Kurganets & Boomerang Discussions Thread #1

The Armata tank and the Karatelia special purpose vehicle have their own threads. Now that we have some more tangible photos of the Kurganets and Boomerang, it is time to dedicate a new thread to these platforms.


Starting from the front:
Boomerang with 120 mm mortar
Boomerang with 57 mm gun
Kurganets-25 with 57 mm gun
Kurganets-25 with 125 mm gun


From 5th vehicle:
152 mm Self propelled gun on wheeled chassis
152 mm gun on tracked chassis


152 mm naval gun

Some quick observations from my side:
The 57mm guns on Boomerang/Kurganets looks to be heavy and is meant to have a high rate of fire and a high muzzle velocity.
The 125 mm gun armed Kurganets with an unmanned turret is a new concept that will mark the return of the medium tank.
The wheeled 152mm artillery is probably a recalibrated version of the Bereg coastal defence gun.
The chassis of the tracked 152mm is not clear in the picture. Probably Armata based.
The naval 152mm turret is impressive. It indicates a large surface combatant is in the plans.

AFAIK the actual planned weapon is 45mm, so the 57mm is perhaps an earlier model.

Oops... I just posted a lot of stuff in the T-95 and T90am thread....

AFAIK the actual planned weapon is 45mm, so the 57mm is perhaps an earlier model.

AFAIK they were competing a 45mm round with a 57mm round to decide which was better. The 57mm round was the same as the S-60 round used in 57mm AAGs but with modernised ammo.

There is a paragraph at the end of the article where it mentions new telescoped case ammo, and I hope they go with that design because it means more power in a compact ammo design with future potential to increase calibre for more effective HE rounds and more powerful AP rounds.

The 57mm guns on Boomerang/Kurganets looks to be heavy and is meant to have a high rate of fire and a high muzzle velocity.

Yes, they will be designed to penetrate medium weight vehicles like Bradleys and Warriors etc.

Note the standardised turrets so we can assume a shortened Boomerang-10 with 4 or 6 wheels will also have this sort of turret as the standard IFV. Note the models show a front right hand location for the engine with three crew positions around the engine so the turret is unmanned. The Armata IFV will likely have the same turret and engine arrangement with troops at the rear.

Instead of the basic Armored personnel carrier version, i expect (ATGM) missile vehicle armed with the Kornet missile. I would also expect a mortar carrier like Patria AMOS version with Boomerang.

The 120mm mortar armed wheeled vehicle bottom left is the boomerang-25 mortar carrier... there will be the same turret on a Kurganets-25 and Armata with the same mortar arrangement and same sensors and electronics.

There will also be an ATGM armed vehicle in each brigade... likely either Kornet-EM or Krisantema with the appropriate chassis (ie in an Armata heavy brigade it will be on an armata chassis).

Kurganets with 120mm gun wiil propably assigned to Naval Infantry as light tank.
Armata with 152mm will be the next SPH

The navy has already selected the kurganets-25 as their standard vehicle so their light tank will be the vehicle in the photo above farthest away from the camera next to the truck with the low profile turret and 125mm smoothbore high velocity main gun.

Armata with a 152mm gun is called Koalition and will in many ways be similar to the MSTA 2S19 vehicles it will be replacing... only with heavier armour, an unmanned turret, and much longer range ammo with guided shells.

That naval 152mm gun will be very interesting and likely fitted to Destroyers and upgraded cruisers... or is there a bigger gun in design for the cruisers? 203mm?

Considering the 152mm can fire shells to 80km and with Glonass guidance accuracy to 10m then would they need a larger gun?

The 152mm probably uses shells in the 40-45kg weight range, while the 203mm guns tend to fire rounds in the 100-110kg range.

Certainly a pirates worst nightmare... clear blue skies with not a military ship in sight and you are lining up a nice big freighter and unknown to you 5km up a small unmanned aircraft painted blue and almost impossible to see from the sea surface is transmitting your position back to a Russian destroyer 50km away... over the horizon. A minute and a half later airburst heavy HE shells start exploding all around you and you are cut to shreds.

To reiterate I think the 45mm gun was a planned new weapon... it was mentioned in the 1980s as a replacement for the 30 x 165mm standard round of the Russian Army, Navy, and Air Force. There was a 45mm gun planned for the Su-25 and the Il-102 that it competed against for CAS.

AFAIK the 57mm round is based directly on the S-60 AA round that is enormous but powerful and has enormous potential with new ammo types. An upgraded gun and ammo were put forward as a replacement for the 76.2mm gun of the PT-76, and included a laser homing shell for anti aircraft use.

