Kalibr missile system

A change of propulsion from turbojet to scramjet and a new nose design... it is not like the original missile was a high drag low speed design...

For all we know they might have a new design with fuel lines running the length of the missile where fuel from the main fuel tank is pumped into a tank in the nose and heated by friction and then pumped back and sprayed into the engine hot to increase its energy and to cool the nose... right at the rear it could have a downward looking radar scanning the ground... navigation systems lose accuracy over time but knowing its position at launch and then flying from a known point to another known point with a radar looking down so it sees any island the missile passes over, or the shape of the beach and land as it approaches the target it probably would not need terminal guidance... its accuracy should be pretty good based on terrain comparison and altitude sensors on its way to its target...

Viktor wrote:Point is 1.8 km/sec is hyper sonic speed. Fact Russian portal is mentioning it means 3M-54E received upgrades since the first time it was introduced.

Who could have guessed Kaliber missile can be upgraded to hyper sonic speeds and given its time already in service if the upgrade does not require any major

mechanical modification which was most likely one of project task for its modernization we are seeing almost momentarily shift of Russian navy towards hyper sonic weapons.

It's a mistake! Kalibr with average speed of over 6500 km/h is not a Kalibr anymore. The change in nearly everything would make it a Zirkon and this not possible with only a "upgrade", it needs a complete new constrcution of nearly everything.

By the way...found no other information. Probably the test was a Zirkon and they wrote just Kalibr, or ot was a Kalibr and the flight time was just wrong written.

Azi wrote:

Viktor wrote:Point is 1.8 km/sec is hyper sonic speed. Fact Russian portal is mentioning it means 3M-54E received upgrades since the first time it was introduced.

Who could have guessed Kaliber missile can be upgraded to hyper sonic speeds and given its time already in service if the upgrade does not require any major

mechanical modification which was most likely one of project task for its modernization we are seeing almost momentarily shift of Russian navy towards hyper sonic weapons.

It's a mistake! Kalibr with average speed of over 6500 km/h is not a Kalibr anymore. The change in nearly everything would make it a Zirkon and this not possible with only a "upgrade", it needs a complete new constrcution of nearly everything.

By the way...found no other information. Probably the test was a Zirkon and they wrote just Kalibr, or ot was a Kalibr and the flight time was just wrong written.

It could be a mistake we can not know but it could be that it is not. It could be that the reporting is correct. How could we know?

Russian PVO missiles have achieved 2+km/sec and as 3M-54 missile is already multistage missile it could be that the Russians where testing last stage with more energetic fuel than

was before.

If it was an identification error then it certainly wont be Zircon... which is supposed to travel almost twice as fast as 1.8km/s... perhaps what was tested was the Onyx with the new higher energy fuel... it would make sense for its speed to pretty much double... from about 900m/s to 1.8km/s... they had already mentioned that as being the case...

GarryB wrote:If it was an identification error then it certainly wont be Zircon... which is supposed to travel almost twice as fast as 1.8km/s... perhaps what was tested was the Onyx with the new higher energy fuel... it would make sense for its speed to pretty much double... from about 900m/s to 1.8km/s... they had already mentioned that as being the case...

You have to account for the accelaration of the misile, Zircon does not leave the launch tube at 3,6km/s speed. But I have no idea how fast it accelerates or for how long.

Zircon would be a combined scramjet rocket probably with a solid rocket booster... much like the Onyx, except Onyx has a ramjet rather than a scramjet.

A cold launch system or the solid rocket booster will blow or push the missile up out of the vertical tube and into a vertical climb... when it burns out the nose mounted intake cover will be jettisonned, and then the internal solid rocket motor will fire to continue the climb and acceleration... but the internal solid will burn until the cavity it creates inside the missile is empty and the remaining internal structure is blown out the back of the missile and air starts flowing in through the front intake and the ramjet/scramjet lights up to accelerate the weapon to operational speed.

Acceleration with the solid rocket motor will be relatively fast, though the focus will be on climbing to thinner colder high altitude air where the ramjet/scramjet will have more power and more effect because the missile will be in a lower drag environment and be able to move faster through the air.

Over a distance of 250km... even a 1,000km range missile like Zircon should be getting there rather faster than an average of 1.8km/s.

