Zmeevik New hypersonic ASBM

Obviously an answer to Dark Eagle, a worthy successor to the Pioneer plus finally replicating the DF-26/21 role missing until now due to INF.

It is more of a solution to AEGIS cruisers in the Arctic ocean and Pacific and Atlantic oceans trying to pick off Russian ICBMs and SLBMs and bombers attacking the US.

Just take several Kinzhals, install them on shortened solid rocket booster from Topol/Yars, put it on a truck and voilà, Zmeevik anti-ship missile

Nah... a 3,000km to 5,000km range IRBM is going to come down at rather higher speeds than Iskander was ever designed to deal with... rather than looking small and scaling up I would say go the other way and look at their ICBM glide vehicles and scale them down.

Hypersonic solutions are really the only way to get attack advantage. Stealth is rubbish for attacking 3rd world countries without the detection and
response systems.

Stealth is good for some things but don't put all your eggs in one basket... combinations of weapons give the best chance of success and the most flexibility.

The game of cat and mouse continues.

Rocket designers have mistresses to feed too. Much harder to justify the payola on a circumcised RS-26, has to be a clean sheet.

Russian rocket designers don't get the enormous profit margins they would get in the west so when you get the job of designing a shore based IRBM it is easiest to just take one stage off of an ICBM or SLBM and use an already design hypersonic glide vehicle scaled down to hit the carrier.

Otherwise just use an obsolete SLBM with several big warheads... carrier location information is then used to target a pattern in the sea around the point of aim and launch... the effect of four large nukes exploding a few kilometres apart in the open ocean would melt most radar domes and set fire to most ships and aircraft nearby... no need for developing hypersonic glide vehicles at all... but if you have them anyway then why not use them too.

Conventionally armed models could be used in conventional wars too and would be interesting against naval and land based hardened targets too.

Probably the average speed in the hypersonic stretch of the flight will be also substantially higher.

Assuming an IRBM launch and a range of 4,000km it will likely be coming in to the target area at mach 15-18 already without any use of propulsion... the solid rocket motor on the Kinzhal would probably act as a gas generator on a base bleed artillery shell... countering and nullifying drag so it maintains speed as it dives down on the target... and of course control surfaces in the rocket exhaust would allow it to manouver as it comes screaming in.

GarryB wrote:It is more of a solution to AEGIS cruisers in the Arctic ocean and Pacific and Atlantic oceans trying to pick off Russian ICBMs and SLBMs and bombers attacking the US.

SM3 do not fly high enough for modern Russian ICBMs with shortened boost phase, bombers do not need to come close to USN vessels. But in any case, any surface fleet even at a serious distance from Russia would be under a much more acute threat than even now with Kinzhals and Tsirkons.

Nah... a 3,000km to 5,000km range IRBM is going to come down at rather higher speeds than Iskander was ever designed to deal with... rather than looking small and scaling up I would say go the other way and look at their ICBM glide vehicles and scale them down.

That is the case with Dark Eagle and probably close to the truth also in the case of Zmeevik. It would allow very high speed and long range, and would substantially raise the kinematic demands required for interception.

Like all the other modern missiles it will have land attack capabilities. So it's also a new ballistic missile that can reach Paris, London and Madrid. And one missile is enough since it will carry more than 1 warhead.

But it's also a secobdary project since they already have Tzirkon and Kinzhal that are going full speed production. No rush on this one.

US totally fucked up. They let China grow to the first economical position by giving away their and EU industries to them. And they made Russia fully armed and investing in state of art military stuff and keeping its natural ressources for itself.

Clearly a new cold war they can't win. And their hot civil war is about to start.

I hope the zmeevik will have an SLBM variant, so boreis can target CBGs too.

Correct me if I am wrong but I dont think there are many classically defined ballistic missiles left. Even the new ballistic missiles can fly in the high high atmosphere and maneuver in almost all regimes.

TMA1 wrote:Correct me if I am wrong but I dont think there are many classically defined ballistic missiles left. Even the new ballistic missiles can fly in the high high atmosphere and maneuver in almost all regimes.

Topol M, Yars, Voevoda, Bulava have ballistic uncontrollable trajectories AFAIK. Their main advantage is low CEP and having a very large amount of decoy warheads

US totally fucked up. They let China grow to the first economical position by giving away their and EU industries to them. And they made Russia fully armed and investing in state of art military stuff and keeping its natural ressources for itself.

Worse than that... Russia and China didn't want conflict or to destroy the west... they bought US debt which means they were banking on its ability to pay its debt... you don't buy the debt of a country you want to destroy because you lose your money.

