Russian Army ATGM Thread

Isn't it possible that it was foreign crews trying as part of some weapon demonstration? If this is Russian crews hired by the manufacturer for PR purposes it was not a great achievement, to say the least...

T-72B3 and t-90 launched both one atgm and missed.

T-80 launched 4 atgm and 3 missed.

Pathetic result. Can either be that they used old missiles or the missile sucks.

No missiles pretend to have 100% hit performance.

Firing one missile and not hitting the target says nothing about the missile... most PK rates for ATGMs is 80-90% so one or two in ten will miss in normal conditions.

The poor performance here however probably needs to be looked in to... perhaps they were not using them properly... a technical fault, or perhaps a bad batch.

Would be true if it was 1 crew and 1 tank. The issue is in the missile or the sights.

I am sure they will work out what the problem was and fix it...

Could also be that it's not army crews inside but factory ones who are not used to fire with the gun.

The purpose is for army crews to show their stuff, not factory crews... this is an Army event, not a defence exhibition...

It is entirely in the crew as it is still manually controlled and not fire and forget.

The crew would be responsible for loading the round and selecting the target, but these missiles are not manually flown like AT-3 missiles.

The target sight should be locked onto the target before launch and should autotrack the target if it moves or stays still.

The targets were pretty easy ones in open field and there were at least three different crews doing almost the same mistake. That's almost impossible.

Not if they were all making the same mistake...

Good thing if it pushes them to create a new missile. Their actual gun launched one is limited. With the new guns allowing longer munitions, even the missile can benefit of that improvement. Longer missile so longer range and longer warhead.

The missile is fine... they are already developing new missiles anyway... the Sokol-V is one... but standard missiles seem OK... these are laser beam riding missiles that use the same technology as Kornet and Bulat, so there should be no problem with the technology.

It is probably a failed batch or the crew that suck.

Should be too easy to use for the crew to stuff it up... perhaps the missiles were from an old batch or the storage area was damp or their batteries have expired.

When you say miss... do you mean got no where near a tank sized target, or do you mean missed a rubbish tin lid sized target representing a tank.

I remember in the early 1990s there was a western delegation watching an exercise in Russia that included soldiers launching Konkurs missiles at targets.

During the exercises the soldiers would launch their missiles at targets 3-4km away, but as the missiles approached their targets they would climb into the air and fly over the target and then dive into the ground beyond. There was lots of speculation at the time... was it faulty missiles or badly trained soldiers... was it disinformation... or were they displaying a new version that climbs upwards before impact and attacks the target in a diving top attack mode...

The soldiers were from well respected units.... there was lots of speculation but I don't remember reading any followup... or definitive explaination from the Russians.

Maybe they were using old stock that had faulty batteries... or maybe it was old stock that used old components that have not aged well... over time clear plastic can yellow so an optical port looking back at the launcher looking for a laser beam to follow might have trouble if it is aged... weaker batteries might reduce the performance of the control surfaces so they can't respond properly to keep on target... I would want to see the hits and the misses and even then it might not be obvious... it might just be pressure.

It could be also someone with a small laser in the public that confuses the missile on purpose.

Wouldn't work... it is not a normal laser beam, and the missile does not have a wide field of regard so it likely wouldn't even see the crowd.

Thry will have to inspect all that because the Pk of their missiles seems to be close the 50% if we ake all the shots and mix the missiles.

They will have serial numbers and can look at whether it was an old batch they wanted to use up because it is near expiry date, or possibly not stored properly.

For all we know they might have tried to simulate a top attack algorithm that does not work with a two dimensional target...

Is that even possible to fool LBR with outside source? I mean they listen to a a specific laser designator that has its "fingerprint" by using a sequence of impulses in which it communicates only with the fired missile, so the missile doesn't pick up any other source.

My understanding is that the laser beam it uses is coded and has four quadrants... the missile looks back into the beam so the beam can be rather weak because it just has to reach the missile and does not need to reach the target and reflect back to the missile off the surface of the target. It also means the surface of the target is not important either...

