Russian MRLS: Grad, Uragan, Smerch, Tornado-G/S

Any word on the production of precision ammunition for these?

What a stupid question... rocket launchers are designed to be used against area targets or in situations where you can't precisely define pinpoint targets... wasting money on precision guided artillery rockets is a waste... it would be like insisting on making machine gun ammo to the precision and performance of sniper ammo... totally wasted effort...

These rockets will be fired with drone support and a volley of rockets does not do the job then launch a bigger volley.

How to take a brilliant and effective battlefield weapon and make it expensive and useless... get the Americans to make them.

MLRS "Tornado" was created to replace the rocket systems "Grad" and "Smerch" in the Russian armed forces. "Tornado" has a more advanced fire control system and is available in versions of "Tornado-G" caliber 122 mm and "Tornado-S" caliber 300 mm.

So if that is the case then are those 15 tube pallets we have seen on Tornado-S actually 300mm too?

We assumed they were 220mm Uragan rockets but if they say there is no Tornado in 220mm...

There is some misinterpretation in the matter.
Russkie don't help here either, as the number of different configs and modifications of their new systems is mindblowing.
Tornado-S other name is Uragan-1M. 9A53 index.
It is a swap of Tornado and Smerch, and both calibers can be used with the same carrier. Those are replaceable pods.

I think he is talking about the himars-like gps/glonass guided rockets. I believe they already have these.

HIMARS doesn't make sense for Russia... HIMARS is expensive but cheaper to operate than the much more expensive M270 that the US essentially if forcing on HATO countries. M270 has a tracked chassis based on the Bradley IFV that only they use so it is another tracked chassis for its HATO allies to buy and maintain... and is not very cheap at all.

The enormous costs to buy and to use for the tracked M270 meant even the US needed a cheaper alternative... HIMARS is not cheap, but being wheeled it is cheaper than the M270.

It is not cheaper than any Russian MLRS system they have ever operated which were all truck based and cheap enough to use in the enormous numbers that make them effective.

Needless to say Russia can deal with three or four HIMARs systems launching volleys... that is only 18-24 rockets at a time.

If they were Smerch I wonder how a HATO country or the US itself would deal with 4 x 12 rockets... 48 targets incoming at once?

They couldn't deal with 18 threats at once let alone 48.

The Russians have had guided rockets for longer than the Americans have, but their actual answer to HIMARS is Hermes... six missiles per vehicle with precision guidance and 100km range for point targets... they are delaying it because the new models have powered second stages that evade interception and are therefore actually likely to hit their targets... unlike most GMLRS.

Tornado-S other name is Uragan-1M. 9A53 index.

Doesn't Uragan mean Tornado?

It is a swap of Tornado and Smerch, and both calibers can be used with the same carrier. Those are replaceable pods.

The Tornado G, is a grad and Tornado S replaces the old Tornado and the old Smerch.

The two new vehicles are fully autonomous and can roll up to a position, receive target coordinates, orient the launch tubes and fire based on its current position and then roll away.

Their upgrades of tube artillery seem to offer the same capabilities too.

They only made 8-14 of these 4-6 years ago and nothing since so status unsure.

They are getting all the experience they need and opportunity to test things right now, so hopefully they will decide which to move forward with, production wise.

Garry, if you think it's stupid you need to move your mentality past WW2 and into the modern world, especially when dealing with an opponent who loves fixed fortifications.

Fixed fortifications have not just recently been invented... and they have guided Tulip rounds for any level of fortification.

Gun rounds tend to be more use against fortifications because the stress of launching from a gun barrel tends to mean the shells are strongly built and therefore they tend to penetrate better before exploding. Exploding inside a structure is always more effective than exploding outside.

Yep, likely way cheaper for use vs cities in range than x-101 or kalibers.

Too easy to be shot down when the target is actually defended. Drones and gun artillery is going to be rather more effective...

Guided versions of Unguided rockets don't make sense, because guided HIMARS rockets just use GPS guidance so they can only hit fixed coordinates anyway.

New 152mm shells also use GLONASS guidance and could do the same, the purpose of rocket artillery remains a great way to blunt an infantry attack and with Orc and Nazi forces running out of heavy armour and having to use civilian vehicles that would be horrendously vulnerable to fragments having rocket artillery ready to cover entire fields with fragments makes more sense than trying to hit each vehicle with one rocket at a time.

For the same reasons machine guns wont get replaced with sniper rifles.

Targets inside cities will be hit with drones and guided weapons to reduce the chance of collateral damage, but there are plenty of weapon option types for the Russian forces other than guided rockets... all of which are cheaper than their western alternatives.

Uragan is "hurricane" in English.

The same tulips that are incredibly vulnerable to drone dropped grenades of drone directed guided rounds like Excalibur and GMLRS?

Yup.

But why should Tuplips be safe when nothing else is?

Three Excalibur rounds and probably the same number of GMLRS probably cost more than a Tulip.

