North Korea Armes Forces: News

mack8 mentioned a mix of SLBMs and SLCMs.

I wonder if they will make the offer to allow some NK observers to come to the conflict in the Ukraine and take some of their super long range rocket artillery vehicles for testing in an operational environment.

The Russian side could get some experience and the NK officers could get some real world testing and perhaps look at some command and control and other systems the Russians use to organise and control their artillery forces to make them more effective and efficient... maybe they could help each other out...

Well the point is that the cost of the Iskander comes from its accuracy, so an unguided rocket with similar range is not going to be much cheaper and carrying half a dozen on a truck will make the system more expensive... especially if you have to launch 10 of those rockets to hit the target with the same weight of explosives that one Iskander delivers.

Against specific targets I can see such long range weapons being useful but honestly I think Hermes and Iskander are better because they evade being intercepted during their attacks which makes them more likely to be successful.

Having longer ranged rockets that just get shot down is not value for money.

Having said that... take a few batteries with a few different rocket types and bring along some NK experts and they can do some live testing against real targets being defended in a similar manner that South Korean might be defended by the US and they can see how well it works in a real test against real targets.

Thanks to the US they can use cluster warheads which is a great way to make smaller warheads more effective against area targets.

I would tend to disagree these missiles aren't like an old FrOg-7 where accuracy is poor.

The purpose of the FROG-7 rockets was to deliver 250kgs of warhead to a target... with the low accuracy made up for with a volley of quite a few of them being launched at one time at a single target.

More importantly chem and bio and nuclear warheads would be used against area targets like airfields so NBC equipment would have to be worn by the enemy which will make them cumbersome and inefficient, but the use of non persistent chem weapons by the time your troops get there it should be safe enough to operate without NBC gear.

These systems have accuracy normally around 10m which is accurate enough, and these systems tend to be around mach 3-5 which is fast enough.

There is no proof such systems would be this accurate, and they have never been proven in combat before so I would question that seriously.

If they can get 10m accuracy then their guidance is better than first generation Iskander guidance, which is pretty damn impressive... how can it be so cheap?

These missiles are cheaper than iskander they aren't as fast, as accurate, they don't have as sophisticated maneuverability, or as large payload or decoy functions.

So against an enemy with IRS-T and other modern western SAMs they should not hit their targets most of the time... but i suppose they would require Kiev to use up their SAMs against such threats...

The extended range of these rockets means their warheads would be token warheads that would require multiple hits on some harder targets to ensure reasonable effect.

Which again makes them more expensive because multiple shots would be needed on some targets that Iskander can deal with a single shot.

There is times iskander is Overkill.

Of course. Things like SPAAGs or mobile artillery, whether self propelled or towed would not need 500kgs of HE to destroy... but artillery rockets are generally used against area targets that require multiple rockets to be fired at once to give a good coverage of HE and fragments around a significant area to do damage.

Would u use iskander on an undefended power plant? Probably not but if that power plant is essential to be taken out and the enemy has heavy air defence systems then u might.

I would say if it is a fixed coordinate target like a power station or ammo depot or fuel dump then a Kh-22M makes more sense and can be delivered by surprise more quickly to areas deeper in Ukrainian territory than truck mounted artillery could manage.

As for being shot down we have seen kalibr shot down and they are most likely more expensive. These systems are faster and cheaper obviously not as long range. I think Ukrainian AD systems would struggle taking down mach 5 missiles.

You are not the person I normally talk to then... a low flying relatively fast cruise missile is not invincible but it is a tricky target for most modern air defence systems because very low flying missiles cannot be engaged at huge ranges most of the time so you need a missile system on the flight path of the missile and most of teh time the flight path of the missile is calculated to take it on a path that does not cross a lot of air defence systems.

In comparison ballistic rocket even with terminal guidance to hit point targets are faster but also much easier to detect and track and engage because their ballistic path makes them sitting ducks against decent air defence systems even from the 1980s for the Soviet Union.

Look at how many HIMARs missiles are being shot down most days... the only ones that get through are pointed at civilian targets that are not defended.

Now of course the Orc defences are not as good as the Russian ones but talking about value for money they need to hit their targets for there to be any value at all.

Russia has a range of air launched missiles and drones that can get that job done.