The missile looks back in flight and determines its place in the beam. A good way to visualise it would be with colour coding... imagine you have four torches in two rows of two... the top left one is red, the top right one is blue, the bottom left one is green and the bottom right one is orange. When the missile is launched it looks back at the beam... if it sees red then it knows it is high and to the left so it starts to turn down and to the right... if it sees green it knows it is now too low but still to the left of the target so it will stop descending and keep turning right... if it sees orange it knows it has gone right far enough and needs to turn back left a little. When it sees all four colours it knows it is on the path it needs to be.

Now for the first part of the flight the laser might be raised a few metres above the target to avoid the manouvering missile from hitting trees or bushes or fences or other things on the ground... as the missile gets close to the target the system automatically drops the crosshair onto the target... with the missile then dropping down and impacting the target.

Most of the time the target is autotracked by the video system with no input from the gunner.

The missile would ignore any lasers outside its field of view simply because it can't see them anyway, and no amount of pointing a normal laser at it will simulate the necessary "colour" it sees.

Obviously the missile sensor isn't actually using colour because the laser is not using visible light, but it can determine frequency quite accurately and so the colours would get stronger the further away from the centre they are so a deep red would tell the missile to turn quite sharply for instance as it might be well off target.

As mentioned because the laser sensor in the missile is looking at the vehicle that launched the missile then smoke or DIRCMS are not much use till the missile gets very close to the target an enters the smoke cloud.

The laser used for guidance is rather less powerful by an order of magnitude than a laser range finder, so if the target has a laser sensor sensitive enough to detect the beam they likely will already have turned it off because even their own laser rangefinder would probably set it off at that level.

Thanks for the update Mindstorm....

Isos wrote:Do you think guys think suicide drones will replace ATGM in the near future ?

They have ten times the range of ATGMs and allow top attack. They also allow to destroy enemy vehicle in the rear when they don't expect to be destroyed and allow to destroy supply vehicles which can't be reached by ATGM.

They also allow surveillance and help long range artillery.

IMO frontline will be a no man's land and future wars will see armies separeted by a 50km zone where anyone going inside will get immediately destroyed  

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Kamikaze drones are niche weapons for when you don't have a modern reconnaissance fire complex or even a decent fleet of warplanes. Who gives a cr*p if a drone strike can disable a handful of vehicles - when a rocket salvo spotted with recon UAVs can wipe out entire battalions at once. Proponents of the drone would say they have near instantaneous response times compared to artillery, but as the Russians have demonstrated in combat, you can expect even as much as 10 seconds from detection to engagement with a modern recce-fire complex. All the while dramatically expanding the combat endurance of artillery units since ammunition requirements have been slashed to a tenth of what is required before.

They are also false economy even compared to aviation. You can spend hundreds of millions of dollars to get a day one strike capability of a few hundred targets, but with aviation its buy once cry once. As the Russians have shown, a few flights can get up to a few hundred strikes per day, and keep that tempo for weeks on end. Drone fleets couldn't even dream of getting close to this level of effectiveness, and it shows.

Suicide drones have their uses and are clever for flying into unknown enemy held territory and destroying targets of opportunity discovered there, but also being drones they will be more expensive than most ATGMs... except Javelin, and will be much slower than most Russian anti tank missiles like Kornet and Krisantema and Bulat...

As mentioned above I suspect many suicide drones will struggle with APS systems and also air defence systems like MANPADS and Pine and TOR and Pantsir... especially with the new four shot mini models of the latter two weapons for close in shots at small RCS targets like drones.

I would think new gun ammo types like air burst 30mm and 57mm rounds and perhaps even a 40mm grenade model might make the task of drone operations over hostile airspace a big more dangerous and that is even ignoring anti optics lasers and EW jammers and directed energy weapons as well.

Double edged sword though is it not... if these things are attacking targets in your rear areas then their equivalents will be doing the same in your rear areas so both sides are going to run out of fuel and ammo and WWIII will be fought with bayonets and rifle butts.

Metis-M1 costs less than $5,000 per missile... and that was export price.

I agree, most others cost more but a 20km plus drone with a decent warhead and optics and intelligence and a decent datalink is not going to be much less than 20-30 grand each... I am talking the military in service models... not what an insurgency force could knock together from a K Mart kit and some explosive.

