Indian Army (IA): Equipment and News

So you are saying that there is no countermeasures against Beam Riding ATGMs?

Of course not, but it is not easy. Kornet has a range of about 5km at night and 6km during day time and Kornet EM has a range of 8.5km against armour and 10km against soft targets with a HE warhead.... it would be near impossible to detect the launch most of the time and being supersonic missiles they will hit you before you hear them.

The Kornet EM uses an auto tracker so the operator locks the target and fires and the tracking system will follow the target to impact... but if the target drives behind cover it is safe. If it pops smoke and reverses out of there it would most often be safe... but as I said most of the time it wont know it is under attack until boom.

An APS system to shoot the missile down in flight.

But flares and chaff make no difference... it is neither radar guided nor heat seeking...

The missile is fired towards the sea so that it falls in the beach. The missile falls in the beach (sand)

Wouldn't it make more sense to use it on land on a shooting range where a real target can be used so its accuracy can be determined.... and its ability to hit targets in the different flight modes can be tested?

But you need first to detect it and like Syrian conflict showed it isn't really easy and even t-90 and leopard 2 tanks got hit and didn't detect the missile. Humans with portable missile launchers can hide much better than atgm equiped vehicles.

In Syria a TOW missile launch was often not spotted from less than 4km range, and TOW is a wire dragger so it moves at less than half the speed of Kornet.

You can't make a weapon totally useless. It was created to destroy tanks and the designers took into consideration the enemy protection systems. If you come up with a new defensive system, the atgm will be adapted to counter it. That's why you have plenty of different atgm created often.

And if you are smart and use a few different types of ATGMs guidance options you end up with weapons very tricky to stop.

Laser beam riding ATGMs also have limitations, since laser designation/illumination activates the laser warners & countermeasures suites.

No it doesn't.

Because the sensor that looks for the laser beam is actually looking back directly at the laser the power of the laser is orders of magnitude lower than a laser that has to reflect off the surface of a target to provide a mark for laser guided weapons to target. Laser warners and countermeasures systems can't be set sensitive enough to detect the laser beam of a beam riding missile otherwise the damn things will be popping smoke and sounding warnings all the time because of laser range finders.... both your own and the enemies...

If they were sensitive enough to detect a Kornets laser beam it would go off every time the vehicle used its own laser range finder to range a target... and every time friendly and enemy forces did the same... it would be going off all the time and you either learn to ignore it, or most likely you turn it off and it is useless if you keep it off.

The Kornet system lases the target for range when you select it so it will know the distance to the target. When you choose to launch a missile it knows the flight speed of the missile so it can calculate the flight time to the target and so it controls the laser so for the first few seconds of the engagement it aims several metres above the target so that the missile flys clear of clutter on the ground like bushes and trees... when the missile gets to 1000m from the target it will automatically drop the laser onto the point of aim to impact... it will also send a coded pulse in the laser beam that will activate the missiles fuse so it can explode.

Hence, dual-mode or tri-mode guidance is the preferred alternative.

You don't want it too complex...

The latest ATGMs available today incorporate dual-mode or triple-mode guidance for overcoming countermeasures.

Actually one of the best weapons right now would be Khrisantema... it can use laser beam riding and has MMW radar guidance as backup... meaning it can operate in a snow storm or dust storm... MMW radar is tough to jam...

To overcome them you can point the laser on the ground near the tank and point the tank at the last second.

For rangefinding you can find an object beside the target the same distance away that way if it detects the reflections it will think the laser came from the thing you lased instead of from you. The Kornet-EM is basically automated, with aiming high as standard to prevent the missile running in to objects on the ground on its way to the target.

But IMO the best is man in the loop wire and optically guided, i.e the french MMP.

Wire makes the missile slow and limits the range.... and means you need to be stationary when firing the missile...

Fire and forget are the worst missiles you can have.

Often the most expensive, and for a sophisticated enemy fairly straight forward to either decoy, jam or otherwise defeat.

Driving behind something is the best way to protect from most missiles...

Laser beam riding missiles like Kornet of course have their advantages but since their max range is around 10kms, acquiring the target becomes a challenge.

Drones can locate targets for them and from a defensive position seeing tanks approaching even from 10km away is not impossible... they have excellent magnified optics and thermals...

Similarly, man-in-the-loop wire and optically guided ATGMs have their advantages. However, Sensors on MBTs, IFVs, etc that track incoming shots at the vehicle can also paint a target on the shooter and activate Slew-to-Cue weapons to neutralize the ATGM operators.

Popping smoke and reversing out of the position and moving is their best move... but of course if you have ERA and APS and you feel safe you might want to try to locate the shooter and fire at them.

Anti armour Kornet-EMs reach 8.5km which is a huge volume of space to search looking for a threat...