By all means test some longer ranged missiles from Belarus and NK, but they have Hermes on the way which is probably going to be orders of magnitude better in terms of accuracy and performance and actually reaching the target to kill it.

I think the Hermes will be better because it should be able to hit moving targets marked by the drones that found the moving targets in the first place.

Having the weapon being long range and ground based means the drone can just carry more fuel and operate longer behind enemy lines looking for targets while a rocket ramjet or rocket scramjet powered missile could move at enormous speeds and be very useful out to significant distances without being very expensive.

Jet fuel is cheaper than solid rocket fuel and also rather more efficient.

I would have to disagree Again. Sorry.

No problem at all, though I would not really call this a debate, more just a discussion between interested parties.

Like in most situations I don't think there is a right and wrong answer to these problems, which is why I think Russia should take the opportunity to test systems from both North Korea and Belarus... who don't have Iskander missiles and have evolved their rocket artillery to fill that gap.

Whether it is effective or cost effective remains to be seen in my opinion... we have seen that US claims about Excalibr and M777 and MLRS and HIMARs have proven to be not true... the Russian army has not collapsed because all their HQs are getting taken out by US systems operating beyond the effective range of the Russian forces to retaliate.

Storm Shadow hasn't brought them to their knees either and the fact that 70% were shot down in their most recent attack suggests they are not as super stealth as was claimed either.

(of course detection is one thing but actually getting something close enough to intercept it before it reaches its target is another and they are watching the guard routines to launch attacks at the best possible time to slip through gaps...)

Firstly you say the accuracy can't be true, accuracy of a weapon as such can be tested in training firing it during combat does change it accuracy.

Accuracy doesn't just happen and adds to the costs of the weapons so suggesting these are cheap simple artillery rockets that can do the job of big heavy expensive Iskander sounds very suspect. If they are quarter of the price then they are more expensive per vehicle when their vehicle has 10 rockets.

New rocket fuel is not cheap so improved more powerful rocket fuel could make them more expensive than Iskander.

Of course these rockets are likely just ballistic rockets so the rocket motor burns and then burns out and the rocket coasts to the target. The iskander has a rocket motor that burns all the way to the target because it uses thrust vectoring to manouver... the tiny external rear fins are fixed stabilisers, so when the rocket motor stops running it cannot manouver at all... it just falls.

But it also means its ability to manouver is astounding like the MiG-29OVT...

Which is why they don't get shot down.... in addition to jammers and decoys and other sneaky shit it has...

Pay a bit more to actually hit the target is worth the extra money.

Frog-7 wasn't designed to inaccurate on purpose it was just the technology of the time.

Rockets are not naturally accurate and at the time even missiles were not particularly accurate so it made sense to keep it as a cheap and simple ballistic rocket because it was intended to hit group targets rather than point targets anyway so a volley of quite a few of them made sense and their accuracy was good enough for hitting large area targets if you fired enough.

Making them more accurate would not have improved accuracy to the point where every target would be hit but it would increase the price to the point where you could not launch enough to seriously damage a large target like troops advancing over an open field.... nicely spaced so one rocket wont kill too many... so you need to fire lots.

If u need an iskander you use one if you need something less sophisticated or smaller warhead you do so. However Russia is missing the bit between 300mm (smerch type) and iskander thee isn't much in-between.

They had Tochka but removed it from service because it was not enormously cheaper than Iskander and had a rather shorter range. It was more effective to get rid of the separate system and just buy and use more Iskanders which reach further and get the job done.

At the moment the Tochka has essentially been replaced by the Smerch with a 150km range anyway.

Anything being spotted further away than that should be engaged by air power or special forces operating behind enemy lines.

They were talking about the Kh-50 as being a super cheap cruise missile that can hit targets up to 1,000km away with precision and a decent conventional warhead in a missile that is small and cheap and can be carried in large numbers by large and small aircraft including tactical aircraft.

U mention Hermes yet we haven't seen it in action (must be a reason) and maybe we won't by the time the war is over.

They tested it in Syria and no doubt tested it in Ukraine but they are changing the design according to the last report I saw.

The Hermes is like the SAM for the Tunguska and Pantsir which is an unpowered gliding missile launched with a large solid rocket booster... the different missiles with different effective ranges having different boosters. The Sosna uses the same principle too.

