Strategic Rocket Forces (RVSN): Discussion & News

JohninMK wrote:
Hold on, Russia 'benefited' too. The US nuclear cruise missiles and Pershings were removed.

It was not a win-win situation.
Muricans fooled Russkie. While they physically destroyed hundreds of missiles, Muricans just dismantled them and kept warheads with delivery buses.
What is even more important, Soviet missiles were much more advanced and widespread at the moment - they had a generation overlap, and next generation on final design stage. Including a 2kkm Volga, being upstaged Iskander. Soviet arsenal was  - if I remember the numbers correctly - five times bigger than US one. Plus no other NATO country was involved in a treaty, so France kept a nuclear S-3 missiles till 1996.
Last but not least, liquidation of an entire sort of nuke carriers opened a wide gap uncovered targets in Europe, as those were targeted by MRBMs. Some of the targets were too close to be attacked with existing ICBM locations, forcing them to build new missile bases deeper in Russia only for the purpose.
Soviets were outmaneuvered, as Gorbi/Scheva team was clearly dealing with a certain agenda. It is one of the common examples of the Soviet attitude when they voluntarily give away a clear advantage only in order to de-escalate.
Putin has not catch this bate this time, giving a clear middle finger to Murican "offer" of a hypersonic weapon moratorium, when they are 20 years ahead.
A clear example of Anglosaxon cynism.

lancelot wrote:
i.e. the S-10 Granat with 2400km range. All the Project 971 submarines had the capability to launch it.

And 671RTMK, where K refers to "krylyata raketa".

Mir wrote:The real f***up was the destruction of the Oka missiles. It was well within the required range limit but Gorby thought it was a great idea!
Bush Sr. is probably still chuckling in his grave

I guess the up-side of this stupidity was the development of the Iskander-M/K.

Not only disposing of Oka but freezing the development of Oka-U, which was Iskander. That hampered Russian development for two decades - with the usual rhythm, those missiles would arrive at the end of 80s.

thegopnik wrote:"war should have never started

That part is technically speaking the core truth.
This war was started as a US deep state operation, and it is crystal clear. Maybe even a wider "deep state" than US only.
Political solution has already been established.
A deal brokered by France, Germany and Poland.
Yanuk removed.
Early elections set.
Constitutional changes process agreed.
Obama is asking Putin to persuade Yanuk to deescalate, and they will take a step back, too.
And after all of that already a done deal - a nazi shit hits the fan. Storming police stations, plundering arms, killing their own in staged provocations.
Now we are 700k dead after.

Russia intends to revive the production of medium-range and shorter-range missiles.

https://rg.ru/2024/06/29/pioner-vsem-raketam-primer.html

Big_Gazza wrote:[
IIRC they were a purely strategic weapon as they had relatively poor accuracy so were fitted with nuclear warheads.  Couldn't be used for conventional land attack and couldn't be used for long range anti-ship missions.

Correct me pls if wrong.

Those had "poor accuracy" by a reason of being nuclear only from the beginning. 150m circular error was just good enough for the task. Soviets never considered this weapon other than nuclear deterrence having multiple dedicated anti ship missile submarine carriers.

Big_Gazza wrote:
IIRC they were a purely strategic weapon as they had relatively poor accuracy so were fitted with nuclear warheads.  Couldn't be used for conventional land attack and couldn't be used for long range anti-ship missions.

Correct me pls if wrong.

The S-10 Granat (RK-55) was initially developed as a tactical nuclear weapon but it's accuracy was probably not any worse than the American Tomahawk. It's guidance system included a combination of inertial guidance, terrain contour-matching, as well as radar and images stored in the memory of an onboard computer.

Btw - the S-10 Granat was also being able to be launched from the 4 Yankee Notch pr.667AT subs each armed with 32-40 of these3000 km range cruise missiles. It also served in the Sierra subs and the other subs mentioned above . In fact it is believed that a conventional version still serves in the Russian Navy.

The same RK-55 also entered service as the 9M729 land based cruise missile just as the INF Treaty was signed. The Kalibr missiles was developed from the RK-55's.

Another interesting cruise missile was the mach 3 P-750 Meteorit that was able to launch from aircraft, submarines and from land. It's range was given as 3000 kms! The sole Yankee Sidecar could launch 12 P-750 Meteorit-Ms. The missile program was abandoned with the end of the Cold War.