If the 45mm round is a modern telescopic case design that is both compact and powerful then I hope they select that. If they have developed a new modern telescoped case design in 57mm calibre I hope they adopt that instead.

I want power, but also compact and efficient ammo, so lots of rounds can be carried and it works well in auto loading guns and automated ammo handling systems.

This new round... which ever they decide to adopt may in time replace aircraft (certainly ground attack) and naval weapons in 30mm calibre as well.

Certainly a dogfight of the future with 57mm calibre guided shells coming at you will be tricky... especially laser guided shells that ignore towed radar jammers and flares.

By the look of the laptop computers inside and the aerials outside, I would say that was the communications/electronic warfare/command vehicle Kurganets-25. There will be similar wheeled boomerang-25 and 10 models and of course a heavy tracked Armata version as well.

Another photo that appeared here: http://andrei-bt.livejournal.com/154193.html



Next to the tank (discussed in the Armata thread), there is a self propeeled artillery version of the Kurganets-25. next to that there is a Tigr (or Medved) vehicle with a mortar. And right after it there is a Taifun MRAP with a gun turret at the back.

It is getting more and more interesting every day.

More about the 45mm gun >>> http://gurkhan.blogspot.com/2012/08/45.html

Interesting gun, I hope soon will be known more about it.

I don't think weight would be as much as a problem as ammo size. Since the turret on the new unified chassis hold most of the ammo, it's really hard to judge which would be the better gun.

The larger 57mm shell would be a better base for the more exotic munitions, such as guided and airburst rounds. The 45mm would obviously be able to carry more ammo, and the exotic ammo could still be effective.

1.I think the Kurganets next to tank is the IFV version because the turret looks smaller than the others after 6th vechile.

A taller turret generally means the gun is designed to elevate over a wider range and usually denotes either air defence vehicles or artillery vehicles.

I rather suspect the vehicle next to the armata vehicle has the 120mm rifled gun fitted to the armata vehicle depicted and is in fact more of an artillery vehicle. The tank is definitely not to the same scale as the other vehicles.

2.The tower and gun in 2nd Boumerang and at the Kurganetz next to it are the same, so THESE ARE the artilliery gun versions.

But the guns are too small to be artillery, and have been identified as either 57mm or 45mm calibre... which are high velocity anti armour calibres that are designed to defeat enemy IFVs. If they were artillery they would be larger calibre. If they were just for anti armour it would be 125mm smoothbores and they would be tanks. What vehicle needs a high velocity gun to penetrate light and medium enemy armour but does not have enough space for a full size tank gun and ammo? IFV.

3.Last Kurganets is either an anti-tank gun or light tank

Agreed... this is the tank of the Kurganets-25 brigade.

4.Another conclusion is that Taifun is clearly a MPAR vechile

Note Taifun and Typhoon are not the same thing.

Armata, kurganets-25, boomerang, and typhoon were four vehicle families but somewhere along the way they realised that it didn't make sense to have two different vehicle families for medium wheeled vehicle and light wheeled vehicle, so Typhoon has been replaced by a shortened lightened Boomerang.

This means there are only three vehicle family types with two variants... the front engined and rear engined armata is one variant and the boomerang-10 will include 4 and 6 wheeled lightened and shortened versions of Boomerang-25 which will be an 8 wheeled vehicle.

Taifun is an MRAP truck made by a different company.

More on 45mm gun

Telescopic case ammo is small and compact and can be stored and handled in automated ammo handling systems for autoloaders.

I don't think weight would be as much as a problem as ammo size. Since the turret on the new unified chassis hold most of the ammo, it's really hard to judge which would be the better gun.

The 57mm gun would not be much bigger than a 45mm gun, but the ammo size difference would be significant with the 45mm round being much more compact and easier to handle too.

The 57mm gun would have greater capacity for heavier projectiles and higher pressure loadings leading to better performance, and more room for guided rounds and other exotic ideas (even a gun launched UAV perhaps).

So what we see from right to left:

AK-130 (152 mm caliber)
More likely A190 as a designation... it is interesting that this weapon is single barrelled too as there would be no issue with turret size or weight for a ship

ACS and the TLV-based Kamaz
The view is not great but I would say that next to the naval turret is a 152mm gun on a tank chassis which makes it Koalition though of course the chassis will be an armata chassis. The next vehicle is a truck with a similar turret on the back which I would agree with TR-1 and say that would be a 152mm calibre upgrade of Bereg coastal artillery system. The next vehicle is a truck with a large box structure on the rear which I would expect is a support vehicle for the Bereg replacement system

"Kurganets-25" with a 125mm gun (like replacing "Octopus")
So it is the MBT vehicle in the Medium tracked brigades.

