Question Thread: Russian Army

Never seen an SA-13 with what looked like one strela missile and two manpads, can some correct me wasn't so clear is was the just the mount for more strela missiles.

The SA-13 was clearly only expected to fire one missile so only one missile box was fitted... it normally carries four or six boxes with four or six missiles.

As I mentioned above the South Africans developed a version that could fire SA-9 or SA-13 missiles, but I am not aware of any versions able to fire MANPADS.

The SA-13 and SA-9 both had electronics boxes on them that could detect the low energy terrain avoiding radar used by low flying high speed aircraft like the F-111 or by missiles like cruise missiles avoiding terrain...

Such emissions are low power so cannot be detected at long range but good for cueing the system as the threat approaches and is fully passive.

Anyone knows what this TY-300D target missile is ? Any link about it ? I want to know if it is a supersonic missile. The igla is impressive but the last missile launch seem to be different from the first.

My first guess would be a ballistic target version of the S-300PM missile...

It was a joint exercise so it was probably a drone target of some sort... I doubt they made up the name... it would be Chinas name for the target.

Of course drones have their own designations, what I am saying is that some drones are dedicated drones specifically designed to be target drones and have only ever been target drones, while some target drones they use are ex aircraft... the M-23 is a MiG-23 fighter with anything valuable removed and replaced with ballast weights like avionics and IRST and radar and fitted for remote control flight and flown into an air defence exercise as a target to be shot down.

There is quite famous video footage of a Tu-16 being shot down by an Su-25TM using the Skhval-M EO system and Vihhr missiles... that Tu-16 obviously being a target drone aircraft too.

In addition to custom designed drones.... one of their oldest is this one which has been in use since about the 70s or before, the La-17MM target drone... from the Lavochkin design bureau... and the more common E95 drone... sometimes called Enix I think that is also widely used to simulate aircraft cheaply.





But they also use their air defence forces to defend against all sorts of munitions that are of course normally simulated with old obsolete SAMs, with the SA-1 being made in enormous numbers and plenty of other systems built since.

The SA-8 is an excellent drone system... it is fully mobile... you can drive it out onto the range to anywhere you like and it can launch up to six supersonic targets that can be controlled by the vehicle to simulate anything you want.

The seekers and warheads are removed of course and various different corner reflectors can be fitted to them to help them better simulate the target they are trying to represent, but especially command guided missiles are ideal as they can fly any flight profile you want with the launch vehicle controlling them... they have already been paid for and as I said they tended to produce these weapons in enormous numbers.

marcellogo wrote:How come that Soviet and later Russian went to a three vehicle platoon on both infantry and tanks, instead of four?
And how they use such a formation tactically?
They move or fire them all together or one by one?

I mean: in he west the platoon is spit in two section , while one move the other cover it and viceversa but with three vehicles how they act?

They use both I think. 3 tank platoons for tank regiments, and 4 tank platoons for motor rifle regiments. The three tank platoon conducts fire and maneuver within the company, so its like an oversized section. Each element has more staying power, and the whole thing is easier to control.

Firstly what makes you think they are not?

Secondly, most trenches built since WWI often have areas with top cover making air burst artillery less effective as the troops can move to the sections with top cover and fire from forward facing firing points at the enemy.

When the trenches have sufficient top cover... half a metre to a metre of soil on top is normally plenty then airburst artillery is no longer very effective.

The solution is delayed ground burst rounds of heavy calibre... the Tuplip and the the Pion being ideal weapons in this case but of course 152mm rounds are effective too.

Simply fire on a steep angle to land amongst the trench lines with a delayed HE blast round... the rounds will land near vertically and bury themselves into the soil by a metre or two before exploding... we are talking about 45kg HE shells with the 152mm rounds and 110kg HE shells for the Pion at 203mm and 130kg HE shells with Tulip at 240mm rounds.... all of which would send enormous shockwaves through the soil... whether it is loose or compacted the shock wave will shatter the bonds between the soil components and turn it effectively into a liquid. This liquid moves like liquid so any cavities like tunnels or bunkers will fill with soil... the weight of the soil means any humans there would be submerged in a liquid concrete like material that will set hard as soon as it stops moving... its weight will crush humans and you essentially would be buried alive unable to move a muscle because the weight of soil would be immense.