The Pioneer IRBM was also developed into improved versions. Model 3 was the last modification. A similar missile system the 15P666 Skorogod was also under development. All these systems posed a very serious threat to Europe.

Arrow wrote:
Meteorit is a marked project, there is no point in returning to it, especially since currently there is 3M22 and hypersonic missiles for strategic aviation are under development.  The same development versions of Pioneer.  Since then, missile technology has advanced significantly in Russia.  Pioneer was a huge technological leap for the USSR, then Topol was created, etc. Now you can make a very advanced IRBM very quickly based on Yars and its developments.

Did I say anything about "returning" the Meteorit!? Don't think so!

A "Yars" IRBM was already in the making. It's just a matter of putting it into production.

The factories which make the Yars and Bulava are now probably running at extremely reduced speed. The upgrade from Topol to Yars is basically done. This means they are available for making an IRBM like Rubezh.

And two important things have changed, well three actually.

First the level of accuracy they are achieving with their missiles is amazing so conventional warheads actually become a viable alternative to nuclear payloads, which actually makes them more usable.

Second intermediate range missiles are smaller and lighter and cheaper, so can be made in huge numbers while remaining affordable.

And thirdly with scramjet technology enabling rocket speeds and altitudes with jet engine fuel efficiency and costs means they will get much smaller and lighter and presumably cheaper again.

IRCMs or intermediate range cruise missiles could be loaded onto train carriages and carried in enormous numbers and moved around very easily and quickly when needed.

Those two idiots of Gorbachev and Shevardnadze cancelled the RSD-10 Pioneer IRBM in exchange of empty promises, basically completely disregarding all military and scientific upper echelons in USSR.

To be fair at the time there was no way to stop such missiles and HATO locating such weapons in Turkey meant flight times to Moscow and St Petersberg would be mere minutes... it might take a minute to detect them which might give you 2 minutes to identify the threat and work out if it is an error or an attempted decapitation strike.

Imagine a threat detected a 3:20am middle of the week, no warning... do you launch a full strike in response or do you wait for Moscow or a major city to be destroyed before deciding?

It created a hair trigger and a very very stressful situation.

Ironically of course if anyone could shoot down such missiles it would be the Soviet Union... then and Russia now.

These weapons would still be destabilising, but now Russia has missiles to defend itself with.

HATO and EU... not so much.

A few thousand nukes pointed specially at them might be sobering for countries that have recently given up their neutrality like Sweden and Finland and of course Switzerland.

Now Russia will be able to put back in service a modern equivalent to the pioneer,

The SS-20 was an excellent missile with a 5,000km range and three nuclear warheads, but it was 52 tons, which is pretty heavy.

A scramjet powered cruise missile, perhaps weighing 5-7 tons that operates at 40-50km altitude moving at 3-4km/s with four of five small nuclear warheads that can be released in flight with a glide kit and inertial navigation system to hit point targets a good distance off the flight path of the missile would be rather interesting really.

And relatively small and cheap and easy to mass produce...

One of the few "good" things Trump did - without even knowing it!

And no complaints from the EU.

I think it was Ironsightsniper who suggested a naval version of the Iskander for their new ships with anti ship versions. I dismissed the idea at the time because of course the west would complain about ballistic naval missiles that could easily be fitted to ground launchers... which is ironic because it is the US that has AEGIS Ashore missile launch systems that are naval vertical launch systems designed for land attack cruise missiles as well as SAMs.

Having a missile that can fly 2,000km and hit point targets with accuracy would actually be very useful and now land based missiles are no longer banned they could make a unified missile with two or three stages for ship or sub or ground launch and a one or two stage missile for air launch that flys high and fast and can hit point targets great distances away with very good accuracy and a decent warhead along with a bit of kinetic punch.

Hold on, Russia 'benefited' too. The US nuclear cruise missiles and Pershings were removed.

Most such missiles are operated by the US Navy and Air Force. The US Army does not have much of a record of theatre or strategic missile use.

The missiles of the navy and air force were not banned, only army weapons.

US and European strategic institutions are entwined. Their hegemony is symbiotic. British MI6, French DGSE & German BND have worked in total unison since the start of the Ukraine war.

