Russian Gun Artillery Thread

Anymore info on that shell, e.g. name, yield, year etc? It looks slightly different from the RD4-01, but not by much.

If you click on this link:

https://www.vitalykuzmin.net/Military/ARMY-2022-Exhibition-pavilions/i-4SHhQdv

It will take you to Vitalys wonderful site showing the Military-technical forum ARMY-2022 - Exhibition pavilions.

If you scroll down the page the third and fourth images are of a nuclear bomb (RDS-4), and then below that a 203mm nuclear shell (RD5-1), then a 152mm nuclear shell RD4-01.

The two images I already posted I got from this forum, but I think they are Vitalys.
I labeled them 152mm nuclear 2.5KT.

Some rubbish on this thread that needs to be trimmed... or should I say is now in the process of being trimmed.

The Russian corporation Rostec: Russia is developing ammunition whose accuracy is around 100%, 02.10.2023.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Russia is developing ammo that will have an accuracy of the order of 100%, a spokesman for the Rostec corporation told Sputnik.

"We are increasing the production of high-precision ammunition and developing new models of precise weapons. Its accuracy will be around 100%," said the Rostec representative.

The spokesman refused to specify the type and technical characteristics of these munitions, but assured that the American Abrams tanks and the German Leopard will be a convenient target.

Earlier, a solvent source told Sputnik that in Russia the production of Krasnopol smart bombs for 152-millimeter shells was increased "several times" in 2022, and that the volume will increase this year.

Yandex Translate from Spanish

https://sputniknews.lat/20230210/la-corporacion-rusa-rostec-rusia-esta-desarrollando-municiones-cuya-precision-ronda-el-100-1135613611.html

Hermes 100km range system is ground based...

Last article I read they were adapting the Hermes to make the terminal stage powered and able to pull serious manouvers to evade enemy air defences around the target... otherwise it would just be as easy to shoot down as HIMARS.

This conflict is an ideal situation for them to work out strategies and technologies to deal with enemy forces at extended ranges with air and ground launched weapons.

This will be interesting.

Especially if they end up with a single tube launcher for HERMES that more vulnerable countries could operate... you don't need an expensive attack helicopter with radar sensors if the targets are in your country where friendly locals can send the target coordinates and you can launch a missile that flies to the area of the coordinates and then looks for a tank target for itself to hit... could be a nightmare for some countries in occupied territories for instance... the HE warhead of the HERMES was 57kgs, I would guess it has a HEAT warhead at the nose with fragmentation material around the outside of the warhead for extra effect.

Ukraine has no such field repair capability for their NATO guns btw. For major equipment repairs like barrel replacements they have to send it across the country to Poland.

This tent is very impressive.
Seems a standard solution, and is obviously modular - in some other materials it was just the same construction.
Only big enough to repair three tanks at once.

Are they also working on artillery ramjet shells in Russia? Russia actually has a lot of experience in ramjet. You can see that the US is doing very advanced work here.

https://www.c4defence.com/en/ramjet-artillery-projectile/

There have been lots of pictures of ramjet powered tank rounds designed to maintain muzzle velocities to extend effective range, but to be really effective it would benefit from guidance so the maintained speed was accurately delivered to target.

In this case however the ramjet is used instead of base bleed rocket motors to extend range.

With a normal smooth ball the width of the ball is the drag area with a huge low pressure area behind it that slows the ball down through the air.

Dimples on a golfball are designed to create surface turbulence so the air flow sticks to the surface partially so the low pressure drag area at the back of a golf ball or any ball with dimples will be smaller... which means less drag... which means in flight for the same hit energy a ball the same size and weight as a golf ball but with a smooth surface will hit the ground first and travel a much shorter distance.

With rifle bullets it was found you could extend the range by an enormous distance by making the rear get narrow like the rear end of a ship rather than just being flat, and this does the same thing by reducing the drag area which allows the bullet with the better shape to maintain a higher flight speed for longer which makes it travel much further.

With artillery shells what they did was they added solid rocket fuel into the tail of the round... not high energy high thrust rocket fuel, but a slow burning fuel that could continue for a large portion of the flight of the round and it released gas into the low pressure air behind the shell reducing drag all the way and massively extended the flight range.

If they had used high energy rocket fuel it might have added 50 or 100m/s to the flight speed but it would only burn for a second or two and then the shell would slow down much more rapidly like it would with no fuel there at all so the range boost would be tiny.

The faster an object flies through the air the higher the drag so the faster it moves the faster it will slow down in any given air density, so lofting shells high in the air improves range as well because the air is thinner and the drag is lower.