The information I saw was that they were going with a Hermes missile with a double warhead... 57kgs in total with the original 100km range missile with the missile itself gliding to the target after having been launched and lofted into the air with a large solid rocket booster... a rather bigger and heavier booster than that fitted to the helicopter launched version with a range of 25km and a 30kg HE payload.

After testing and operational experience they decided to make the terminal stage of the missile be able to manouver to evade interception to make it more likely to hit its target so they are delaying the entry of the ground launched missile to adapt the missile to be powered and also presumably reduce the warhead size too... though the ground launched missile is supposed to hit infrastructure targets so a bigger warhead is better so maybe not a smaller warhead...

The bigger solid rocket boosters are larger calibre than the older smaller ones but AFAIK the missile has not increased in calibre despite having room in the enlarged missile tube that would allow a bigger missile. Perhaps they will take advantage of the larger calibre tube to make a bigger missile with a bigger warhead and propulsion to improve range and performance.

As for shooting down ballistic missiles etc, the example u gave was HIMARS being shot down. Which I find us t a great example the reason being is your talking about the missile going in the opposite direction.

Himars is essentially a Uragan artillery rocket... the American rockets are 227mm calibre and the Soviet/Russian rockets are 220mm calibre and they both are launched by their rocket motor and fly to the general direction of their target and then use GPS to then manouver finely to hit what they were aimed at... which means small corrections as it flys to eventually hit a point in 3D space... the target.

Soviet and Russian air defence systems have been developed to hit such ballistic rockets since the 1970s and they are very very good at that.

Speed does not help... the fact that they are lofted into the air makes them easy to spot and easy to track and relatively easy to shoot down with missiles.

Most modern Russian missiles would be very effective at bringing such targets down from Tunguska and Pantsir and TOR and BUK and VIKING, and S-300 and S-400...

Russia has AD network and systems that can deal with such, Ukraine doesn't have such a great network as Russia they are using a multitude of systems nothing it's networked and they lack systems.

Are you saying western countries have no SAMs that can shoot down simple ballistic targets?

They don't need a full air defence network... just locate the air defence system near important things you want to protect...

Russia should not develop and build systems to fight the Ukraine... the Su-57 and T-14 were not developed to fight the Ukraine, and who knows what the west might end up supplying to Kiev by the time this conflict is over.

Russia could use a long range cost effective weapon for hitting point targets that don't require the warhead weight of Iskander but can get there faster than a drone could.

You seem to have been polluted with the western view of rocket artillery as being some sort of scalpel... which ironically makes them too expensive to use them the way the Russians use them... look at TOS as an example of what a volley of 30 rockets can do to an infantry charge over open ground or even through a forested area.

Their biggest amount of AD systems are MANPADS and I highly doubt they will be doing much taking down of such systems.

And do you think the army guys in the west are going to accept there are no funds for air defence and that their air forces should be handling air defence for them, or do you think they will say the Soviets and Russians got it right... we need more artillery that is affordable to be able to use it in the volumes that make it effective and we need massively improved ground based air defence systems that can deal with all these Russian super weapons that make our junk look like junk.

Don't think your enemy is stupid and wont adapt and improve.... just hope that is the case.

You mentioned Hermes but I might be wrong but doesn't Hermes have a max range of 100km and around 25-30kg warhead?

The original plans for the ground launched Hermes yes. The air launched model with a smaller rocket booster has a range of 25-30km or so. The missiles were the same despite the ground launched model with much bigger solid rocket motors meaning much wider tubes.

This conflict experience has already led to them wanting a powered missile (ramjet perhaps or possibly scramjet which would increase performance massively).

KN-09 has 100-200km range 75kg warhead.
KN-25 has 380km range 300kg warhead.
Polonez M has 280-300km range 480kg warhead.

You are missing the point... rocket artillery is a machine gun for use against area targets like troops in the field or armoured formations... where lots of rockets fired at once perhaps with cluster munitions or multiple anti armour top attack munitions can deal with a large widely spread area target in a way that a single missile like Iskander can't handle... Iskander being a sniper rifle or perhaps a recoilless rifle with HE warheads... too accurate to be a mortar...

If you want to turn a machine gun into a sniper rifle then each bullet becomes very expensive and far to accurate for many targets.