European elites only pretend to be under the US’s thumb because it excuses their actions.

Taxpayers in the EU can tell who gives the orders every time they get their power bill... To say the US threw the EU under the bus is not accurate... the US gave the order and the EU jumped under the bus themselves.

Muricans fooled Russkie. While they physically destroyed hundreds of missiles, Muricans just dismantled them and kept warheads with delivery buses.

You give them too much credit. The hair trigger situation was just too dangerous and could have led to war by accident.

Getting rid of a whole category of weapons was a good idea at the time even if it was a bit one sided.

Now we are 700k dead after.

But it is a win for the US because it is 700K mostly Russians. (Soviets = Russians).

Those had "poor accuracy" by a reason of being nuclear only from the beginning. 150m circular error was just good enough for the task. Soviets never considered this weapon other than nuclear deterrence having multiple dedicated anti ship missile submarine carriers.

The important point is HATO is the enemy, so precision strikes to minimise civilian casualties makes no sense... the goal is max destruction of civil and military targets to force the enemy to sue for peace.

The Soviets had land based, naval, and air force cruise missiles... each different models with different performances... They were very much spoiled for choice... and accuracy levels were relatively low because they didn't really use terminal guidance, but as they were armed with nuke warheads that wasn't really an issue.

Lots of great missile posts here but they are O/T

Can you move them please Garry so that they don't get lost?

Scorpius wrote:Russia intends to revive the production of medium-range and shorter-range missiles.

https://rg.ru/2024/06/29/pioner-vsem-raketam-primer.html

There were 2 interesting projects form Soviet times already:

Kourier ICBM but 16 tons only... on pic below missile/complex on truck and SS-26 Rubezh




Skorost (speed) IRMB to hunt for Perishing's locations.


But the most probable candidates i can see are RubezhSS-26 and kind of Iskander/on steroids or Zircon/on steroids land based.

For a land-based Tsirkon there are no limitations by the silo, so an ER version should be quite easy to make.

Arrow wrote:
Interesting Pioneer IRBM gave a big impetus to the development of strategic mobile ICBMs.

Quite the opposite. The father(s) of the mobile IRBM's came from mobile ICBM developments way back in the early 60's.
Some of them were just experimental but the concept was certainly proven back then with a mobile ICBM system known as the RT-20. It got the nice NATO name of the Scrooge!

The real father of the Pioneer was another ICBM missile - the RT-21 Temp 2S, known in the west as the SS-16 Sinner. It had a short life and the much improved Topol quickly replaced it.

And John I agree with you all this missile talk should be moved to an appropriate threat

Hole wrote:For a land-based Tsirkon there are no limitations by the silo, so an ER version should be quite easy to make.

Not sure what do you understand by silo, all Soviet IR/SBM were on mobile platforms. Zircon though in sea based version has ~ 1000km range. For IRCM role perhaps need an extra booster stage.

For an IRCM I would think things will change a bit... when you are flying 4-5 thousand kms you are going to need a significant amount of fuel, which is going to add weight, and for a scramjet powered missile it would not make sense to try to accelerate to top speed just after launch because the rocket booster required would be enormous and further add weight.

Ironically extra stages that are essentially just fuel tanks and also designed to absorb heat from the compression generated flying at such speeds would mean actually having a three stage missile with the stage at the bottom of the missile that launches the weapon and enables it to climb and accelerate is naturally going to be a solid rocket motor of significant power, but the next stage could be the actual cruise missile and on top at the front of the weapon a carefully shaped fuel tank with piping so the fuel at the very front tip runs back down through the centre of the front mounted fuel tank and back into the actual missile and straight into the scramjet engine... the heat from the nose drawn away by pumping fuel to be heated by the outer skin temperature and then pumped down to burn it in the missiles engine... which obviously heats it a lot more but removes heat from the fuel system and the fuel system removes heat from the nose of the missile.

Wings on the fuel tank could be optimised for the flight speed and altitude achieved by the solid rocket motor... and when it burns out and falls away the internal solid rocket engine of the scramjet cruise missile lights up and accelerates and climbs the missile a bit more and then falls away leaving the scramjet engine to light up and start using the fuel from the front mounted fuel tank, which could be pressurised to pump fuel forward and cool the nose of the weapon... once that fuel has been consumed it can be jettisoned making the missile lighter and it can use its own fuel.