"Kurganets-25" and "Boomerang" with 57 mm cannon
I would say either 45mm or 57mm as it doesn't seem to have been decided yet. Either way that makes these two vehicles the IFV of the medium tracked and wheeled brigades respectively.

"Boomerang" ACS 120 mm (Nona-SVK??)
Agreed. Mortar carrier for medium wheeled brigades

Self-propelled mortar on the basis of "Typhoon"
Mortar platoon vehicle based on taifun MRAP vehicle

Self-propelled mortar-based "Tiger"
Yes... likely for mountain units where removing the weapon from the vehicle and carrying it to a better firing position the vehicle can't reach would be a huge advantage. Also Tigr would be able to get to more inaccessible places than a heavier larger vehicle.

"Kurganets-25" with 45 mm cannon
The tower like optics/sensor on the roof of this vehicle makes me think it is designed for indirect fire. As I mentioned above the tall turret suggests the ability for high elevation. Of course if they have developed guided shells in 57mm or 45mm then this could be a new anti aircraft gun vehicle that perhaps operates with TOR or Pantsir-S1. It could be the case that they have decided that TOR and Pantsir-S1 are too fragile or too heavy for medium and light brigades

"Armata "
BMPT armata?

3. Self-propelled mortar-based armored KAMAZ "Typhoon", in the medium brigades also

Doesn't make sense as adding a Taifun vehicle to a unit equipped with Kurganets-25s or Boomerangs doesn't fit the philosophy behind the vehicle family idea. Especially when a 120mm mortar version of Boomerang and Kurganets should be just as easy to develop.

152-mm self-propelled gun on the basis of KAMAZ will find its place in the medium "wheel" all-arms brigades, and tracked brother - in heavy.

So there will be truck mounted 152mm gun vehicles in Boomerang-25 brigades as well...

57mm would be way too big for an IFV IMO, combat compartment would be huge, and ammunition count low.

57mm would be way too big for an IFV IMO, combat compartment would be huge, and ammunition count low.

I agree, it would be effective as anti armour and in other roles, but the ammo is just huge...





Just for clarity the 30 x 165mm round at the far right in the top photo is the standard Russian 30mm round used in aircraft, ground vehicles and naval gun mounts.

In the bottom photo the 57 x 347SR round is the 57mm shell we are talking about, which is a high velocity anti aircraft round, which as you can tell from the designation has a 35cm case length which is twice the 16.5cm case length of the current 30mm round.

In practical terms it means a normal load of 80-120 shells for a vehicle with a 57mm gun or 500 shells for a 30mm gun.

Of course if the requirement is to penetrate a 32 ton Bradley from the front at 2,000m then no amount of 30mm shells will do the job.

The telescoped case rounds actually look like very large aluminium cans with a rim at one end with the projectile wrapped in propellent. It means you can load them into what looks like a large revolver cylinder but because of their shape and rimless design you can poke them in the rear of the cylinder and rotate the cylinder till it is aligned with the barrel and bolt and fire the round and then once it is past there and empty you can blow it out forwards or backwards out of the mechanism. Because it is a straight cylinder they stack level and you can get a lot in a magazine.


For more info including similar pictures to those above go here:

http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk/WLIP.htm


In fact below the first four photos of vehicles is two photos of rounds... the right hand photo shows the 57mm round in question. Note the left most round in that photo is 35 x 228mm round that is in the extreme right of the left photo and as you can see in that photo that the 35 x 228mm shell case is significantly bigger than the 30 x 165mm shell used in the Russian 30mm cannon... though it is still a powerful and effective round.

Here is an example of a telescoped case round:



Note the new 45mm round the Russians are developing will likely look like the 40 x 255mm or 50 x 330mm rounds where the nose is a sabot that drags the projectile out down the barrel with the propellent around the projectile, with straight case sides so they pack into a tight space and are easily handled in automatic ammo racks.

will the krganets have an armored ammo comparment seperate from the crew and troops unlike the BMP-3?

AFAIK Kurganets, Boomerang and armata will all have unmanned turrets with the crew in front, the turret in the centre, and to the rear in the troop carrying IFVs there will be a troop compartment with a powered rear ramp.

For the IFVs the engines will be in the front in all vehicles, which frees up the rear for troops, and the centre for crew and unmanned turret.

For vehicles with no heavy armament like command vehicles or engineer vehicles then there is less need for an unmanned turret.

