Russian VSHORADS Thread

medo wrote:

Strela-10 is old VSHORAD, but Russia modernized 70 of them to Strela-10MN standard with thermal imager and data link. New missiles are great for them as they will still serve for some time. Missile is heavier and bigger than Verba and have bigger warhead. Having more fragments is not that unimportant against small targets. They are still useful against kamikaze drones.

I wonder if any of the -10MN accidentally made their way into Donbas?

They put a K in where they shouldn't have.... 5,000m is the range, not 5,000km which would make it an ICBM...

Having IR guided missiles like this is useful as they are essentially fire and forget, but the new Pine SAMs based on the SOSNA missiles are just so much better.

The first models are laser beam riding, which means anything the launcher can see and track can be engaged, and their flight speed is enormous so they get to 10km targets in about 10 seconds or so... this is outstanding because it means in 15 seconds you are ready to engage the next target even out to max range, but much of the time the target will be a 5-6km range so 10 seconds later you can find your next target and engage.

Laser beam riding missiles against air targets you can lase the target to get a precise range and closing speed so the laser beam the missile flys down can be pointed 20m above the target till it gets within 1km of the target so the target wont even know it is being engaged till about a second before impact and chaff and flares and DIRCMs wont help because the missile is looking for the laser beam back at the launcher, not reflecting off the target.

IR guided missiles are very useful too and should be able to be fired on the move if needed, but then so should Pine.

Both systems are excellent for low emission use and sneaky attacks and while its range is only 5km, the Strela-1MN with a significant warhead would be very useful against higher flying bigger targets too.

This is dumb. Micro-missiles have insanely short ranges and weak payloads - exactly the opposite of what you want against UCAVs which frequently loiter at just beyond the engagement range of a defender. For micro-uavs which are frequently used to spot for artillery they can be useful, but really its a half-baked solution. Your SAM would hardly be able to provide air defense coverage for all the units in a formation, and they will tend to spread out just out of operational necessity so the protection it offers is effectively nullified anyway. The only real answer is a low level C4ISR infrastructure where every unit not even just the AD can spot for and engage air targets in a shared picture. It might not seem much, but modern vehicles with guns and missiles slaved to automatic fire control systems do stand a decent chance of intercepting even the dreaded micro-uavs, especially with proximity/time-fuzed ammo - they just have to spot them first.

I thought it was interesting, it mentions a US missile that is about 3kgs and has no warhead, but it goes on to compare command guided missiles and ARH missiles and their performance differences in terms of a mass attack.

It appears to show that hit to kill accuracy for the ARH missiles make them more efficient in dealing with mass attacks of drones or rockets or artillery shells or combinations.

I would say that cost is not everything, but being prepared for anything is important so I would say a mix of command guided as well as ARH and perhaps even some IIR guided missiles should be considered.

ARH and command guided use radars for target detection and tracking and engagement or guiding the outgoing missile to the target so they work in all weathers day and night and in the presence of smoke or dust or aerosols or snow or rain or whatever.... ARH is more expensive but also more accurate and allows more targets to be engaged at one time.

It mentions a three or four sided fixed radar is expensive, but I would think it would be worth it because 360 degrees could be electronically scanned meaning super fast update rates for very high speed targets or small targets.

IIR sensors and missiles would allow even the lowest RCS target to be engaged in the right conditions.

Because of all this I would suggest a mixture of IIR and ARH and command guided missiles in the 10-20kg weight range with a small proximity fuse for use against very small targets.

We don't know much about 9M100 but I suspect it will be rather bigger than this, but there was talk of IIR and ARH versions for aircraft and ship and and vehicle applications... I would think having a mix of missile types would make sense but with the S-350 system we are talking 48 missiles per TEL, while this new missile they are talking about will have hundreds of missiles per launch vehicle.

With a fixed four face phased array radar and a mix of IIR and ARH and command guided missiles depending on the situation it would be excellent for all sorts of situations.