As it flys and burns fuel it will be getting lighter so it will be able to climb and accelerate all the way as it approaches the target area.

With a scramjet scooping up the oxygen it needs to burn its fuel means it can be much lighter than a solid rocket weapon.

Most long range missiles are like long range bombers... 80-90% of them is fuel by weight, so reducing their fuel load by 3/4s is a massive weight saving... but despite being a jet it can achieve rocket speeds, which further improves range and speed.

Not sure what do you understand by silo, all Soviet IR/SBM were on mobile platforms. Zircon though in sea based version has ~ 1000km range. For IRCM role perhaps need an extra booster stage.

I suspect he means that ship and sub based Zircon are fired from UKSK and UKSK-M launch tubes which limits their width and length to the size of those launch tubes.

A land based IRCM version could be made rather longer and wider and heavier if need be.

For all we know they might have a heavy missile vertical launch system in development for naval S-500 and naval IRCM and IRBMs.

They could design it so the UKSK could fit inside it.

If you look at UKSK designs it is two very large tubes each with four smaller tubes inside each tube to make a vertical launch system able to launch 8 missiles.

On a very large ship with lots of launch tubes it might be worth it to take four tubes out of one of those very big tubes and have a very big weapon loaded in there for special occasions.

For instance a SLBM or SLCM could be loaded into a bigger tube... a single Bulava missile would be an interesting addition... the Bulava has a 12.1m long launch tube and UKSK is 10m long, so not a huge difference.

A new UKSK-M launcher that is say 15m deep might allow the use of SLBMs and heavy IRCMs.

Ideally you would want a design that allowed packing extra missiles... so for instance making it 12.5m deep might allow the Bulava to be used, but making it 15m deep might allow shorter missiles like S-350 SAM missiles to be loaded 2 or 3 deep with 4-5 missiles per layer for instance.

It would be a very cool game of tetris.

Obviously you would have to only stack the same types of missiles, because the situation where you have to fire a missile so you can use the missile types loaded below it would not be very good.

I would also add that the quickest and easiest way of making a mature and ready to use IRBM is to take a stage off an ICBM or a SLBM, which are generally 3 stage missiles.

Taking one stage off makes them lighter and cheaper and smaller and reduces their range from the 6-8K km range mark to the 4-5K km range mark.

The real threat for the west of course is that now they have scramjet engine technology, so instead of taking ballistic flight paths these weapons can fly above the interception altitudes of most SAMs and below the interception altitudes of most ABM missiles and at flight speeds that makes interception difficult, while at the same time giving speed and fuel efficiency only a scramjet engine can provide.

If conventional turbofan powered cruise missiles could operate at 40km plus altitudes they would because the air will be super thin, so very low drag and they could fly much faster than they could at lower altitudes, plus only carrying fuel and not carrying oxygen for rocket fuel to burn means they can be faster and lighter and cheaper, but also more difficult to reach and engage.

Really only heavy SAMs could reach such targets and such SAMS are expensive... western SAMs are horribly expensive anyway, but ones that could be made to reach so high up will be horribly expensive and therefore they wont have many of them to start with.

Such large SAMS are easy to locate and destroy with these weapons too.

With terminal guidance these cruise missiles could have conventional warheads and be very very effective and affordable.

This means that old projects like Meteorite wont be revived in its original form, but using a scramjet instead of a ramjet its flight speed can double without using a lot of extra fuel, which means fight range will massively increase too...

Imagine an S-70 type drone with a scramjet motor flying at 50km altitude at mach 7 or 8 very easily... carrying some 500kg bombs with special high speed glide kits...

Cheap and reusable and able to reach deep into enemy territory.

GarryB wrote:
The SS-20 was an excellent missile with a 5,000km range and three nuclear warheads, but it was 52 tons, which is pretty heavy.

Only if you compare apples to oranges.

First, it was not 52t but 37 - this is a start weight of the missile, and 42+t with start container.
The west has not operated missiles of such class at all, so what are we here to compare?
The closest equivalent was French S3 silo based missile with a start weight of 26t.
So a peak MRBM that the west could provide was a 26t 3500 range one warhead missile.
While 15X45 was a 37t, 5000 km range and three warheads missile.
So again what we have here is western propaganda.

