Offtopic stuff from the T-90 thread

Mir wrote:

Iskander copies have been available in both China and North Korea for years now.

In reality, they all started with Oka clones that Ukrs have sold to everyone interested.
Every single "rough regime" 30 years back, was buying everything that could have been delivered.

Because 404 was just the same shithole from the very beginning.
A fukin' garrage sale.

NK SLBM project is a direct effect of buying Yuzhnoye projects.
They started 30 years ago with R-21 used for 629 sub.
Which was a reversed engineered first NK submarine carried ballistic missile.
But they have sold a better toys, too ...

That is very true but since then developments have moved at hypersonic speed - literally!

Yes, and this is a part that I find particularly funny.
It seems like the US - spending on "defense" close to the whole of the world combined, are not only outrun by the Russians.
They have put that crystal clear back in 2001. Putin did.
It is North Korea and Iran who outran them.
And the Europans.
It is China - of course.
Soon, India will join the club, while the "western" audience will be feed with shitstrem of how the future Wunderwaffe that is just around the corner will chah&mate everyone else ...
While "everyone else" will just ... carry on.

Arrow wrote:
They are developing rapidly, but Chinese ICBMs and SLBMs are still far from Russian ICBMs and SLBMs

Not so sure anymore...


The Jl-2 is probably not the best example but having a MIRV SLBM that can be used against you from virtually anywhere in the Pacific is quite a serious deterrent against American imperialism.

Mir wrote:
Not so sure anymore...

Russkie has been improving Chinese strategic projection for at least a decade.
They used to be extremely vulnerable to decapitation strikes, lacking both early warning and strategic depth two decades ago.
For at least a decade, China has been connected to the Russian EW system.
Tons of materials how they commonly exercised the matter.
Those Chinese satellites work for Russia for a reason, you know.
Russia and China are allies for the last 1.5 decade, at least.
If one needs a compass, map, and a searchlight to figure that .. well ...

Arrow wrote:

It's hard to believe that China, and especially North Korea, has mastered the HGV gliding warhead technology.  Only recently did Russia manage to master it after decades of developing this type of warheads.  Suddenly China comes up with such technology?  Not to mention North Korea.  China also does not have an equivalent of the Tsirkon missile.

It's good to have friends in high places

Honestly it seems simple enough to create a glide vehicle than can handle re-entry into Earths atmosphere and have some maneuver capability to make interception virtually impossible. Mind you even if it comes straight down it would still be next to impossible for the west to intercept something traveling at Mach 20+!

Arrow wrote:It's hard to believe that China, and especially North Korea, has mastered the HGV gliding warhead technology.  Only recently did Russia manage to master it after decades of developing this type of warheads.  Suddenly China comes up with such technology?  Not to mention North Korea.  China also does not have an equivalent of the Tsirkon missile.

Russia and China have high speed wind tunnels. And the US does not.
https://asiatimes.com/2022/09/chinas-new-hypersonic-test-tunnel-zooms-by-us/

The US tries to design HGVs just by relying on computer simulation. And the results are self-evident. As for China not having an equivalent of the Zircon, they have been lagging in engine technology for decades. This is just another instance of that coming to bite them.

Honestly it seems simple enough to create a glide vehicle than can handle re-entry into Earths atmosphere and have some maneuver capability to make interception virtually impossible. Mind you even if it comes straight down it would still be next to impossible for the west to intercept something traveling at Mach 20+!

When your MIC is mostly government owned then the people making attack missiles and the people making defense missiles can work together to make their defence missiles better, but also optimised their attack missiles to make them more likely to get through too.

Soviet and Russian attack missiles have been influenced by naval missiles that have to attack remote point targets called aircraft carriers with AWACS and fighter protection and also AEGIS cruiser protection that amounts to the best defended targets in the west. The companies that make defences test their systems with the attack missiles other Soviet/Russian companies are making and both sides learn from the tests and develop improvements for both systems.

Pure speed was quickly found to not be enough so they added flying very very high and also added sensors to the weapons so the weapons knew when they were under attack and would start manouvering if they detected an ARH weapon approaching them. They could also release jammers and flares and chaff as well as manouver to make things more difficult for the intercepting missiles.

The west just get range and speed specs and rely on numbers to defeat the target.

50 years ago when ships had one or two guidance channels so they could only guide one or two SAMs at one target at a time meant launching half a dozen missiles at a ship would assure something got through. Not so much now.

The US tries to design HGVs just by relying on computer simulation. And the results are self-evident. As for China not having an equivalent of the Zircon, they have been lagging in engine technology for decades. This is just another instance of that coming to bite them.

But China has the money and the talent and they will eventually solve their problems... honestly investing 10 billion dollars over the next 10 years and they can start loading them into the missile tubes of hundreds of cruisers and destroyers and they could have a dozen aircraft carriers by then.

Russia is very sensible to work at having good relations with China... the west is very stupid to make both Russia and China an enemy when it was totally unnecessary.

t's not that simple.

This is very true... if it was simple the Americans and Europeans would have such systems too and they clearly don't.

There are claims that the US has hypersonic anti ship weapons because their long range naval SAMs Standard SM-x are all hypersonic... but such missiles are designed to manouver to hit targets or get close to them, but not actually evade anything and of course once you start trying to make them manouver... they were accelerated by rocket motors so at the edge of their flight range they are coasting so manouvering hard to evade interception would rapidly reduce their flight speed in the same way that pulling high g turns in a glider can quickly lead to a stall and crash.