What you need is a missile, which is why I suggest HERMES because that is what it is... a missile designed to hit a point target.

The Russians are working on a subcalibre low drag 180km range 152mm shell... but being sub calibre the same round with a bigger sabot should fit into a 203mm cannon with a much larger propellent charge and longer barrel to reach maybe 200-250km... remember a 203mm gun fires 110kg shells to 50km already so a 152mm calibre 40kg shell designed for low drag should go further in a suitable 203mm barrel.

With guided shells then what you need are drones that can operate over enemy territory looking for targets... having long range is good because not all your artillery will be lined up along the front line and neither will theirs so being able to have a gun 50km behind the front line shooting at targets 150km behind their front line would be useful but you need the C4ISTAR to actually find targets in real time and allocate those targets to systems with the range to engage them... with the correct shells and are not busy doing something else at the time.

Having big heavy artillery rockets that are just going to be used one at a time on point targets behind enemy lines sounds like a waste... as i keep saying... using a belt fed machine gun as a sniper rifle... which makes it really expensive...

Hermes has its place, but I still think Russia needs something in-between Smerch and Iskander to deal with the threats in that category.

I understand that and I can see that you might think that these artillery rockets might fill a gap, but I think with the end of the INF treaty that the Russian military will be developing a range of missiles from Short range to medium range to intermediate range to even long range ground launched missiles for a variety of uses.... hypersonic weapons are here to stay and scramjet powered missiles are a fraction of the size of the solid rocket missiles... Zircon is about 2.5 tons and has a range of 1,500km, and it is a surface launched missile like Iskander that has a range of 500km in its ground launched model. The air launched Kinzhal has a range of 2,000km but only when lifted to 18km altitude and launched at mach 2.5, but it still does not fly as fast as Zircon and at almost 5 tons is double its weight.

I say by all means get some rocket systems from Belarus and North Korea and give them a good test and let their makers and military come along and get some combat experience with their systems... they might learn some things that will help improve them further... in the short term Russia might buy some and also sell some Iskander to each side too so everyone gets more options and more fire power.... but I really think all that solid rocket fuel is a waste against a decent enemy which the US might evolve in to... and to make money they will have to sell such systems widely.

Remember the west bought Tunguska in the 1990s... they could make them I am sure if they wanted them, and SA-12 systems they also have...the South Koreans worked with Russia to develop SAMs too... they could do what Europe is doing and buy from them as well.

The Soviets and Russians have always tried to make the best systems they can... so rather than making CIWS and SAMs for their ships that could deal with Harpoon and Exocet they designed them to stop their own much better anti ship systems...

Missiles that hit their targets are better than much more expensive flashy western missiles that don't.

There's a big difference between smerch, and Iskander. And it wouldn't take much for Russia to develop a system similar which is most likely better than the ones mentioned.

So you keep saying, but my view is that then need shorter and longer ranged Iskanders that are smaller and more compact and cheaper.... AFAIK the Smerch has plenty of range for what it is used for... unless you want Smerch in the Donbass to be hitting Polish troops approaching the Ukraine border...

A system with two types of rocket use, a 300km range with a 250kg warhead, and another with a range of 500km and 450-500kg warhead.

Well hang on... 500km range with a 500kg warhead is Iskander already... and they have plenty of aircraft delivered bombs that could be released with glide kits to hit targets 300km away from the front line....

What you're looking for is the Oka missile with a range of between 300-450km. Unfortunately Gorby had other plans

Want to see one go to Hungary...

INF treaty banned them... well actually it didn't ban them but Gorby got rid of them anyway... but Hungary didn't sign the INF and was not bound by it.

The Hermes range is limited to 100km - with the 210mm booster, but it's normally only 15-20km with the smaller booster.

As originally designed but they are modifying the design with a powered second stage that might be enlarged... (it was kept small to reduce drag after the solid rocket booster burned out and fell away but if the second stage is powered then filling the tube makes sense to allow more fuel and more payload).

What Ukro war showed is they need a precise but cheap missile system and not iskander like overcostly missile.

Iskander is an excellent missile and has been used extensively in the ground and air launched versions (Kinzhal or Dagger), but 500kg of warhead and almost 5 tons of missile is total overkill against a range of targets like towed or self propelled tube artillery or rocket artillery vehicles... for which a much smaller lighter but fast weapon would be useful... especially if it could be cheap.