Better to pop smoke and reverse and try to spot where the missile seems to come from as it blows past and then send a drone in that general direction and look for the launch platform...

10km for the kornet is good if you have the optics to detect a target at that range. Most man portable kornets would be used at 2 or 3km max. Its main advantage is 1300mm of penetration after ERA.

Kornet crews will try to launch their missiles from near max range, which would be about 5-6km. AFAIK Kornet EM is a vehicle based system with more powerful optics than the man portable model. The missile is supersonic and relatively small... it would be difficult to spot... it is not a smoker.

Firing at the operator while he is firing his missile is a suicide.

From 5-6km away he is going to be a tiny target... very difficult to spot with no reason to move around and draw attention to himself...

Earlier this month, the US State Department reiterated that India must “forgo transactions with Russia that risk triggering sanctions under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act”. wrote:

India is under no obligation to follow US laws... especially when they go against Indias national interests...

So Indian military decision makers (on social media at least) are of the opinion that if India manages to procure the 2S25M "Octopus" SDM1 it will have to go head to head against the Chinese ZTQ-15.

So?

Chinese analysts are of the opinion that:

(1) the 2S25M has a think skin and therefore a direct hit from the ZTQ-15 will destroy it; and

It is a light tank, of course a 105mm gun will penetrate it... from the side a 105 could probably penetrate any MBT...

Do they think the ZTQ-15 at 32 tons... in other words also a light tank can withstand a 125mm gun round?

They are dreaming.

(2) the 2S25M has a gun that is even less powerful than the 2A46 of T-72

The gun of the 2S25M can take the long rod penetrators of the new rounds so it is rather more powerful than the 2A46, but the 2A46 should be able to obliterate a 32 ton light tank anyway...

The gun on the Sprut has a longer recoil stroke to reduce stress on the vehicle but fires the same ammo to the same velocities of the standard tanks in Russian service.

However, IMO, the 2S25M can target the ZTQ-15 from much longer range and will probably use ammos like CLGM as applicable to 125mm guns. But the range and muzzle velocity of a FSAPDS will be less.

The range and performance of the Spruts 125mm gun is vastly more powerful than any ammo fired by any 105mm gun.

Moreover, 2A75 is being replaced by 2A46-M5 in advanced version of the Sprut. So India might get the new gun.

Honestly I don't understand the interest... a tank gun has serious barrel elevation limits... normally less than 5 degrees depression and maybe 20 degrees elevation and in mountains you would struggle to manouver the vehicle to aim the gun correctly if the target is above or below you... the risk of driving down a slope to get an angle on a target below you could result in your tank rolling down  the mountain with lethal results for the crew.

It would be vastly more useful to take a Tigr-M light vehicle with Kornet missiles in the back... you could kill any enemy armour out to 8.5km and hit enemy positions 10km away with excellent precision at a fraction of the cost of getting a tank up there. You could also take a version with a 30mm cannon on board to support it and protect it from UAVs and light aircraft.

Manpack versions of the missile launcher would be even more portable... you could fly them up under a helicopter like a Hip...

For the mountainous area they should buy some suicide drones to counter chinese tanks. Armenian ones did a great job against Azerbaijan.

Even better... good range... can be launched from behind cover from great distances and could carry a bigger bomb than any ATGM could carry for the price...

Long range ATGMs would still be useful... especially fast ones that don't drag strings behind them like Shturm or Kornet.

2S25M "Octopus" SDM1 probably won't have an APS like Afghanit. Not all APS work against APFSDS rounds either. Maybe Afghanit does. Iron Fist APS is supposed to stop APFSDS rounds.

When you say stop, you actually mean dramatically reduce penetration... even if the Chinese tank had a super APS that could deal with APFSDS rounds the Sprut would still kill it because even if the APS got the penetrator to yaw 30 degrees and it shattered on impact the mass of 7kgs of heavy hard metal moving at just under 1.5km per second is still going to rip through the armour of any vehicle that is not a heavily armoured tank like the two light tanks we are talking about.

The reason the Sprut does not have an APS system is that such a light vehicle would still be vulnerable to the residual penetration effect of the munition that was intercepted... they might have improved the APS to make it more effective and new ceramic armours and ERAs might improve dealing wiht the shrapnel left but if you could make a 20 ton tank as well protected as a 50 ton tank WTF would anyone bother making 50 ton tanks for?

My point is, assuming India does get the 2S25M, India can mount an APS on it. But India is unlikely to get the 2S25M anytime soon contrary to what India's MoD thinks.

I honestly don't think it is what you need.

They wont have thousands of light tanks there... the few they would have would be easier to deal with using suicide drones and ATGMs.... and artillery.