The Russians could be working with scramjet boosters for their artillery shells which would have an outstanding effect on performance... a ramjet is good to mach 5 or mach 6 which is actually slower than modern APFSDS rounds, but a scramjet could operate at double that speed making much greater flight speeds and flight ranges possible... even if the scramjet operates at minimum thrust and only slowly increases speed it would overcome drag extending the range to enormous levels for as long as the engine can be run...

One way to massively increase the flight range of an artillery shell is to reduce its diameter because that reduces drag.

It is not an accident that arrows and Javelins and Spears are long narrow things... their length gives them weight which allows them to push through the air more efficiently... think about how easy it is to throw a golf ball a distance but throwing an inflated balloon any distance is hard because its light weight means it accelerates quickly but once you release it it also slows down quickly too and does not end up being projected very far.

A far APFSDS that is full of HE instead of being a solid dart penetrator could be fired great distances because you can accelerate it to high speed easily but it is low drag and dense for its size like a golf ball rather than a balloon so it retains speed better too.

The enormous advantage of a scramjet is that it can handle supersonic airflows through its combustion chamber.

A normal jet engine including ramjets but also pulse jets and turboprops and turbofans and turbojets would choke on supersonic air flowing through the combustion chambers where the fuel is burned so modern mach 2 jets have intakes that open and close... at low speed like on the runway if you put the aircraft in full AB for a high speed takeoff the intakes open to allow the max flow of air through the engine... the engine is essentially taking still air and sucking it through the engine and burning fuel so it leaves the rear at high speed to generate thrust.

As the aircraft takes off and climbs the airflow gets faster and faster, but when the aircraft gets to altitude all that air coming in the engine is now supersonic and so if the intake was wide open the combustion chamber would blow out and fuel would no longer be burning so you essentially lose thrust and the engine flames out.

To keep the engine running at supersonic speeds you have to make the intake smaller so instead of opening up like on the runway, it constricts and limits the amount of air going into the engine so that that airflow can be slowed down to subsonic speed when it hits the combustion chamber and fuel can be added and burned to create thrust.

As you can probably guess a turbo fan with blades also have rotational limits like the wheels of a motorbike trying to beat high speed records... using normal rubber wheels and they would disintegrate and shatter at high speed because the rubber can't take such speeds.

When they talk about the MiG-25 being able to fly at mach 3 but it trashes the engines... that is what they are talking about... the blades are weakened at such speeds and can't really be repaired.

Aircraft like the SR-71 actually cheat... the large pointy nosecone on the SR-71s engine moves forward and back to direct airflow so on the ground the cone sits back opening up the intake and allowing the most air through the engine which is a very clever design of turbofan with a turbojet down its core and a ramjet around the outside where normal turbofans have large fans that are powered by the turbojet down the centre but the big fan sucks air around the turbojet that does not go through the turbojet so it is cold thick air that is oxygen rich so afterburners are more effective.

What is clever about the SR-71s engines is that there is no fan on the front, the air just flows around the turbojet like a ramjet engine with no blades or moving parts... just an afterburner... like an air breathing rocket.

When the SR-71 gets to mach 3 where turbojets start to break apart the nose moves forward and blocks the air going through the turbojet section of the engine and the air just flows through the ramjet to generate thrust... the intake area is tiny so the air flowing is slowed to subsonic speed for combustion which then generates thrust for the aircraft to maintain speed.

The point is that a scramjet doesn't need to slow the airflow to combust fuel... that is why Zircon can fly at mach 10 because the airflow going through its motor does not need to be slowed down to subsonic speeds before the fuel will burn and generate thrust so the amount of thrust a scramjet can generate is enormous at very high speeds because the thrust of a jet engine is based on the airflow speed... if it comes in at mach 5 and you slow it down to subsonic and then have to generate enough thrust to fly at mach 5 or 6 then that takes a lot of high energy fuel... if it is a scramjet and you are flying at mach 10 but the air flows in to the combustion chamber at mach 5 or mach 6 and burns fuel then flying at mach 10 becomes much easier and much more efficient...

With an artillery shell in many cases the shell already is designed to fly efficiently and with low drag so adding a scramjet motor doesn't need to accelerate it much at all but if it does then you could burn the fuel really slowly essentially just overcoming drag and therefore maintain speed for minutes which can extend range enormously on its own.

For a tank shell it can double the muzzle velocity of a tank shell for anti armour use, for artillery it could increase the range of the round by a vast amount by taking it up high to the very thin air of high altitude where its drag would be much lower and burn for several minutes... if the shell is moving at 2-3km/s then one minute could be up to 180km already... and of course being a jet engine the fuel use can be controlled to get the best performance depending on the target distance.