The US Navy talked about 1,000km range EM guns firing ramjet powered shells at high speed but relatively cheap, and I think ultimately that makes more sense than super Smerch type vehicles.

Most AD system don't work against BM. Even less if you have 300 flying at the same time at you.

Russian AD actually works rather well against BMs and that is why they developed non ballistic high speed missiles like Iskander and Kinzhal and Zircon and Kh-32 and more on the drawing board.

They need 1500km range with a CEP of 5m which allows a smaller warhead thus higher range keeping the size smaller.

They are working on mini cruise missiles for just that role that are designed to be cheap enough to use in massive numbers and small and light enough to be carried in large numbers even by tactical aircraft.

North korea only needs something to cover south Korea. 600km range is enough.

Exactly... the INF treaty is gone... why not go large... 1,500km or go home...

Low flying cruise missiles are vastly more difficult to deal with than conventional ballistic rockets.

Of course manouvering hypersonic rockets are also a problem and with scramjet propulsion flying high but very very fast might be their best solution in terms of low cost... a scramjet is a jet engine and therefore cheaper than any rocket.

Here is the North Korean equivalent to the Oka/Iskander. wrote:

The question is whether it is also an aeroballistic missile and can perform many maneuvers. Does it have as accurate CEP as Iskander etc?

Long story short, it's good that some finally realized what I had been talking about for months.
Russkie lack inexpensive striking systems <500km range.
The weapon they constructed is an overkill for most of the scenarios, and at the end of a day it turned out that the most sophisticated NATO based air defense can't deal with lawnmowers
It is cost effective systems that were constructed in countries like Iran and Korea what can make a difference.
Considering purchasing power parity, missiles like Fateh or KN25 would be a great add to the arsenal, however I still don't see why not expanding Polonez production.

This KN25 missile system seems very interesting, as it offers a range of at least 380 km.
It has been tested at such distance, but there are some speculations that it can do 500.

It is obviously corrected :




This thing is a monster, and they have already presented that missiles can be launched with 20s interval.

What is the most interesting part of this whole visit, is the fact it was 6 days long.
I can hardly remember any head of state visit lasting so long.
If it is not Kim's holidays, then the scope of discussion and agreements must be really massive.

Long story short, it's good that some Razz finally realized what I had been talking about for months.
Russkie lack inexpensive striking systems <500km range.

There is no evidence these North Korean and Belarussian rockets would work out to be much cheaper than Russian systems... you have not even proven that the Russian Army would find targets more than 250km deep inside enemy territory that would justify a missile attack that would not require an Iskander level payload.

We can speculate that it may not be as sophisticated as the Iskander but in reality it doesn't really matter. The Hohols won't be able to intercept it.

No point introducing a new weapon system for Russia to find it is useful in this conflict but completely made useless for any other conflict in the future.

The Russians prefer to make missiles that can penetrate their own defences and they made air defences that can stop their attack potential.

Their drones were not that great before but they seem to have filled all the important gaps and now it is up to their air defence to work on dealing with such drones.

Their air defence don't need to worry about shooting down scud level ballistic rockets because they have already cracked that problem.

The weapon they constructed is an overkill for most of the scenarios, and at the end of a day it turned out that the most sophisticated NATO based air defense can't deal with lawnmowers

You make jokes but low flying slow drones have always been a problem for any air defence system.

It is funny you talk about cost effectiveness when suggesting bigger longer ranged more expensive Smerch rockets are needed... turning smerch into Hermes is not the solution.

It is cost effective systems that were constructed in countries like Iran and Korea what can make a difference.

You are missing the point... new technology high energy solid rocket fuel is not cheap and for countries like North Korea and Iran even less so... but in their situation it is cheaper and less vulnerable than air power so they invest the money and resources.

If they were selling them to Russia they would not be cheap.

This thing is a monster, and they have already presented that missiles can be launched with 20s interval.

And this conflict is not going to encourage HATO to up their air defence game so when your new rockets are ready their counter will be ready too... or some enemy that was supplied with Russian systems or Chinese clones of Russian or Soviet air defence systems shoots such things down easily rendering them rather pointless.

Ohh... it would save your air power because they will be using up their SAMs against rockets instead of your planes... but the job of the rockets is to kill targets... not to absorb enemy defence assets.