The main problem as far as I can see is that they seem to be drone first and their suicide vests don't seem to have the capacity to obliterate most targets... I suspect a lot of the time they will be doing damage rather than destroying the target...

And the obvious solution is to make fuel trucks look like school buses or ambulances... and also indepth air defence... a nice wheeled 57mm gun mount vehicle at the front and middle and rear of every convoy... be great for any light ground force attack too...

mnztr wrote:I have wondered if the standard tank structure, (i.e rotating turret on body) is long overdue to be replaced. Instead a lower platform with VLS ATGM and a 120 mm mortar for bombardment. You can even have the tractor vehicle tow the weapons in an armoured trailer for extra protection from exploding ammo. A telescopic mast can carry sensors if the tank needs to look over a dug out. 20-40 missiles can easily be carried and the tank can fire simultaneously at multiple targets

The high-velocity smoothbore gun is likely to persist as the tank's main armament despite what recent advancements would have you think. Its basic economics: a tank round is at least an order of a magnitude cheaper but no less effective against most targets even accounting for more expensive specialty ammo like APFSDS. In most cases its vastly more lethal even, since tankers have the luxury of dumping ammo on most targets to ensure total destruction (i.e. keep firing until the target silhouette changes shape or color). Beyond that, the tank gun has always been mainly used to pound suspected or identified enemy positions, something that requires actual tonnages of high explosives to accomplish, and clearly beyond the means for a missile if it is to be done economically. Its that simple: the tank gun simply provides vastly more bang per buck than any missile ever could.

You mention using a mortar alongside the missiles to do the grunt work. While this might make the setup vastly more economical, it simply side-steps the issue by introducing yet another complication and thus inefficiency. You still have to afford a ton of missiles per "tank" on top of keeping your mortars fed, and that is simply more expensive and an added headache for logistics. Besides that mortar bombs are decidedly less effective for the kind of targets most tanks will encounter. Out in the open the edge might be towards the mortar bomb with its more even fragmentation patterning, but with anything involving hard cover or fortifications the penetration potential of He-Frag shells wins out. Targets like AFVs that are short of the heavy armor other tanks have are reliably destroyed with simple He-Frag too. So having a tank gun is not only more effective, but keeps things a lot more simple as well.

But since you've pointed it out, simultaneous engagement of multiple targets is not really a requirement for tanks. Tanks don't operate on their own and tanks routinely subdivide their frontages into sectors both the commander and gunner can easily observe and if targets present, fire upon. Engagement is also lighting quick with most visible targets dispatched in the first round alone, while another target could be chained for engagement before the gun is even reloaded. In practice tanks are already suited for multiple target engagements and even from multiple directions.

You make a good point about telescopic masts however, and I think the Russians are of a mind with you. In fact they took that idea a step further and had a micro UAV designed for the T-14 fitted with required thermoptics and powered through a tether cable. There are even rumors that with the relative scarcity of the T-14 for many years to come that they would first serve as command tanks to the other legacy tanks on account of their superior sensors (courtesy of the drone mostly) and battle management capability (the expensive ESU-TZ BMS terminal is bound to be standard for the T-14).

Isos wrote:Tanks without 360° APS are outdated. They are just targets for infantry/drones. We saw that in any post 2010 conflict. Hundreds of tabks got anhilated by cheap atgm/drones.

The APS however makes it safe and gives the tank its initial role of destroying anything it sees.

T-14 also needs to upgrade its Afghanit to face 360° all the time.

And of those tanks lost, how many have been competently utilized as part of a combined arms approach to warfare? Virtually none. I highly doubt introducing APS to these materially stricken militaries are going to alleviate a much deeper problem with how they fight and why they take the kinds of losses they have.

Speaking of, the Afghanit APS design is perfectly fine for the kinds of conflict the T-14 is being designed for. Against ATGMs, which could come from any direction, it does have a 360 degree coverage of the azimuth using the soft-kill countermeasures. For intercepting projectiles from tanks and other AFVs the forward facing effectors makes a lot of sense given that these threats are supposed to be in the front of your main gun at all times. The Afghanit is designed primarily for conventional warfare where tanks are arrayed to effectively cover a frontage with their fields of fire, and that's why they only cover the forward hemisphere with their effectors.