Russia wanted to be allies and friends and the US pissed all over them and told them it was raining...

The US has created a rival in Russia and China and other countries too... and it has not been nice...

Correct me if I am wrong but I dont think there are many classically defined ballistic missiles left. Even the new ballistic missiles can fly in the high high atmosphere and maneuver in almost all regimes.

There is still a difference between MARVs and ABM evading reentry vehicles, which are very different.

The former manouvers slightly to improve accuracy, the latter manouvers to be difficult to hit by defences... it is like the fine adjustments to run down a line and the manouvers you take when you are carrying a ball and don't want to get tackled.

Solid fuel ICBMs are faster than liquid fuel

Where does that come from?

New US AAMs use a gel propellent that is more powerful than their solid rocket fuels... my understanding is that liquid propellants are more powerful than solid rocket propellants.

Missiles that manuever throughtout their phases with more G overloads, EW capabilities, better stealth coatings, lower altitude capabilies, plasma shield generators, release black particle clouds that block radars, is worth the investment and i hope more detials get released that makes it different from an average ballistic missile. Also it has to have ICBM range capabilities or else I just find it pointless.

ICBMs and SLBMs generally have three rocket stages... the first stage burns out fairly quickly and is the most powerful because it has to lift the full mass of the missile off the truck or out of the silo or tube or off the pad it is launching from, the second stage then starts in the upper atmosphere and is pushing the remaining rocket out of the atmosphere and continues to accelerate it further and finally the third stage ignites and gets the rocket onto the path to hit the target area.

If you think of it in terms of a gun the speed required to reach intercontinental range is over 5km per second and if you accelerated something to that speed over a short distance it would be more like a bomb explosion than an acceleration... using rockets spreads the acceleration over a much longer period... but it does not operate all the way to the target so as it is falling to the target it does not have thrust for manouvering.

The Iskander is different... if it was just a ballistic rocket it could be half its weight because it would not need its rocket motor running all the way allowing manouvering right to impact to evade air defences.

If this missile had ICBM range then they could have designed and built it decades ago... more importantly it would be very big and rather more expensive than necessary.

This weapon will be an IRCM/IRBM because they have ICBMs and SLBMs already... these weapons are for the gaps that now appear with the end of the INF treaty and the likelyhood that Europe is going to make their own ballistic missiles moving forward too.

The US hasn't got 100 aircraft carriers... at best they have about 25 including helicopter carriers and even then Russia likely already has enough Kinzhals and Onyx missiles to deal with the US fleet... and with Zircon on the way they are even better prepared.

This missile will make Russian SSGNs very capable with satellite links to a global satellite system finding enemy ships of all types... we have seen corvettes in the Caspian hit targets thousands of kms away in Syria... with this weapon we might see missiles fired from the Pacific ocean at targets in the Atlantic or Carribean sea...

Solid fuel ICBMs are faster than liquid fuel wrote:

Could you explain? Liquid fuel engines are more powerful The Sarmatian has no detonation engines. It just has engines with more thrust than the R-36M2. Thanks to that it accelerates faster and the engine phase lasts shorter.

GarryB wrote:

Solid fuel ICBMs are faster than liquid fuel

Where does that come from?

New US AAMs use a gel propellent that is more powerful than their solid rocket fuels... my understanding is that liquid propellants are more powerful than solid rocket propellants.

Solid fuel ICBMS/SLBMs are a bit harder to master than hypergolic-fueled missiles. Solid fueled missiles suffer when it comes to engine cut off. Solid fuel rockets/missiles generally have a pretty finite "shelf life" before requiring replacement of propellant.

I hope the zmeevik will have an SLBM variant, so boreis can target CBGs too.

Well if they end up with some spare Boreis then they could designate a few as being SSGNs with anti carrier ballistic missiles and that would make perfect sense...

I rather suspect the US will demand Poseidon and Thunderbird and other weapons to be counted, but then their demands to include Chinese weapons... while strangely not demanding UK and French and Israeli nuclear weapons be included, are likely going to prevent much traction on the next agreement... so I don't expect too much agreement after 2026 or so...

With the INF treaty also gone IRBMs and IRCMs are not restricted either, which is great for Russia because they can build such weapons to target Europe and the UK and the Middle East and hostile Asia Pacific countries like Japan and Australia, without needing rather bigger ICBMs for the job, which frees those up to get better coverage of the US in any all out conflict.

Solid fuel ICBMS/SLBMs are a bit harder to master than hypergolic-fueled missiles.

I don't agree, Solid fuels were not a priority of the Soviet Union and so they only dabbled for a while with them, but they are now every bit as good at solid fuels as the US is.