You could deploy ARH in high threat areas and have it as a last ditch defence system with other systems or even as part of a convoy watching out for TOW type ATGMs and Javelin launches... obviously not much use with an RPG launched from 20m, but that would be the job of an APS anyway.

In other situations it might also provide general air defence as well so a few command guided missiles could engage larger drones or light aircraft cheaply and efficiently... or in good conditions an IIR guided weapon could be used as a fire and forget system too.

They could unify the design so that it is essentially a scaled down SA-15 TOR missile, where the standard TOR has command guidance, while these smaller missiles carried on a trailer in much larger numbers might include ARH and IIR and command guided smaller missiles optimised for drones or artillery shells or small hard targets.

Perhaps a unit of four vehicles operate together each with two face array radars where two vehicles operate their radars at once providing 360 degree coverage while the rest just have missiles... 200 missiles per vehicle, making a four vehicle unit able to deal with up to 800 targets, with perhaps a 57mm gun vehicle operating with it, and EW/DRCMS vehicle to jam and defeat the fuses and guidance of some incoming weapons or blind optically guided weapons or their operators.

This new weapon is a Verba or Igla or double their weight weapon, so 1/3rd lighter than Kornet... perhaps a Bulat sized weapon?

What you're proposing is a concentrated, hyper-dense system when what you really want is distributed protection. Lots of shooters and spotters eventually add up. Even just knowing which general direction a drone operates is enough for infantry to disperse and hide, minimizing potential casualties in a strike.

And another thing - remote operation ought to be a must for tactical air defenses, especially those that have radars. Part of the reason for the losses is that the AD haven't been nearly been aggressive enough, as crews spend a lot of time either not utilizing their active sensors, or worse, they are away from their vehicle. It probably wouldn't cost as much to relocate the control cabins to dedicated APCs so their risk is effectively minimized.

Tigr ZSU

Tigr ZSU

That is... interesting....

I would have thought a four barrel gatling would be more compact... either in rifle calibre or 12.7mm calibre... both of which already in Russian service.

4 single 12,7mm guns are easier to maintain. Also if a Gatling gun malfunctions it´s useless while with that installation you still can use the 3 other guns.

The "Kalashnikov" concern announced the development of the "Vihor"/Vikhr-1guided aviation missile for use with attack drones. Range 8km

What you're proposing is a concentrated, hyper-dense system when what you really want is distributed protection. Lots of shooters and spotters eventually add up. Even just knowing which general direction a drone operates is enough for infantry to disperse and hide, minimizing potential casualties in a strike.

No, what they are proposing with the mini missiles is to distribute air defence missiles across the board so perhaps each unit and even each group of logistics vehicles will have an air defence vehicle with hundreds of missiles to defend the position... and hopefully a turret with a 30mm cannon with air burst shells to deal with drones and light targets and also lasers and jammers etc etc. A suicide drone needs to be able to see the target it is flying into so a laser dazzler that blinds the drone would be effective in making it miss everything...

Everything from shotguns through to small missiles and cannon with air burst shells, using radar and Lidar and IIR optics and even IRST to find and engage targets.

Regarding the idea of making a multipurpose battlefield weapon the US is making grenades for shotguns with 17mm grenades firing through standard 12 gauge shotgun shells.

I think the Russians could do the same but be smarter and use an 8 gauge shotgun they already have in production called the KS-23 which was made from rejected 23mm cannon barrels (when the Russian Air Force essentially went from 23mm fighter cannon to 30mm cannon there were a lot of spare 23mm lying around).

23mm is the equivalent of an 8 gauge calibre for which they could make a whole range of rounds and ammo types that would allow better effective range over the 12 gauge, and a better payload and range for a shotgun version.

Note the gauge system is weird... it is based on a 1 pound sphere of lead. With that 1 pound of lead you divide it up to make balls all the same size to work out the calibre of the gun, so if you made a single ball out of 1 pound of lead that would be a 1 gauge calibre. Obviously a 12 gauge is 1/12th of a pound of lead rolled into a ball which is about 18mm calibre, while an 8 gauge shotgun is a 23mm calibre weapon.