A short while ago the Russians stated that with new types of high energy fuel and a few design changes... presumably aerodynamic shape and intake design, that they could increase the flight speed of Onyx to mach 5... now if you work it out... the speed of sound being about 350m/s then 5 times that is... pretty close to 1.8km/s... in fact it is 1,750m/s...

It is as logical an explanation as I can think of... I mean they have been talking about Zircon for a while now... the name is not secret... why would they call it Kalibr now?

Of course equally they might have developed a new Kalibr family member that could perhaps replace the supersonic version with the rocket powered final stage with a scramjet powered final stage that extends the final high supersonic portion to a 250km hypersonic portion... In action it might cruise subsonically at medium altitude for 1,500km perhaps and then launch a hypersonic terminal stage that can now fly 250km to the target and they were just testing the terminal component...

New long range weapons are blurring the meaning of the concept "theater of operations"; Below the range of the new Kalibr-M in some real geographical scenarios:








Planning AD is much more fun when you don't even know the broad vector of attack

...what about the exponentially increased area to be covered by Western ASW forces? I am sure they are loving it.

And if the dumbasses in Washington make a mistake the weapon will appear on trucks everywhere in Russia.

Isos wrote:Electromagnetic guns should send cruise missiles to scrapyards in the future. They will just fire rounds at mach 20 and let them follow a ballistic path around the world to destroy anything they want at huge distances.

Thoes would be incredibly bulky and very vulnerable static installations and their velocity will be limited by the need for the projectile to not overcome gravity.

Though with the pindos current tendency to leave all of the useful treaties we may soon see orbital bombardment stations in space.

There will be no treaties against them until Russia and China get them, and then it will be important to restrict their use and limit who can get them....

Interesting that EM guns might be the best way to send things into space... the main problem is that while the objects they fire remain inside the atmosphere they will heat up and be slowed down by the atmosphere, but the most efficient way to launch something to hit somewhere else is to fire it horizontally... such a structure on the surface of the moon would be a good way to launch things back into moon orbit or even out to earth orbit without needing to use hydrogen or oxygen for rocket fuel...

Isos wrote:Electromagnetic guns should send cruise missiles to scrapyards in the future. They will just fire rounds at mach 20 and let them follow a ballistic path around the world to destroy anything they want at huge distances.

Just supposing that its possible to build an EM gun that could fire projectiles with a muzzle velocity of M20, what makes you think that (a) it will be possible to make electronics in the fired ammunition that can withstand such unholy accelerations, and (b) that atmospheric friction won't consume the bulk of the munitions kinetic energy?  

The ablative heat shield needed to protect the warhead from frictional heating as it rips thru the lower atmosphere is going to be heavy and will subtract greatly from the usable payload weight.

This ain't the Star wars universe...

This stuff belongs in a different thread, sry to be the OT Nazi...

Back on topic I should point out that Kalibr is technically not a single missile but a family of missiles.

Kalibr is the domestic name for a missile exported under the name of Club and was based originally on a massive upgrade of the SS-N-21 Granat... note Granat... not Granit. Granat is the 533mm calibre 1.5 ton 2,500km range nuclear warhead equipped low flying turbofan powered subsonic cruise missile from the cold war period as opposed to the rather much wider Granit anti ship missile that weighed 7.5 tons 500-600km range rocket ramjet powered mach 2 anti ship missile carried by Oscar class SSBNs, Kirov class cruisers and the Kuznetsov and later large aircraft carriers.

The original Granat didn't have terminal guidance and had a CEP of about 250m, so there was only a nuclear armed version which made it a strategic weapon only.

It is not related to the Air Force Kh-55 family of missiles at all.

The Kalibr has terminal guidance and can obviously use conventional warheads , but it has expanded from just land attack to include anti ship missiles including one subsonic all the way missile, and one missile with a rocket powered terminal phase section also used for anti ship purposes.

The rocket powered terminal attack model only fires over a relatively short range... 20-30km or so because at very low altitude the air is very thick and rocket motors don't burn efficiently...

Replacing the rocket motor with a scramjet motor would be interesting as the missile could accelerate all the way to the target which would make it a harder target, but it is hard to know what sort of speed it would accelerate to and the friction heat at low altitude would be extreme...