Solid fuels are just chemistry, while liquid propellent fuels is mechanical engineering too... pumps etc.

Liquid fuels can also be throttled and even shut down and restarted... once a solid fuel rocket is burning that is normally it... to get gaps in thrust with solid fuel you need multiple stages... the current medium range AAM the Russians are deploying now has a three stage rocket motor where the first stage is a layer of fuel that is high energy to accelerate and climb the missile to altitude and the next layer is lower energy longer burning cruise fuel that basically compensates for drag and maintains speed for several minutes... when it burns out the missile just coasts on its own inertia and slowly slows down... as it approaches the target another separate solid rocket stage lights up and provides energy for the terminal stage of the attack... making it much harder for the target to evade because the missile can turn harder with thrust vectoring energy than with falling energy based on its small external control surfaces.

Obviously a scramjet powered missile can manage its fuel and throttle setting to not waste energy and burn the fuel more efficiently with the ability to shut down and restart multiple times.

Solid fuel rockets/missiles generally have a pretty finite "shelf life" before requiring replacement of propellant.

To be fair their shelf life is generally better than the shelf life of most batteries and some electronic components.

The solid fuel rocket lag of the USSR behind the US in the 1980s was fully an issue of chemistry. It is clear that the current
Russian solid rocket fuel technology has at least twice the energy density of the 1980s Soviet fuels. This is a very big deal since
it is the difference between a viable solution and pie in the sky. For example consider the rail based ICBMs. They are now fully practical
without the need for special moving stock and special rails.

I think the tech will advance given the better understanding of nanoparticle physics in combustion. We covered this aspect in other
threads. Adding copper nanoparticles to solid rocket fuel greatly increases the combustion rate and efficiency as well.

The claims about Russians not understanding how to handle solid rocket fuel are BS.

GarryB wrote:I don't agree, Solid fuels were not a priority of the Soviet Union and so they only dabbled for a while with them, but they are now every bit as good at solid fuels as the US is.

Yeah right.....that's why they continue to design liquid fuelled ICBMs/SLBMs. To justify their lack of competence they will use alibis like throw weight and size.  Even Avangard has been put on a liquid-fueled ICBM. And SS-29 Sarmat is also liquid fueled.

kvs wrote:   For example consider the rail based ICBMs.   They are now fully practical
without the need for special moving stock and special rails.  

Not quite the design of the new railway complex is based on the much lighter Yars version of the missile. The older system from the 1980s was based on the heavy ICBM RT 23 that weighed over 100 tons. Yars weighs approximately 50 tons. The RT 23 missile carried 10 heavy MIRVs and had a throw weight of over 4 tons. Yars has a throw weight of only 1.2-1.5 tons according to the START declaration. This indicates that solid fuels in the 1980s in the USSR were not so energy backward compared to their Western counterparts. The American MX weighed 90 tons and had a similar throw weight to the RT-23.

Arrow wrote:

kvs wrote:   For example consider the rail based ICBMs.   They are now fully practical
without the need for special moving stock and special rails.  

Not quite the design of the new railway complex is based on the much lighter Yars version of the missile. The older system from the 1980s was based on the heavy ICBM RT 23 that weighed over 100 tons. Yars weighs approximately 50 tons. The RT 23 missile carried 10 heavy MIRVs and had a throw weight of over 4 tons. Yars has a throw weight of only 1.2-1.5 tons according to the START declaration. This indicates that solid fuels in the 1980s in the USSR were not so energy backward compared to their Western counterparts. The American MX weighed 90 tons and had a similar throw weight to the RT-23.

Russian sources also claimed that the CEP of the RT-23 was 500m when western assessments put it at 150-250m.    The 1.2-1.5 tons
claim is pulled from some ass.    It does not even make sense if we go by identical fuel characteristics with an identical fuel burn profile.  
The Yars (not actually the rail based missile, otherwise they would not need to develop a new one) has a weight of 50 tons compared to
105 tons for the Molodets.  So it should have a throw weight of 2 tons, i.e. half, and not less than a third.  

The payload or throw weight percentage is determined by how fast the fuel is burned off.   Slow civilian rockets such as the Soyuz have
it at about 2.5%.   By official numbers ICBMs have it at around 4-5% since they reach greater speeds by burning through their fuel faster.  
Lofting the fuel for longer costs.   The shorter the burn the larger the payload percentage.    So a number of 4% is not fixed in stone.  
Think of a gun and a bullet: burning through the fuel all at once will prevent the need for carrying it but at the price of extreme
acceleration.  