The concept of extreme range artillery shells seems ass-backwards to me. For one, you're already supposing ISR that can detect and classify targets out at those extreme ranges like 150, 170 km. You can either afford hundreds of billions of dollars to build and maintain such a system, in which case why the **** are you penny pinching on proper PGMs - or you have allies that provide you access, and again, can probably afford to give you actual proper extended range munitions like heavy guided rocket artillery.

I think the concept is to reduce the cruise missile or guided bomb to a shell with control surfaces and the smallest guidance package and simple propulsion so a gun can launch them in significant numbers to deliver HE payloads to positions in three dimensional space... just like a missile does but more efficiently.

For a ship it is cheaper and easier to stack HE shells in one room and have propellent in another room... especially if you can do clever stuff like have liquid propellent that is safe and stable in more than one liquid ingredient that can be mixed in the chamber of the gun ready to fire where it is not so safe and stable.

It is just a very fast and efficient way of delivering HE to targets.

The simplest way of launching a swarm attack would be to have a few guns firing guided shells in whatever calibre... to 10km it could be a 57mm gun for instance, or out to 250km it might be 203mm calibre.


The US attempt for their Zumwalt class ships failed and the shells cost more than a Tomahawk missile while only having a fraction of its range and payload.

I would think the Russians can do better and make something more practical and affordable.

Being able to fire at fixed targets from enormous distances is useful, but of course having drones near the target area able to mark moving targets makes them even better... the excess range means you don't need to move your guns so much and they wont need to be anywhere near the front line.

When firing at a group of enemy troops moving forward across a field then accuracy is not important because you are not going to fire a single shell at each individual person and even if you tried the problems of tracking 100 targets at once would make it a waste of time anyway.

A swarm technology where you aim one shell to land in the centre of where the enemy target will be and have the subsequent shells land in a spread out pattern around that first shot would be rather useful and rather effective against spread out area targets.

If you know what pattern your enemy uses to space out their troops in combat you can optimise your pattern to maximise your kills with the least number of shots to be fired.

500km range shells could mean naval artillery could deal with targets relatively inland without needing to approach the shore where they would be vulnerable, but of course coastal artillery would be better able to prevent enemy ships from approaching very close.

The current coastal systems are the BAL anti ship platforms with 16 x Uran type missiles and also the Onyx type missiles in the Bastian type twin launcher system along with the 130mm Bereg gun system with a range of about 25-30km.

Obviously the missiles dominate the system with the better reach and hit power but a landing force, as it approaches would make 130mm shells useful too as well as smaller targets that don't warrant the use of missiles.

A 203mm 500km range gun with guided shells... very useful on land or at sea...

To set things in order.
Ammo production consists of three main pillars.

1. steel/iron/metal
2. chemicals
3. energy

Russia has almost unlimited stock of all of those.

Europe strived with a lack of steel industry, which was affected by the lack of energy.
And lack of chemicals, affected by the lack of energy as well.
A lot of Euro chemical/metal production is gone already, after two years of market changes.
Just take a look at BASF reports.
It is warmly called "increasing operations in China".
But what it is in real is killing the operations in Europe.
It is not a fukin rocket science, stupidos.

https://www.euronews.com/next/2022/10/26/basf-results

BASF is Europe's largest chemical company. And I guess the world's biggest (?) ...

What are we even discussing, really?

Turns out the russian army is forced to use ancient D-1s and rapiras not due to attrition, but mainly due to barrel wear.
Seems russian industrial capability to mass produce thousands of replacement barrels for these old howitzers is very insufficient.

It just makes sense that old artillery pieces barrels are not longer in production and that after a year of use replacement barrels are not abundant.

The logistics issues you posted with that are also completely over your head... you bitch because they don't have enough artillery shells at the front line but you would be the first to piss your pants if they had mountains of artillery shells near the front line and a lucky nazi hit the jackpot and blew it to hell.

Which is why you are just noise that most people try to tune out and don't take seriously even if you do occasionally bring up important points.

Hopefully there are several more plants built, using funds diverted from nuclear triad upkeep.,

Yes because filling every front line foxhole with a few HE shells is of course the best way to keep your people safe and who needs a nuclear deterrent in times like these... are you that stupid?

You have just been bitching on another thread that Russian ammo is too sensitive and likely to burn and explode if hit in combat and now you want the front lines flooded with ammo targets for the enemy... and to pay for it by cutting money to nuclear weapons...