Because the number divides a fixed amount of material the higher the number the smaller the calibre and the less powerful the shotgun is.

The exception is the .410 gauge shotgun which is actually a .41 calibre round which can fire .41 calibre pistol rounds.

Common shotgun calibres include 12 (the most common), 16, 20, 32, and 410. 10 gauge is also used but the most common are the 12 gauge.

The smaller calibres like the 16 and 20 and 32 and .410 calibres are popular because they don't kick as much but being less common they are often more expensive than the very widely used 12 gauge.

That sounds very expensive and impractical.

An integrated air defense package like Tor-M2 that can detect, track and engage targets all on its own is very expensive. They are also not designed to work solo - to be effective they need to be part of a battery with a single unified command and control and served by various combat and non-combat support.

If you take them piecemeal so that most of your army has an AD coverage you're doing it wrong. Your AD vehicles will get attrited very quickly without much impact.

Over on the BTR-82 thread I just posted a new version armed with dual 23mm cannon with a small radar and it uses programmable airburst rounds, this system should be a cheap solution to drones.

That sounds very expensive and impractical.

The cost comes down to what is expended to defeat the targets.

If you are launching 10 million dollar Patriots at each drone then that is expensive and impractical... first of all the cost of equipping all your forces with Patriot batteries and also the cost of launching missiles at targets just make it silly.

With a 23mm or 30mm calibre round with air burst capacity you could find your targets and determine range and fire a burst of 3-4 shells per barrel and set them to explode at or around the distance to the target, which should create a mass of splinters and fragments all around the location of the target drone giving a very very high chance of getting multiple hits with a very small number of shots fired.

In comparison with normal rounds you might need to fire thousands of rounds just to hit one tiny drone at distances over 1km so despite being more expensive than standard rounds the extra cost is well worth it.

You could also use such airburst shells against troops in a trench or behind cover but without top cover, and you can carry belts of other ammo types for other threats or targets like anti armour.

(Has been shown in combat where overhead drones film enemy forces in trenches or in the open used to spot vehicles or weapons to walk their target on target and take out enemy forces you can't see with a direct line of sight, yet you effectively wipe them out or stop their attacks with accurate fire using a drone as a spotter).

These vehicles can be dual purpose systems useful for other jobs that can be used in other roles too... the optics and radar might enable enemy troops to be detected and engaged at greater distances too.

Fitting the 23mm gun turret to a vehicle like the Kurganets  you could have the crew in the hull in the front (3) and then the turret with two 23mm guns with maybe 3,000 rounds of ready to fire ammo, and then have the entire troop compartment at the rear with perhaps 40 to 50 of these mini self defence missiles arranged vertically in a vertical launch system ready to defend from artillery or enemy airpower or ATGMs.

You could fit extra missile tubes to other vehicles or have dedicated vehicles filled with hundreds of missiles ready to launch... produced in enormous numbers the price might come down to something that is affordable to deploy widely... look at how many ATGMs they produce.

The first laser beam riding ATGMs were the gun tube launched missiles and they were expensive... $50K plus each, but now Kornet, which is a 152mm calibre laser beam riding missile has an export price of under $5k per missile... very affordable.

During WWII someone might say equipping every soldier with a bullet resistant vest that will stop .338 Lapua ammo would not be affordable, or tracked vehicle transport for every soldier so no one has to walk or be moved by truck would be too expensive too... but the reality of drones makes it something to try to achieve.

Obviously even when this system is up and running the losses of Russian forces is not going to go to zero, but these things are not impossible.

An integrated air defense package like Tor-M2 that can detect, track and engage targets all on its own is very expensive. They are also not designed to work solo - to be effective they need to be part of a battery with a single unified command and control and served by various combat and non-combat support.

The TOR is expensive, not because it has super expensive ARH missiles, but because it has high tech 3D search and tracking radars that were and are very capable high performance systems. The missiles are relatively cheap command guided missiles.