Unmanned turret is excellent for crew safety until it works. But there is one little problem in it. When there is a jam or something fail, crew must go outside vehicle to repair it. In manned turret crew could do this inside turret.

will the krganets have an armored ammo comparment seperate from the crew and troops unlike the BMP-3?

From


http://gurkhan.blogspot.it/2012/08/25.html

Прежде всего, по сравнению с БМП трех предыдущих поколений, новая машина получит усиленную броневую защиту модульного исполнения, которая сможет усиливаться, в зависимости от выполняемых задач. Особое внимание на "Курганце" будет уделено противоминной защите. Как сообщали ранее официальные лица, экипаж и десант спасет специальная усиленная капсула. Для этой БМП планируется создать различные комплексы вооружения. Называются разные калибры применяемых пушек: до 57-мм. Они и боекомплект к ним будут помещены в изолированные боевые отделения, что еще больше усилит выживаемость экипажа в случае поражения боевых машин.

Kurganet is designed to provide a scalable level of protection in a completely new league for vehicles in its class and likely will integrate ,for the versions expected to figth in the most difficult conditions (the same that will recdeive the maximum level of armour and likely also LAV ERA blocks ) also a new APS -active protection system - claimed to be effective also against MBT APFSDS !

Также, судя опять по сообщениям, которые появились в СМИ, в России создан новый комплекс активной защиты (КАЗ), способный противодействовать даже танковым бронебойным подкалиберным снарядам. Вполне возможно, данные КАЗ появятся и на "Курганце".

The only true problem created by "Kurganet" and "Boomerang" unified modular vehicles is that ,in theirs wait, Russian MoD has literally blocked any acquisition of today models at any level , a choice that has generated severe tensions in particular with VDV and Navy assault forces believing that the block of acquisition of dedicated armoured vehicles (in particular BMD-4M for VDV) will create a dangerous void of capability for two/two and half years.

Thanks Mindstorm , An APS that can defeat APFSDS if possible is really good.

Will VDV get a airborne version of Kurganet ?

I think BMD-4M is a good vehical it available and they should buy it , like they say a bird in hand is worth two in the bush.

When there is a jam or something fail, crew must go outside vehicle to repair it. In manned turret crew could do this inside turret.

A vehicle with a jammed turret or misfiring gun will return to the rear like any tank that has been damaged in combat or has run out of ammo.

If the problem is a fire then the crew will bail and try to make it back to the rear and the engineers will try to recover the vehicle or will set fire to it to keep it from enemy hands.

This is all perfectly normal... lots of things fail in vehicles that the crews can't fix so they have to train for all sorts of things like this... normal.

also a new APS -active protection system - claimed to be effective also against MBT APFSDS !

So Afghanistan is effective against APFSDS rounds! Impressive!

The only true problem created by "Kurganet" and "Boomerang" unified modular vehicles is that ,in theirs wait, Russian MoD has literally blocked any acquisition of today models at any level , a choice that has generated severe tensions in particular with VDV and Navy assault forces believing that the block of acquisition of dedicated armoured vehicles (in particular BMD-4M for VDV) will create a dangerous void of capability for two/two and half years.

That is a bit short sighted... though I guess it is a little like asking what would have happened if WWIII had started when the west had F-15s and F-14s and F-16s and F-18s and the Soviets had Mig-21s and Mig-23s... the answer of course is it didn't.

It is similar to asking what would have happened in WWIII in the late 1980s with Su-27s and Mig-29s all with HMS and high off boresight missiles. (note a lot is said about the R-73, but the R-27T has the same seeker, but the larger missile nose allows a 55 degree off boresight angle of view.) and the answer is the same... it didn't.

Assuming WWIII doesn't break out in the next 3-4 years there should not be a problem.

I do note that the Navy has said it will have a special version of the Kurganets-25 that is designed for rough sea states and with external propellers for operation in the sea.

I think BMD-4M is a good vehical it available and they should buy it , like they say a bird in hand is worth two in the bush.

I agree, and for a few reasons... first the Kurganets-25 will be too heavy to land by parachute. That is OK because not all VDV units are landed by parachute, but the forces that are should get BMD-4Ms, and when the Kurganets-25 comes online the rest of the VDV can get modified Kurganets-25s, and the BMD-4Ms can be upgraded with the new electronics and sensors fitted to all the new vehicles for commonality and ease of use/maintainence.

One alternative is to use the Boomerang-10 as a basis, though these vehicles might be too light for some missions.

Another alternative is to use Kurganets-10... something I just made up, but the same thing they did to the Boomerang-25 to create the Boomerang-10 that is applied to the kurganets-25. You could simply fit the boomerang-10 stuff into the Kurganets-10.