Zircon has a jet motor, which could be shut down mid flight to coast to the target and then lit up as you approach the target to extend flight range and maximise flight speed in the dive by having high energy thrust all the way down... if they are clever they would use control surfaces inside the jet exhaust or have a thrust vectoring engine nozzle so it could perform extreme manouvers without stalling or creating drag with external control surfaces trying to manouver the weapon.

The Iskander uses control surfaces inside the rocket exhaust for the same reasons... plus TVC gives astounding manouver performance.

Thread has gone way off topic. Like an Excaliber shell whose GPS is kaput due to Ruskie EW spoofing...

Big_Gazza wrote:Thread has gone way off topic.  Like an Excaliber shell whose GPS is kaput due to Ruskie EW spoofing...

A funny fact.
Muricans have a M712 Copperhead round, which is guided on laser point.
In theory, it should work the same way as Russkie Krasnopol.
But the difference is, that they stopped producing it 35 years ago, so most probably none of them will work now.
The other issue is the fact, that ukrs have no chance to use a laser target designator in the way Russkie does - on UAVs.

it's not that simple

My last thought on the subject. What you guys seem to forget is the fact that most of the technology we see today has been the result of what was developed in the Soviet Union. However with the brake-up there was absolutely no money for all these projects and EVERYTHING in the MIC came to screeching halt. They all started producing bicycles and fridges just to survive. Much of what we see today is the resurrection of these old Soviet era projects - including Avand Garde.

that they stopped producing it 35 years ago

Because Copperhead was way to cheap.

They stopped the production back in 1989 calling it to be ... too expensive
You know, those were old times when weapon was supposed to work

Mir wrote:
My last thought on the subject. What you guys seem to forget is the fact that most of the technology we see today has been the result of what was developed in the Soviet Union. However with the brake-up there was absolutely no money for all these projects and EVERYTHING in the MIC came to screeching halt. They all started producing bicycles and fridges just to survive. Much of what we see today is the resurrection of these old Soviet era projects - including Avand Garde.

Well ... yes and no.
Work on HGV gliders was started in late 80s indeed, but it was mostly scientific research that was made until the 90s.
It used to be a practical spinn off from the Soviet shuttle projects, Clipper including.
And it's fate after 1991 was clear, right?
NPO restarted it as Proyekt 4202 only in the mid of 90s, but - again - it was more conceptual.
What made a kick-off was the US withdrawal from the ABM 1972 treaty, in 2002.
Putin commented on that back then, that this one sided US move will force them to seek for asymethrical answers. And those will be both effective and cost effective.
He later reminded of that in 2007 and 2008,
So the real job was started in the 00s.

What is the most shocking part of it, is the fact that the US broke out from the 1972ABM to have free hands to create a strategic level of Russian ballistic missile interceptors, which was needed to disrupt the MAD concept.
This used to be a cold blooded and cynical project based on the projected of Russias collapse.
From the early 00s perspective, Russia was done.
Separatism was spreading all over the place, and the logical effect to be expected was partition of the Federation.
This would leave a nice for the creation of several nuclear-capable states, likely repeating the 1991+ situation.
Decreasing the number of Russian missiles would make it possible to deal with ABM system, on a scale making a decapitation strike possible, with a limited answer only.

How the things developed after that, is a clear laur for Putin's regime. Not only none of the strategies applied by the west affected as planned, but Russia managed to nullify the effect of locating two ABM bases in Europe.
If someone would describe the Russian status on 2015 in 2000 - we would call him a copium driven idiot.

Copperhead was awful.

It was super fragile and had to be stored and move separately with the optical sensor protected and repeatedly polished to a mirror shine at several steps during handling and loading.

In comparison Krasnopol had a built in optical cover to protect the lens which was ejected in flight towards the target and came in two pieces that were stored in the individual ammo and propellant racks on standard Russian vehicles designed to fire the round.

It was treated like a standard round of ammo and was much much cheaper than Copperhead.

There was a German article about it in a magazine called Military technology from the 1990s and they didn't like the US weapon at all... it needed to be assembled and tested before loading it into the gun to be fired. The Soviet round joined together as it was loaded and was essentially treated in the vehicle or with a towed gun like a normal round of ammo.

The US would generally prefer to use air power to hit targets anyway so it was not a high priority like air defence... and ammo production.

GarryB wrote:Copperhead was awful.

It was super fragile and had to be stored and move separately with the optical sensor protected and repeatedly polished to a mirror shine at several steps during handling and loading.

It is enough only to check what external factors were officially called as lowering it's efficiency.
It was fog.
Clouds.
Wind.
Bright daylight.
Rain.
Dust.
A fukin' everything out there

...and it seems decades later that the much hyped Excalibur is not doing any better?

Well, it worked fine.
For a moment

Even without EW, a GPS-guided round such as the Excalibur would be no good against moving targets

And GPS-guided is always going to a little less precise than laser-guided. For a bomb this might not matter so much, but for a 155mm round it's the difference between coating an armored vehicle or dugout with shrapnel, or impacting and destroying it.

It is enough only to check what external factors were officially called as lowering it's efficiency.
It was fog.
Clouds.
Wind.
Bright daylight.
Rain.
Dust.
A fukin' everything out there

All things which should effect Krasnopol and Kitilov and Smelchak, and Santimetr and Gran... but they all seem to get the job done fine...

... at a fraction of the price

Weren't the French dithering about buying Krasnopol 155mm shells for their military because they were cost effective and already compatible with their laser target marking systems?

Probably just as well they decided not to go ahead with that or they might have production capacity for 155mm guided shells they could pass on to Kiev.