Iran's Ballistic Missile Program

Do they not have the internet... the Russian military have shown me the design of the Iskander...



In excellent detail.

BTW the export model has a range of 300km, while the domestic models range is closer to 500km.

Its ballistic range would probably be double that if it followed a purely ballistic path to its target, but instead it climbs to about 100km altitude and then cruises towards the target like a plane and then starts to manouver as it approaches the target area... it can detect enemy radar sensors and deploy chaff decoys to disrupt enemy radar as it manouvers in to hit the target at mach 6-7 or so.

The air launched model called Kinzhal (Dagger in english... the same name as the naval TOR SAM system) can use its solid rocket motor to fly much faster and higher which allows it to hit targets 2,000km away instead of 500km away.

The Iskander uses various types of guidance options, but most are strapdown inertial to the target area and active radar for large targets like bridges or groups of armoured vehicles (for which it can carry a cluster munition warhead) or a fixed building (conventional or nuclear warhead up to 600kgs or so).

There is also an optical seeker version that has a CEP of about 3m that can be used against moving targets like ships.

Ballistics is all about allowing it to maintain speed all the way to the target... the missile is steered by small control vanes that are located inside the rocket exhaust so it essentially has TVC rocket steering, which means its rocket motor needs to operate after launch obviously, but it cruises to the target area and then starts up its rocket motor again for the terminal manouvering needed to evade defences and hit the target.

The US CIWS Phalanx uses a DU core to penetrate through the nose mounted radar of a supersonic Soviet anti ship missile to try to damage the weapon structurally to make it fall and crash into the sea.

Soviet CIWS invariably fired HE shells to try to detonate the incoming weapon or aircraft.

A large powerful warhead on an anti ship missile can still do serious damage to a ship if it explodes within 300m or so, and of course a very high speed missile can have its radar shattered completely and still fly into the ship target.

Detonating the warhead of the incoming threat is the best way to defeat an incoming missile or weapon and the problems associated with that are enormous and variable.

For ballistic weapons the core problem is that for most of its ballistic flight it is operating at altitude, where the air is thin.

Intercepting a target at 30km altitude and your HE blast warhead will be useless beyond a metre or so, but Soviet and Russian ABM missiles (including SAMs) have smart fuses... at the last micro second the sensors in the intercepting missile can determine the distance and direction to the incoming missile. The Soviets had the advantage of designing SAMs that were intended to engage a variety of targets so when engaging an enemy plane going for centre mass could sever the fuselage, remove the tail section, or destroy the wing structure, but with a falling ballistic target like a scud missile the engine is not running and the fuel tanks are empty so you need to target the warhead, which is in the nose section... you can shred the rest of the missile and have absolutely no effect because it is already falling anyway... breaking up the missile in flight means the next Patriots will go for the fuel tanks and engine sections because they are bigger than the warhead section so you might hit a Scud five times and the warhead still hits the ground along with the other four Patriot missiles that missed it... so nine Patriots fired but no real kills because the five that hit just shredded the empty fuel tanks and engines and the warhead landed on the ground anyway.

The Russian SAMs on the other hand know the target is ballistic and as it approaches the target at enormous speeds it calculates a final intercept angle and detonates its 150kg warhead directing a stream of metallic fragments at enormous speeds at the warhead of the incoming missile blowing up the entire target.

Firing ballistic missiles in volleys makes sense... having them follow each other also makes sense... the disturbed air means less drag for the following rockets so they will arrive closer together... but far enough apart that one interceptor missile cannot get more than one at a time...

The flight speed of the incoming ballistic missile is normally added to the outgoing speed of the interceptor missile with the fragments of that outgoing interceptor missile having the speed of explosive accelerated fragments added to the game.

The target missile wont have super thick metal around its HE warhead... the purpose of the metal around the warhead is to be broken up and flung around the place by the explosion... if it is too heavy and too thick it wont go very far or very fast... for use against targets above the surface exploding the warhead 50m above the ground would spread the metal fragments which would be falling at enormous speeds resulting in enormous damage to things on the ground... leaving the explosion too late could result in the penetrator being in the ground which would protect most things near the target because the ground would absorb the fragments and energy.

For a ballistic missiles warhead of 450kg, having 200kgs of HE and therefore 250kgs of metal fragments those metal fragments would not be a 250kg solid piece of metal encasing the HE charge... it would likely be a mixture of ball bearings and metal cubes in several layers around the outside of the HE payload.

The explosion in a ballistic missile might be at 2-3km/s because of the HE burn rate, but the metal pieces wont all be accelerated to that speed like a rifle bullet, because there is no barrel to concentrate the gas and accelerate the fragments over a period of time and distance, but then the missile itself will be moving at a good speed too.

A 30mm HE cannon shell could set off the warhead prematurely, just like any HE warhead equipped missile... but being in the right place at the right time is an issue.

GLONASS/INS will probably ensure that even if the radar is damaged the cruise missile can still hit the target. U.S cruise missiles probably have similar features.

The difference is that the US anti ship missiles are subsonic and easier to hit than manouvering hypersonic threats moving 10 times faster.

An impressive thing is that those are two different class of missiles. First is a 700km range with no plasma around it which suggests it's not as fast as the second one which has plasma and suggests a speed way greater than maach 4/5. And they both come at the same time as shown in the pictures.

It complicates a potential interception.

Unless it is a very high speed camera those warheads are not super fast, but considering US defences they don't really have to be if they can manouver as they come in....

First of all, if we combine that with the effect of the last Iranian strike at the US bases, it turns out clear that they put a lot of effort to NOT hit them too much.

Being fast and able to manouver a little will dramatically reduce the number of US weapons that can shoot them down... make them in useful numbers and there will be quite a few that will get through no matter where it is aimed at... which makes them very dangerous for the US and Israel...

Time to talk seriously with Iran... rather than at Iran which is what they normally do and perhaps start to make some real concessions... nor not.. and just remain arrogant pricks as usual.

So Iran already has ICBM missiles