This new system is likely to shift precision requirements to the missile so the missiles wont be so cheap, though as I have said having ARH and IIR and also command guided missile alternatives could reduce the price while making the system more flexible because not all targets have a radar signature or IR signature that makes engagement possible with sensors small enough to fit in the nose of a tiny missile, so command guided missiles do make sense, but a mix is certainly worth while.

As AESA radar elements go into enormous mass production their cost per element will drop to a few dollars each making radar arrays much more affordable and over time mass production with refine and improve performance as well as reduce costs.

If you take them piecemeal so that most of your army has an AD coverage you're doing it wrong. Your AD vehicles will get attrited very quickly without much impact.

With the modern fire control systems and optics of BMPs and BTRs and airburst cannon shells of calibres of 23mm and 30mm and 57mm and 125mm the load can be distributed to most armoured vehicles fairly cheaply and easily... airburst rounds are useful for engaging a range of targets on the ground and in the air.

this system should be a cheap solution to drones.

The use of 23mm cannon on ground targets suggests that they would be useful for all sorts of things...

Pics are from September 2023.
Gibka-S and radar vehicle in the SMO zone.

I would think that BTR with 23m cannon and IR and optical sensors would be a light mobile cheap vehicle to operate with support units supplying Russian forces in combat.

The 23mm cannon shells would be effective against ground and air targets and the ranging and aiming systems would probably make them rather accurate.

Those are Shilka 23mm cannon barrels so they have the water cooling jackets for sustained fire and it should be able to carry large volumes of ammo.

On the front line versions of Terminator with the same sensors and the 30mm airburst ammo but with the armour and mobility of a tank would be excellent for dealing with drones on the front line while other AD vehicles operate as normal defending from other threats.

BMP vehicles with 30mm and 57mm guns with air burst shells can all contribute to dealing with the drone threat and could coordinate their sensors and weapons to make the area around them very dangerous while still performing their normal duties as a troop transport and support vehicle.

Perhaps 40mm grenade air burst ammo would be a useful addition as a remote weapon station with a few thousand rounds of 40mm grenades could be added to vehicles including tanks to deal with threats on the ground and in the air.

The 23mm shotgun rounds are already in use... the KS-23 is a shotgun used by police and government troops in Russia that was basically made from substandard 23mm cannon barrels that were rejected for use in their primary role. Cutting them much shorter and making shotguns out of them was deemed cost effective and they are in use and the ammo is produced.

If they have a drone firing 30mm shotgun rounds then I suspect they have ammo and weapon designs for the job... the ammo would be more expensive than standard shotgun ammo but standard shotgun ammo is not particularly expensive and would be a cheap and efficient way of dealing with all sorts of drones... the main problem is that it is only effective to 20-40m or so, but putting it in a drone and taking it up in the air to where the enemy drones are is a good solution because you can spray projectiles in a burst at relatively short range so accuracy is not critical... even a two or three shot burst would not be expensive if it ensures a kill.

Some sort of belt feed system would be ideal because of the size of the shells would probably be quite big.

In 12 gauge they have mini shells with reduced power and reduced number of pellets to reduce recoil... you could have mini 30mm shotgun shells for closer ranged shots and to reduce recoil, but the large calibre and say a 2.5 inch long shell case would still hold plenty of propellant and projectiles to be effective.

It would be very interesting to experiment with that sort of stuff... working out what sort of load to use for different targets.

With Shotguns you already have to select the right ammo for the right target... very light pellet loads can be used for very small animals at close range while heavier pellets are needed as the animals get bigger. When dealing with humans or dangerous animals (fortunately not a problem for me here in NZ) then solid slugs and buckshot are your main options as lighter pellets will wound and annoy rather than kill a human or bear.

The Bird catcher/SOSNA/Pine system mounted on the BMD-4 is ready for production it seems:



It will replace the Strela-10M series systems (better known in the west as the SA-13 mounted on the MTLB vehicle chassis.)