But then flying at high altitude means you can go fast all the way so instead of taking a few hours to attack a target that almost certainly would have moved during that period, it might reduce interception time to less than 20 minutes which means for a surface ship no matter which way it went it would probably still be visible to the missile when it arrives and starts looking for its target.

Most scramjets benefit from operating at high altitudes which also means they can see enormous distances too, and also means they can move through the thinner colder air much faster.


Of course with AAMs they are talking about cluster missiles, or carrier missiles that carry large numbers of smaller missiles over large distances to an area where the enemy targets are... a group of fighters or missiles or bombers or an AWACS aircraft with fighter support or whatever... perhaps a large SLBM like weapon that leaves the atmosphere and comes in at a shallow angle releasing 6-10 scramjet powered weapons coming down at enormous speeds and with scramjet propulsion accelerating and manouvering to hit surface ship targets... either several ships or one big ship multiple times with the individual reentry vehicles spreading slightly and accelerating as they come down and converging on one or two targets...

I can't think of an application for Kalibr... perhaps a land attack SEAD model with a long range cruise missile section and instead of a final rocket powered anti ship warhead, have half a dozen ARMs that can be ejected to attack active radars around the place...

It is important to remember that the range and performance figures for Club are limited by export restrictions, so while the subsonic land attack Club has a range of 300km and the anti ship subsonic Club has a range of 300km and the anti ship supersonic Club has a range of about 290km... for the domestic model it would make no sense to use efficient turbofan engines to achieve such pathetic short ranges... it is known that Kalibr the subsonic land attack missile with a conventional warhead has a range of 2,500km (which suggests the nuclear armed model likely has a range of 3,000km because the nuclear warhead is smaller and lighter so more fuel can be carried).

It should also be pointed out that all the original Clubs and Kalibrs are designed to be launched from torpedo tube as standard so they are 533mm calibre. The Navy is developing new models because the standard launcher is now the UKSK which can take 750mm calibre weapons up to 10 metres long.

The Russian Air Force Kh-101 and Kh-102 are 750mm calibre and are 7.4m long and have ranges of 4,500km and 5,000km respectively for the conventional and nuke armed models, so talk of 4,000km+ range Kalibrs is referring I suspect to a wider and longer model with much more fuel.

The Club family also includes a solid rocket booster torpedo for attacking submarines... it has a range of 40-50km in the export model and flys through the air at mach 2-2.5... it then splashes down a torpedo within a km or so of the target and tries to sink it.

I have no idea if the domestic model has better range or not though I would assume so... it can be fired from a submarine torpedo tube.

Flying through the air the target would have no warning it was coming, whereas firing a torpedo 40km through the water they would get half an hour or more to prepare or just leave the area....

Isos wrote:Electromagnetic guns should send cruise missiles to scrapyards in the future. They will just fire rounds at mach 20 and let them follow a ballistic path around the world to destroy anything they want at huge distances.

Not soon but it will happen one day.

We are going towards a world where most powerfull people will need to just push a button to kill anyone they want on the earth within 30 min.

US/Israel are already doing that with drones.

International treaties should be signed to forbid those weapons. Contrary to nuks they really kill thousabd of people every year.

It will only happen when the USA gets hit. How close are we to when a drone can be launched from a shipping container and hit anywhere in the USA?

So the 4500 km range Kalibr-M has a 1 ton warhead. That is impressive.

Two hits from these missiles can sink a carrier and they can also be used against bunkers. Mounting a nuclear warhead
with a 1 ton of weight makes them ICBM-like in their damage potential. Most nuclear warheads are lighter than 1 ton.

By now it is only this video that is saying that, anyone knows if they are reliable or if any official source said as much? Martyanov has picked up the news, but data seems pretty exaggerated to me... waiting for confirmation.

Of course it wasn't tested it's too early.

From 8 January 2019:
"The creation of the rocket is at the stage of scientific research and financed by the Ministry of Defense"

Isos wrote:Where did you see that ? Kalibr M can't be much bugger than Kalibr because they will need to be launched from UKSK. I doubt they can carry 2 times bigger warheads.

It has been talked that it would have such range and warhead weight, but I agree it makes little sense if it needs to use the same UKSK than regular Kalibr. If they substitute Granits 1 to 1 maybe this would be possible though, they still have a number of ships and subs capable of carrying such big missiles...