actively supported and armed opponents of the west in all their interventions over the last 30 years?

This is going to be painful for the west because they have lots of fingers in lots of pies and slapping Russias hand like this is going to backfire on them massively going forward... even without malicious intent on the side of Russia... it isn't going to go out of its way to hurt the west the way the west has tried with Russia and any country that is allied with Russia... despite US accusations of bounties on US soldiers in Afghanistan... maybe they should announce the details of these criminals in the Ukraine and start posting bounties on their heads dead or alive to get the Ukrainians to start rooting them out and cleaning house for themselves...

The worst thing they could do is mistreat Russian prisoners... which they are already doing...

Almost certainly there will be an element of 'everyone gets a chance of having a go' about the way the Russian military are doing it.

Another factor is that some targets are static and you can hit them any time you like and perhaps hitting them at night might reduce casualties, whereas hitting a head quarters while it is managing an operation the timing might be critical and a 2,000km range subsonic cruise missile takes more time to reach its target than a mach 2.5 anti ship missile flying less than half that distance.

Soft targets and hard targets might be better destroyed with different warheads.

Different levels of local air defence might mean a cruise missile might get shot down but a mach 7 Iskander wont... and its cluster warhead might be good for dealing with an ammo depot where ammo is spread out to prevent one explosion setting it all off... lots of small explosives scattered around an enormous area might be rather more effective... a cluster warhead released at 500m in the air might give enough spread to get it all. with runway penetrating munitions that burrow through metres of concrete and then explode to destroy the underlying foundations might punch through the roof of an arms depot and then explode inside amongst the ammo making it all go up.

It is all about checking the toys with some real scenarios.
Plus they have stocks that need disposal, so why not ... ?

Both valid reasons too...