India does have a number of loitering munitions. Can be effectively used.

Would make much more sense to give them a test to be honest.

Don't get me wrong the Sprut is awesome.... but it is designed for soft open terrain, preferably in the enemies rear areas where there are no or few front line heavy MBTs where is speed and amphibious capability means it could go anywhere and its gun means it could take on anything at all even the occasional heavy tank, but would slaughter lighter vehicles...

It is the tank you have in places where the other guy couldn't bring their heavy armour and only has light thinly armoured stuff too... together with BMDs with 30mm cannon and 100mm HE guns the fire power would be overwhelming... and being airborne could appear anywhere...

Nice, but I would wonder why they would bother.

For Shilka, the 23mm cannon range is the limiting factor... I would think a PESA radar would be orders of magnitude cheaper and still offer the required level of precision and accuracy for tracking small elusive targets.

Actually I would think the Shilka vehicle is fine... all the old electronics it used could probably be replaced by a laptop and a tiny optical and radar station and you could probably drop the crew down to a total of three... driver, gunner, commander.

With the reduction in crew and removal of huge bulky old electronics boxes you could probably double the ammo load and perhaps add a Kornet-EM launcher for engaging small light targets out to about 10km with 4 or 8 ready to fire missiles.

If you wanted better performance then replace the four 23mm cannon with a single 2A38M 30mm twin barrel cannon to improve range and add air burst 30mm cannon shells to the mix. Kornet or Pine missiles would extend effective range to 10km against a variety of target types... a new smaller more fuel efficient engine with a bit more power should be possible too, but I suspect the best move would be to go for a wheeled base to reduce purchase and operational costs dramatically... some 6X6 vehicle of a newer design... I would think a combination of missiles would be best... they are making Igla-S missiles themselves which would be useful against a range of targets, but some small all electric drones don't have a big IR signature and would be better engaged using something command guided like SOSNA or Kornet-EM... so a combination of Kornet-EM and Igla-S perhaps...

If the Indian product was better... then well done India...

Anyone can whack out a drone, but to make it useful and effective is another thing as the Russian companies found... for years they displayed drone projects that were not weapon systems... they showed them at shows and displays but there was never money.

After 2008/8/8 there was money and their prototypes and paper designs were found to be just that...

They had to emergency buy complete systems from Israel while they worked on their drones to get them up to standard, but now they produce excellent battle tested systems.

It seems the conflict in NK has spurred India to the same action but it appears they have a company all ready to deliver mature drones... excellent.

To be clear about the Indian military buying Sprut light tanks... for operations in mountains you can't use normal MBTs very easily... the altitude reduces the engine performance and their excessive weight makes them unable to move on most tracks or bridges seriously limiting their mobility and performance.

Another aspect is their gun elevation... at best minus 10 degrees to about plus 30 degrees and I am being very generous here.

In mountains you can use slopes to change your shooting angles but it wont be easy... but the point is that the Chinese tanks they are talking about engaging are light tanks with 105mm tank guns.

If the target is a main battle tank then tank guns are critical but against light tanks an artillery shell with a direct hit can be as effective.

More importantly an artillery shell can have much longer range... a tank calibre round might hit targets out to 5km and perhaps 10km with HE Frag rounds in a direct fire mode, but artillery rounds can engage targets much further away and can also deal with enemy positions and area targets too.

Gun elevation on a vehicle like a 2S1 is excellent and you could choose between direct fire and indirect fire with drones correcting shots or providing laser target marking for direct hits.

The ammo is likely much cheaper and artillery is rather more versatile while the 2S1 is a mobile system and with modern electronic upgrades would be a very capable system. The towed version of the gun is an excellent piece that would be useful even today.

As I said before in flat terrain the Sprut is awesome and would slaughter enemy BMPs simply because at 2-3km range its armour would likely stop most 30mm and 25mm rounds western BMPs carry while the 125mm gun of the Sprut could rip right through them no matter what add on armour packages they have... and if they want to sit back at 3750m and fire TOW then the Sprut can fire its supersonic 5km range anti armour missiles and still win the engagement... the Bradley must remain stationary while firing TOW or the wire will catch on something and break... the missile moves at less than 200m/s... the Sprut fires a supersonic missile with no wire and it can keep moving while guiding the missile...

In mountains the missile would be useful too but man portable systems like Kornet would be more useful and probably cheaper.

The main problem in the mountains is being able to see much further than you can shoot.

Sitting on the side of a mountain seeing an enemy group form up for an attack at 2-3km away where your small arms can't reach led to the Soviets using SPG-9 weapons as well as various grenade launchers and mortars and light cannon to reach out and touch.

With Kornet-EM reaching 10km and able to engage air targets would be ideal...