The sole missile that the west was operating in numbers was Pershing 2.
It was limited to 1800 km, which while stationed in Western Germany since 1983, covered only westernmost part of the Soviet Union.
Western shitstream is being busy to compare oranges to apples, because never had both
What the most sources will masturbate about is "30m CEP" of P2.
This was a case only if it was being used against stationary, radar contrast targets - bridges or cities.
Without radar contrast of known characteristics, its radar correction didn't work, leaving it with conventional inertial navigation for most of the advertised targets like troops locations, bridgeheads, command points etc.

On the other hand, for RSD-10 a maximal projected deviation of 1300m is being advertised in most of the western sources - which is bullshit.
The catch is "maximal" - no bigger error in computing trajectory was expected.
In general, the missile control system created by Piliugin team was designed to achieve accuracy of "no more than 500m" - and that was no matter the range and azimuth.

To gain a perspective : in 1979, an already improved 15X53 missile was tested, and accepted for duty in troops in 1980 as "Pioneer UTTH" - "uluschonnyye taktichesko-technicznoye harakteristiki".
This one had ever smaller CEP cited "less than 450m" and sometimes referred to a usual deviation of 250m.
And greater dynamic characteristics of the terminal stage, which allowed use of warheads to attack wider spread targets.
It was FIVE YEARS before Pershing was fully operational in Germany.

On the other hand, Soviets already were using R-400 Oka system, with a smaller - tactical - range of 480 km but a 30-50m CEP.
Oka flight pattern was attacking almost vertically, with terminal warhead speed of 10Ma - unstoppable even by the most advanced and only accepted Patriots.
By the time when Pershing was fully operational, Soviets already worked on Oka-U - a missile that was designed to be guided at entire trajectory by external means of observation. It could attack moving targets, which was a pure phantasy from the Murican perspective.
Oka-U with an additional stage was to become Volga, with 2kkm range and same homing type.

If INF had not blocked the Soviets for decades, today we would have face not Iskander, but at least two generations newer missile system, as the Soviet methodology was to start work on next gen as soon as the first feedback of the newest pieces was achievable.

Alamo wrote:If INF had not blocked the Soviets for decades, today we would have face not Iskander, but at least two generations newer missile system, as the Soviet methodology was to start work on next gen as soon as the first feedback of the newest pieces was achievable.

I see Gunship and I already mentioned it - but one such a new development was the 15P666 Skorostb (Speed) IRBM that was developed from various missiles systems. I was also called Skoroghod. Almost like a cut and paste version - based on the Pioneer including the UTTH. It also included elements from Topol and Topol-M.

It was a shorter range version (4000km) that was supposed to target the Pershing II missile sites in Europe. The big difference was that these missiles would have been deployed to the GDR and Czechoslovakia - hence the name "Speed"!

On the other hand the Pioneer UTTH's maximum range was given from 5500km with a single warhead to 7500 km with three warheads. Significantly longer ranged than the original Pioneer (mod1&2).

With the eventual deployment of the Skorostb some of the Pioneers would have been relocated to Chukotka. In 1984, the 99th Motorized Rifle Division was relocated to Chukotka for the preparation of the future deployment of the Pioneer to the area, in order to target early warning sites in Canada and Alaska.

A week after the first test launch the program was terminated due to the INF Treaty. Only 10 missiles were produced.

RUMINT is that with Kinzhal, the Russians have finally mastered the holy grail of PGM and achieved sub-meter levels of precision. They demonstrated this capability by punching a missile through the elevator shaft of one of the strategic command bunkers built by the Soviets for WW3. Literally burying the entire NATO command staff alive.

Mir wrote:
On the other hand the Pioneer UTTH's maximum range was given from 5500km with a single warhead to 7500 km with three warheads. Significantly longer ranged than the original Pioneer (mod1&2).

7400km was a range of third generation of the missile which never ended testing. It was designed with a single small power 50kT warhead. Which strongly suggests further accuracy improvement.

ALAMO wrote:
7400km was a range of third generation of the missile which never ended testing. It was designed with a single small power 50kT warhead. Which strongly suggests further accuracy improvement.

My bad I swapped the ranges around!  
(Nearly confused myself twice!)