Iskander is more expensive than totchka u can't say otherwise when I was in the forces I studied such systems the totchka is far behind iskander. Iskander is a new breed of rocket artillery no other system has its qualities and with it comes expense.

It is more expensive, but also much more capable and the use of Iskander renders the use of Tochka redundant most of the time because it would use completely different systems from command and maintenance vehicles to ammo production and support.

Eliminating an entire category of missile from your arsenal means you produce more of the remaining types and end up with better weapons that are more likely to hit the target when used.

The enemy might use SAMs to defeat it but the evasion of those interceptors means it still destroys the target rather than absorbing a SAM and being destroyed itself.

Your argument saying that BM-30 smerch replaced totchka is also false because yet again completely different use and type of weapon. Smerch has half the warhead weight to tochka at that's the 90km range, the longer range smerch has around 1/3 of the warhead weight of tochka which would totally rebuff your argument using your own point.

But that is what Alamo and you are suggesting... that these Smerch on steroids can replace not just tochka but also Iskander in some missions... except the missions they would replace them in would be the job for individual missiles rather than an artillery system like Smerch.

Smerch is expanding the distance it can reach targets and it is getting GLONASS guided rockets to hit point targets with individual rockets... and the new rockets can reach 150km making the Tochka redundant unless the target is heavy and requires a much heavier warhead... In which case an Iskander would be used.

It would be like having a new machine gun type that uses .338 Lapua magnum rounds to fit between rifle calibre machine guns and heavy machine guns... so you would have three main types... HMG, rifle calibre, and assault rifle small calibre light machine guns, but you would add an extended range calibre between the rifle calibre and the HMG calibre that is heavier than the rifle calibre but lighter than the HMG calibre models that fires ammo that is super expensive, unless you put that calibre into mass serial production where the specs are reduced and accuracy is reduced so it is cheap enough to produce in machine gun volumes... but then you would have to ask yourself why continue with rifle calibre rounds when the assault rifle calibre rounds are better for light automatic personal weapons and the 338 calibre rounds reach so much better than the rifle calibre rounds, with the HMG rounds for vehicles and aircraft.

I would say the problem would be the 338 lapua magnum would never be cheap and while they do reach further than 7.62 HATO and also probably hit harder, operationally most soldiers wont be firing at targets 1,200m away most of the time.

You said having to use multiple BM to target building etc when iskander can do it in one, and that you would have to use multiple BM to do same damage would then make the system more expensive well that would include your idea of smerch you would need three times as many to a single tochka.

Good, you were listening, which is why it is not just the Smerch that replaces the Tochka, but the Iskander as well. A target that needs a single 500kg plus warhead to get the effect you want you can use the Iskander instead of the Tochka and job is done. If the target is 50 armoured vehicles forming up to be fuelled and armed and crewed then one tochka with a cluster warhead with top attack submunitions or HEAT warheads or an Iskander with the same warhead would not be as effective as a Smerch battery of 6 vehicles each launching 12 rockets with thousands of anti armour cluster munitions spread over the area of a football field... like the target is.

If you want to target a single enemy vehicle 300km away then Iskander is definitely overkill and certainly a missile that can travel that far and take it out makes sense but why would you adapt a Smerch or foreign equivalent rocket artillery vehicle to do a job that something like Hermes or another custom designed missile could achieve with rather less rocket fuel.

You mentioned different rockets but they have 100kg 200kg 500kg warheads, which is also massive over kill for hitting point targets deep behind enemy lines... it is no better than using Iskander really.

As for western AD systems they firstly don't value them as much as aircraft when it comes to AD.

I would say western armies can use the current conflict as a wake up call to get funding to take control of airdefence...ironically at a time when the Russian army seems to be handing over air defence to the aerospace defence forces... suspect a few Russian aircraft losses were own goals perhaps... for such a move to be necessary.

It was always believed that Soviet and russian systems were too inaccurate to target such.

Yet evidence to the contrary is probably available now maybe?

Or will they simply refuse to change and learn anything from this... wasn't that what they accuse the Russians of?

