S-500 'Prometheus' and S-550 missile systems

ALAMO wrote:But - which one could consider as a joke if not that it is a reality - France is producing fewer missiles than four operational subs can carry, because of ... one being in maintenance anyway. So they are making a 48 missiles series for every missile they have, let it be M45, or M51.1, 51.2 or next step 51.3 ...

M51 is a pretty successful program.
https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2023/11/france-successfully-test-fires-new-m51-3-slbm/

It only had a single failed launch and that was over a decade ago.

The program went fairly smoothly because a) they have land based testing facilities not just submarine ones b) the missile program is fairly incremental. they reused existing warheads and the last stage initially and only replaced it later.

The M51.3 is basically the originally planned M51 missile with every weapon component being modernized.

M51 shares both part and tech with Arianne.
It makes it effective, and yes, I would consider it quite impressive.
As I have said multiple times, Europe owns military technology that is much better than Murican ones, and much more cost effective.
The problem is, that nobody in EU was serious about supporting own MIC.
German politicians acted like the worst enemy of their own business.

Hole wrote:Command post, a surveillance radar, a fire control radar and some launchers.

How often do launchers need to be changed? In other words after firing how many missiles does it become necessary to change the launcher?

GarryB wrote: They describe the top speed the target can move at as being 7km per second which means most SLBMs and IRBMs and ICBMs would be in danger of being intercepted by the system.

Maybe S-500's interceptors can also carry decoys and countermeasures just like Russian TBMs do. This will fool the navigation system of the incoming ICBM warhead.

 In other words after firing how many missiles does it become necessary to change the launcher?

Looking at old S-300 units still around I would guess never.
Except some malfunctioning missile damages the truck or the driver f..cks up.