The sizing of the ICBM for the railway system is dictated by the fire power.   The USSR could have developed a 50 ton class ICBM to do
the same job but it did not.   The notion that Russia decided to downsize its ICBMs after 1990 is absurd.   The appearance of solid rocket
fuel ICBMs was due to advances in Russian solid rocket fuel.   The ability to increase the fuel burn rate of solid rocket fuel is actually
a very big deal since it directly allows to reduce the total mass of the rocket.

Wankers over US superiority cannot hide their masturbatory delusions.

SM3 do not fly high enough for modern Russian ICBMs with shortened boost phase, bombers do not need to come close to USN vessels.

SM-6.

Hitting targets in the US from bases in Russia the missiles going over the north pole wont allow for very high trajectories which can be used at the cost of range... they could use high trajectories against targets in Europe and Asia or the Middle East but not the US... it is too far away.

Yeah right.....that's why they continue to design liquid fuelled ICBMs/SLBMs. To justify their lack of competence they will use alibis like throw weight and size. Even Avangard has been put on a liquid-fueled ICBM. And SS-29 Sarmat is also liquid fueled.

The SS-N-20 SLBM was a solid rocket missile and they have had solid (Bulava) and liquid fuelled rockets (Liner) developed since.... the fact of the matter is that liquid rocket motors was a strength of the Soviet Union and so solid rocket motors weren't so critical and urgent as they were in the west.

Solid rocket fuel tends to be more compact than liquid fuel rockets but it is not more powerful which is why the Russians continue to make liquid fuel rockets.

In fact the most powerful rockets are used to get into space and except for the solid rocket boosters attached to the US Space shuttle all rockets designed to deliver objects to space are liquid fuelled (except obviously ex SLBM or ICBM rockets used for the purpose when they approach expiry dates).

Liquid rocket motors offer the most power but are not as simple or compact as a solid rocket motor which does not need tanks of fuel and acids and oxygen generating chemicals as well as pumps and fuel lines and other complexities.

One of the core reasons the US went to solid rocket fuels was because their liquid fuel technology was not good enough... a space rocket is fuelled just before launch because the chemicals are volatile and don't store very well for long periods and their fuels for ICBMs and SLBMs were the same.

The Soviets and Russians had better fuels which were powerful but also able to be stored for very long periods so you could fuel up an ICBM and put it on a truck or in a silo and leave it for 10 years... with US fuels you couldn't leave the fuels in the missiles for long periods which meant it took hours to fuel up your missiles so a surprise attack on your ICBM fields was a real threat... Soviet rockets were ready to go much quicker...

Even the Kh-22M anti ship missile used liquid propellent and it was seriously nasty stuff... inhibited red fuming nitric acid... that was incredibly volatile and rather toxic and could not be stored in the missile so part of the arming process was fuelling up these missiles which was very unpopular... but mach 3 speed at 23km altitude to 600km... it got the performance wanted... further improved fuels mean the replacement Kh-32 which is externally identical means mach 4.5 at 40km altitude to 800km range and it is worth it.

Not quite the design of the new railway complex is based on the much lighter Yars version of the missile. The older system from the 1980s was based on the heavy ICBM RT 23 that weighed over 100 tons. Yars weighs approximately 50 tons. The RT 23 missile carried 10 heavy MIRVs and had a throw weight of over 4 tons. Yars has a throw weight of only 1.2-1.5 tons according to the START declaration. This indicates that solid fuels in the 1980s in the USSR were not so energy backward compared to their Western counterparts. The American MX weighed 90 tons and had a similar throw weight to the RT-23.

The thing is that with a rocket design 100 ton missiles will be 85-90 tons of fuel and rocket engines (three sets for the three stages)... with scramjet technology you can use a solid rocket motor to get the missile airborne in conjunction with wings and control surfaces and reduce the total fuel load by three quarters by eliminating the oxygen generating component... in this case that means 67.5 tons of oxygen generating liquids are not needed... now taking a 100 ton rocket and removing more than half its launch weight means a smaller rocket is needed to get it moving and airborne which means the rocket motors get lighter and smaller too and also the missile itself can be narrower and smaller reducing drag and weight even further... pretty soon you have a 20 ton vehicle with the potential to drop multiple small bombs over enemy territory on its way to its primary target.

Another factor is that their train mounted ICBMs had to be ICBMs, but now with Scramjet technology and also the tearing up of the INF treaty they can design 5,000km range IRBMs or IRCMs with multiple nuclear warheads to attack targets much closer to home... Europe, the Middle East, Asia... mount them on a train for mobility but their use means all the SLBMs and ICBMs they have can be used against the US instead of wasting them against much closer targets.