Hermes has its place but even at 57kg warhead even if it was almost doubled to 100kg it will still not be in the realm of BM systems mentioned,

It was not designed to replace Iskander, it was intended to hit enemy armoured vehicles deep behind enemy lines... like artillery vehicles... so the expansion and extension of rocket artillery range will drive further increases in the range of Hermes to deal with the problems.

Nor is it a replacement for Smerch... it has no capacity to deliver the shit storm of fragments and HE that Smerch is designed to deliver.

The extra flight range just means more warning for the enemy in regards to their interception options.

and would need multiple rockets and as you said it wouldn't be cost effective on your argument point. And as u said Hermes is going to have the ability to change course which raise the costs.

A ramjet or scramjet engine would enable it to manouver without the drag of control surfaces and should be relatively cheap and simple... the use of less solid rocket fuel will reduce costs as would the use of a ramjet or scramjet which would be using jet fuel.

These long range missile would be useless if they were just cheap simple grad rockets, you would be aiming them at specific targets which means launching a Hermes missile makes more sense than launching a barrage of unguided heavy rockets.

And a 500km 500kg warhead BM isn't iskander because iskander goes one step further and adds a host of other addins such as decoys being able to change course, higher speed, increase in speed in terminal phase, higher accuracy things that a normal BM doesn't have. And Iskander has a considerable higher warhead weight to 500kg, around 200-300kg more (700-800kg)

AFAIK the massive weight of the Iskander is because it uses thrust vectoring to control its flight. The tiny fins are fixed and are used to stabilise the missile... for the missile to hit the target it has to have its rocket motor operating otherwise it can't turn.

Assuming it accelerated to top speed instantly and flew at that speed all the way to its target 500km away, which is speculated to be mach 7 for the ground launched missile means that 350m/s times 7 equals 2450m/s times 60 equals 147000m/minute, so it is travelling at 147km per minute, so this rocket motor has to burn for a bare minimum of 500 divided by 147 which is about 3 minutes and about 20 second, but the missile doesn't accelerate to mach 7 instantly and it also has to climb to altitude too, which means its rocket motor will probably be burning for at least 5 minutes from launch to impact.

That is why it is almost 5 tons... because it needs a lot of rocket fuel and it needs to carry half a ton payload with it.

With rockets if you reduce the payload and reduce the dead weight you can massively improve flight performance... speed and range.

Using the latest rocket fuels you could massively increase flight range simply by not demanding the missile flys all the way to the target with its rocket motor going.

Tochka had rear mounted control grid fins which increased drag but allowed it to manouver after the rocket motor had burned out.

Fins that deploy after launch with a vectored rocket motor to steer in low drag mode till it gets close to the target would maximise range and performance.

Old Smerch rockets are about 800kgs each with a 100kg warhead and a flight range of 90km... but they have been in production since the 1980s... improvements in rocket fuel and materials should allow massive improvements in performance to be possible... but they had Tochka and Islander so had no need in the past.

These days with their modern C4ISTAR capabilities there might be a role for a missile system that can hit mobile high priority targets at extended ranges but adopting foreign artillery rockets sounds a bit short sighted.

Certainly test them and let them test your Iskanders too, but North Korean needs are very specific and I would say don't get too fixated with Ukraine... Russia could use scramjet technology to massively increase the range and speed of its missiles much cheaper than brand new high energy solid rocket fuel could manage... a tiny solid rocket booster to get a missile airborne plus a scramjet motor could carry missiles thousands of kms.

Their air force is working on a cheap light cruise missile for small targets using a 100kg HE warhead with precision to make it effective against a range of targets... with a range of up to 1,500km.... why not use a ground launched version of that... part of its design is low cost and low flying threats are hardest to spot early.

With ballistic threats the longer the range the earlier everyone is going to see your launch.

The extended range of 152mm is also completely different and you would need a high volume of these to match such and they would be more expensive and wouldn't have as long range, and multiple systems needed to deliver the shells in a timely manner. But these types of shells do have their place but not as a replacement for what is mentioned.

I would disagree. A 152mm calibre artillery system would be more use than a rocket system... they both launch a HE payload with some sort of terminal guidance package attached... the amount of fuel a 152mm artillery system would use to launch those payloads towards the target would be a fraction of what a rocket would use because it is simply more efficient to deliver with a gun than with a rocket or missile.

A battery of 6 vehicles firing 10 plus shells per minute at a target 150km away would be devastating and hard to defend against.