The more powerful rounds obviously will liquify the soil over a greater radius and also reach deeper into the ground but the most powerful shockwaves will go sideways which is why the Tulip as a mortar would be more effective even with its shorter range, its enormous bomb payload and near vertical impact means even a surface burst spreads fragments around in a circle very very effectively because the nose has the fuse pointing down and the tail has the tail pointing up but the sides are the case walls of the bomb lined with fragments to shower fragments sideways in a circle to get nearby soft thing like troops and vehicles.

It would happen so quickly you wouldn't even have time to shoot yourself in the head with a pistol so you would be unable to move and barely able to breathe with the weight of soil against your chest would be crushing in on you... once your mouth fills up with soil how long can you last... a minute of two perhaps... how many hours will it take to dig out out... perhaps an hour or two except everyone close by is probably in the same situation you are in hoping you will come and dig them out.

It is like an avalanche, but soil is even heavier than ice... and ice is pretty.

Airburst shells against narrow slit trenches? Terminal case of brainrot.

If your trench is deep enough to hide a man standing upright the only way an airburst fragmentation would have the angles to hit you while lying down would be if the damn thing were somehow to explode right on top of the trench section you are in, in which case there's really not much difference between an airburst and a impact shell.

Of course the latter actually does some damage on the trench itself, while being at least an order of a magnitude cheaper, so you can shoot more.

If trenches were so easy to defeat why would any army bother.

Heavy artillery can deal with trenches but not deep bunkers, and heavy artillery is also slow even though it is all weather day night capable.

Imagine a tank with 900mm equivalent frontal armour and you have a heavy machine gun... repeated hits on one point of the surface wont eventually bore their way through and penetrate the armour... there is no chance of a penetration at all.

If you make the concrete thick enough and dig the bunkers down deep enough then conventional weapons stop being effective, though there will always be weak points like ventilation shafts and entry points... new concrete piercing weapons are interesting... perhaps the father of all bombs comes in a shaped charge version designed to dig fissures and cracks into the ground so follow up bombs can exploit the weaknesses, but most of the time it is easier to simply wait them out... Russia is in no hurry.

That works when you know where they are, but it is easy enough to compartmentalise things so damage can be isolated and not spread through the entire system.

Ventilation systems can be designed to stop water from flooding and from poison or other gases being pumped in... a well designed bunker system could take years to take out if properly designed and properly stocked and they have been preparing these bunkers for quite a number of years.

Once you are more than two or three dozen metres below the surface normal surface bombing has no effect at all... the US dabbled in deep bunker munitions and they played around with all sorts of different designs but the fact of the matter is that the only sure solution involved nuclear warhead and essentially an earthquake attack that fills in cavities underground though massive shockwaves from nuclear detonations.

Most body armour has shoulder and partial arm protection and if they are wearing helmets an airburst artillery shell would need to be very close to inflict serious casualties.

If air burst rounds were so damn effective why would any soldier anywhere build trenches with no overhead cover?

Air burst artillery would need to be very precisely delivered to have any chance of effect...

GarryB wrote:Most body armour has shoulder and partial arm protection and if they are wearing helmets an airburst artillery shell would need to be very close to inflict serious casualties.

If air burst rounds were so damn effective why would any soldier anywhere build trenches with no overhead cover?

Air burst artillery would need to be very precisely delivered to have any chance of effect...

The modern combat helmet was designed primarily to shield troops hunkering down in trenches from overhead fragments, at least until they can roll on over to the nearest shelter where the airburst rounds are next to useless. Airburst shells are also typically made of preformed fragments (think steel BBs) to maximize fragmentation so while they can cause nasty wounds when hitting exposed flesh, even some layer of padding is enough to stop them, so the straps for your plate carrier should be a fine substitute if you have one of those high cut helms.

Again, the point of shelling trenches is not to outright kill the defenders or destroy the trench. Its to suppress the occupants, keep them pinned down in shelters waiting for the shelling to stop while assault teams move into position. It takes an awful amount of firepower to level a trench, but a few good men with a head start can easily bottle the defenders within their dugouts and kill or capture them using grenades and flamethrowers.