Drones are an issue that needs to be addressed the west does not lead the way in that regard... the west is even more vulnerable to drone attack than the Russians are.

When it comes to cost effectiveness Excalibr and GMLRS are ridiculously expensive compared with Russias options and are not as amazing as western claims suggest... they are only super cheap alternatives to even more expensive solutions for western countries.

Again, you need to get with the times.

No, you need to stop listening to "Western Experts".

You think Excalibr or GMLRS is better than a 240mm laser guided round that weighs 130kgs at destroying fortified positions?

I understand the unobtanium and the bullshittium they make western weapons is very powerful... but only on the internet and sales brochures.

Too easy to shoot down? These are the people struggling against 2 cycle motor powered drones going 100 mph.

You are not getting it are you.

Russia didn't deploy enormous numbers of drones at the start of the war when Orc air defences were intact... they used mostly observation drones of a relatively small size because as the Americans point out they wont provide the big capable drones because they are just sitting ducks for real air defences.

They are fantastic for use against ISIS, but not so good against Russia or what the Ukraine was 8 months ago.

The middle sized drones like that turkish thing are relatively easy to detect and shoot down if you have the right equipment... and the Russians do.

Their air defence equipment does not form an impenetrable field around the territory they are near to... there will always be gaps, but the combination of jammers and missiles and guns and even lasers now, most GMLRS and Excalibrs fired at Russian forces will get shot down and not reach their target...

Do you get the irony... the idea for guided artillery shells and guided artillery rockets is to save money... a guided artillery shell or rocket might cost 100 times what an unguided round would cost but the saving is in time... supposed to be one shot one kill, and the reduced wear and tear on the launch platform... killing 50 targets a day with one shot each and that German gun might work for a day or two before breaking down.... the problem of course is that if the target is troops in a position they wont be all huddled together in a nice tight group for one round to kill so you are going to have to launch several rounds to deal with the target presented and all of a sudden your bill for ammo has gone up 100 times.

THAT is what the western MIC love about guided shells and think they are so wonderful... the really funny thing is that they still need a drone to find the target coordinates... and Soviet and Russian artillery mostly has laser guided rounds too so when their drone is present they can lase targets for even better accuracy than sat nav can provide.

When firing at normal area targets guided rounds don't help... they just make the artillery attack vastly more expensive using much fewer rounds.

A Ukrainian offensive with 50K soldiers attacking, you want artillery... but not guided artillery.

But then Russian guns are not exploding from over use like the orc guns because they have replacement barrels and other support that the Orcs don't have... for the foreign gear the orcs don't even have spare parts.

Russia will be working hard on new air defence systems that can deal with the only problem drones which are the tiny short range ones that are slow and hard to detect and deal with... they mentioned they are introducing lasers and other equipment like jammers to deal with such things, but perhaps the solution will also be drone based...

That is not the case at all.

Multiple rocket artillery systems are machine guns for use against mass attacks or targets you can't spot individually (ie like in a forest).

The small arm equivalent is a Machine gun... but a machine gun uses cheap ammo in great volumes which means pathetic profit margin for profit driven western MICs whose brilliant idea to upgrade the machine gun into the 21st century is to but a sniper scope on the machine gun and guided rounds... of course that means each shot cost about the same as a brand new car so you only have a 6 shot magazine now instead of a 200 round belt.

Now dicks like you are telling the rest of the world how backward the rest of the world is to continue using normal machine guns when these sniper machine guns are where it is at.

Now for a police operation against a gang of 5 or 6 criminals such a weapon might be fantastic, but when the Orcs suddenly start moving forward and batteries of Smerch and Grad don't have enough rockets to deal with the incoming targets how the hell is your pussy little HIMARS going to cope?

Moving to HIMARS means you completely lose any capacity for suppressive fire.

Not to say HIMARS is useless, the Russians are developing HERMES which has terminal guidance and in the new model a manouvering terminal stage so it is almost impossible to shoot down, but pretending HIMARS is anything other than US MIC corruption is just fooling yourself.

When the US introduced the M270 they called it amazing... it was the first time I had heard the phrase Grid Square remover being coined... but its costs caught up with it... lots of countries that adopted it withdrew their gun tube artillery... well why would they need both?

But even the US can't afford it so they developed the HIMARS... how can you claim that to be a success?

Its easy as everything is late in Russia...it's simple, huge corruption, taking state money for some projects that no one wants,

When you say huge corruption, I think you mean huge bureaucracy... a 61 billion US per year on defence Russia has very little corruption in its MIC.

Upgrading older vehicles with new modern equipment is as good as building new vehicles... the target on the receiving end wont know if they are getting shot at by old or new vehicles.

The new long range systems are the Coalition and the new model MRLS, Tornado-S and Tornado-G.

They have lots of other similar truck based systems like the new TOS and of course armoured vehicles that carry around cruise and ballistic missiles like Iskander and soon no doubt even bigger longer ranged missiles too.