A naval version would be even more devastating because it would probably fire four or five times faster.

With ground based vehicles the attack could be coordinated so all the shells land at once on target and those guns could be several kilometres apart and after they finish firing can scatter.

More importantly the first shell they fire could deliver a drone that operates over the target area and monitors the attack in case the drone that found the targets in the first place is shot down.

As for speed not being a factor is wrong. Speed affects detection, reaction times and intercept, the faster the missile the harder it is to take down.

For Soviet and Russian air defences a ballistic rocket can't go fast enough to defeat their air defence systems reliably... unless you are launching rockets on civilian targets that are not defended most will be shot down.

Interception speeds for BUK and Viking and S-350 are all above 3km/s... S-400 is 4.8km/s.

Some of which is Mach 3, now if a BM missile is coming at you which is Mach 5-6 then that system has a higher chance of unlikely to intercept it. Speed matters, even if they detect it, they still have to track, react, and intercept it, and that's if they even have a system within range,

With a dumb falling BM that does not have sensors to detect incoming interceptor missiles or air defence radar locations and does not have jammers and decoys it can release and it does not have thrust vectoring and a manouver capability to evade incoming interceptors, should be intercepted every time by PAC-3 Patriot because that is exactly what it was designed to intercept.

THAAD should also defeat such things though the idea of using THAAD and PAC-3 against artillery rockets is like using a rolls royce to plough a field....

With the rest of their AD systems if they ignore all the lessons from this conflict and continue to be air power based then everything will be fine as long as every Russia gets involved with is armed by the west... but what if they are armed by Russia or China or Belarus or South Korea or a country that learns lessons properly and improves their air defences accordingly.

It would not be impossible for them to swallow their pride and put a TOR or Pantsir or S-350 into service... the latter is essentially in production in South Korea....

Precise but cheap? It's like you want the business class ticket in economy price. Precision isn't free or cheap. Iskander isn't overcostly either. It costs exactly as it performs. The cost is due to the very precision you mentioned + the missile defense evasion system.

If Iskander was excessively expensive they would have kept the Tochka too. It is not free but it is widely deployed and seems to have been produced in decent numbers while spending 65 billion or less per year on their military... though probably slightly more at the moment... but considering in a year and a half and used against Ukraines old Soviet air defence stuff and HATOs new air defence stuff and they clearly have not shot down a single missile suggests it is value for money.

Storm Shadow has been in use for a fraction of the time and has been shot down quite often...

CEP of 5m 1500km away but cheap, ok.

Old missiles were super accurate too... you just need a tube of nano polish to rub on the missile and lube it up so the marketing department can shove it up the buyers arse... accuracy to make your eyes water...

Wasn't everyone confirmed last year that Iranian "cheap" missiles are about to come in service in the Russian army, like they are already on front line waiting to be fired?

At a time when Russia had no drones and should be buying Iranian drones then all of a sudden we find they had such drones and they were produced under licence in Russia by Russian factories using Russian parts...

A bit like the US saying they have to send cluster munitions to Kiev because they are running out of conventional shells and the next day Kiev starts using these shells...

Btw got any idea about the "Geran-25 surveillance drone"?

They have a big warhead... could replace with camera and other equipment for surveillance.

No BM is going to be cheap, but will most likely be cheaper than Iskander.

Iskander was designed to hit targets that are properly defended so the extra cost is justified.

If this was all a real issue they could redesign the Iskander to be just a more conventional rocket without thrust vectoring so it could coast most of the way and could be 1 ton or 2 tons instead of almost 5 tons, with control surfaces that deploy as it gets closer to the target area and steer to hit the target.

It would be much cheaper and you could halve the weight of the warhead too which would probably allow it to reach rather further.

A 5 ton solid fuelled rocket that just coasts to its target like normal ballistic missiles do should have a 2,000km plus range... but would be rather easier to shoot down.

As for cheap there's a difference between cheap and cheaper. No BM is going to be cheap, but will most likely be cheaper than Iskander. It would be as accurate or have all the various tech it has, but a decent range, decent warhead, and a speed of around Mach 5-6 should be sufficient. Pin point accuracy isn't needed. 10-20m would be enough.

So what are the targets such cheaper missiles will be engaging... that would make accuracy and payload requirements easier to assess...