Iskander-M/K (SS-26 Stone):

Here is the pitch control nozzle again - circled in red.

Here is another view of the thrusters also marked in red. The round decoy dispensers are visible right next to it marked in yellow.

ALAMO wrote:
It was made at the factory with ongoing production, which is why I consider the fact that Russkie are making a dumber version of Iskander as the full option proved overkill.
You can see the lack of decoy dispensers.
Steering rudders are made in a different technology, but that solution was clearly being used in full option missiles as well. Maybe it represents a change in technology or a different subcontractors.

As far as I know the decision to produce a cheaper version of the Iskander for the Russian Army was made very recently during the SMO. It may well be the Iskander-E that they opted for?

However the video clip you've shown was made well before the SMO. The Combat Approved video has been on my PC since 18 April 2021.
I have the English version. You may have the Russian version - which will probably be much older than the English version.

Here is a screenshot from my PC of the video clip but showing a bit more info - just to show I did not copy and paste your video clip.  



I'm pretty sure that the factory produce these "E" missiles for their export clients?

From the same video showing the Iskander's (blue line) ability to maneuver during it's flight envelope to evade enemy missiles. The red dotted line represents the edge of the atmosphere. As I've shown earlier the Iskander-M does have two possible flight paths. The other is atmospheric flight path.



It is pretty clear why the Iskander-E does not have these thrusters. It is very short ranged (280km) and never leaves the atmosphere.

ALAMO wrote:
It was supplied to Armenia, Algeria and Belarus.
As far as Belarus operates the same systems as the Russian army, it would have been a serious overkill for both A's.

On the contrary, I actually believe that with the end of the INF Treaty and due to the Iskander's success during the SMO, the export version will very soon be similar to the "M" - if not already!

It was the INF that prohibited Russia from exporting any SSM with a range exceeding 280 (or whatever) kms. Legally that restriction does not apply anymore.

If you are going to make a missile cheaper by making it simpler then removing all the secret stuff that goes on the Russian missile would be an obvious start.

In addition to making it cheaper they likely also likely also took the opportunity to look at ways of extending range and one of those options would be a simple ballistic modification to the flight profile to further extend range. It is normal to add a ballistic flight path to a missile to maximise range... in long range AAM for example.

New fuels and enlarging the solid rocket motor and changing the shape... the long nose of the Iskander is because it normally flys through the atmosphere so it needs to be aerodynamic at a mach 6-7 speed and 50-60km altitude, but if you are going to use it ballistically leaving the atmosphere then aerodynamic shape is not so important... that tiny side thruster Mir keeps showing is not for manouvering to evade air defences it will be to tip over the nose so the missile is pointing down as it flys over its parabolic flight path in space where no control surface would do anything. If they didn't have a small gas thruster in the rear to roll the missile over it would come down sideways and rip itself apart as the air got thicker.

The photo shows that these are ballistic trajectories with possible maneuvers in the terminal phase, etc. So it is more of a quasiballistic than a maneuvering missile.

During that ballistic phase outside the atmosphere the missile would be horribly vulnerable to interception by any missile system designed to intercept targets outside the atmosphere... and that includes THAAD and Patriot PAC-3 AFAIK.

That out of atmosphere flight portion would only be used to extend flight range and would likely extend the flight range beyond 500km which would be illegal under the INF treaty.

On the contrary, I actually believe that with the end of the INF Treaty and due to the Iskander's success during the SMO, the export version will very soon be similar to the "M" - if not already!

The west has violated a lot of very strict international agreements on the export of missiles... especially ATGM and MANPADS... which of course serves western purposes by limiting the amount of such weapons in the hands of the third world countries they invade and bully.

I suspect, considering the extreme cost of effective SAMs (and the current lack of decent SAMs) in the west that Russia might sell a couple of types of Iskander... a more capable, but more expensive model to defeat enemy air defences and a cheaper model to exploit the defeat of those defences and to hammer enemy targets more affordably.

And why wouldn't they?

GarryB wrote:During that ballistic phase outside the atmosphere the missile would be horribly vulnerable to interception by any missile system designed to intercept targets outside the atmosphere... and that includes THAAD and Patriot PAC-3 AFAIK.

All those missiles you mentioned above - and also the long range SM-6 can only intercept incoming ballistic missiles in the terminal/re-entry phase. So they can only interception when the Iskander gets back into the atmosphere. Problem is that the Iskander can pull up to 35 G's which makes it impossible for these missiles to actually intercept the Iskander.

The acronym THAAD = Terminal High Altitude Area Defense. It used to be "Theater".

GarryB wrote:That out of atmosphere flight portion would only be used to extend flight range and would likely extend the flight range beyond 500km which would be illegal under the INF treaty.

INF does not count.

But yes the outer space flight envelope will enable the missile to reach it's maximum range.

All those missiles you mentioned above - and also the long range SM-6 can only intercept incoming ballistic missiles in the terminal/re-entry phase.

Well the claims made about the PAC-3 and THAAD vs the S-400 regarding the Indian market was that the American systems were hit to kill weapons and could hit targets outside the atmosphere, which made them superior we were told at the time.

Claims of interception altitudes up to 185km height were made for some western systems... if it wasn't THAAD then it could have been Aster.

SM-6 is a two stage mid course interceptor isn't it?

Otherwise basing them in Poland would be rather pointless because they wont be defending Poland from Russia attack, they were intended to intercept missiles heading to parts of the US where the missiles would fly across Europe to get there.

The US AEGIS based ABM system uses missiles that can intercept targets outside the atmosphere....

According to this Wiki page:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_anti-ballistic_missile_systems

The US has THAAD (150km altitude) and SM-3 (160km+), India has the Prithvi ADV Phase I (180km), and of course the GBI mid course interception missile.

The SM-3 is supposed to be used on AEGIS ships operating in the arctic, so that would be midcourse interception too.

The acronym THAAD = Terminal High Altitude Area Defense. It used to be "Theater".

And was developed specifically to defeat improved Scuds and their Tochka and Iskander replacements... but didn't anticipate a manouvering threat with the sensor equipment on board to detect incoming ARH equipped interceptor missiles.

INF does not count.

It doesn't count now, but for most of the operational life of the missile it was a requirement they had to follow.

But yes the outer space flight envelope will enable the missile to reach it's maximum range.

The outer space phase is totally predictable and easy to calculate and would allow interceptors to intercept the weapon as it enters the atmosphere before it can get full flight control and be able to evade interceptors.

There is nothing saying that the missile cannot perform evasive maneuvers in the exoatmospheric phase of flight. The missile could infact have a slow burning sustainer that takes over after the high energy fuel if burnt up. This would allow it to perform reasonable maneuvers outside the atmosphere.

@GarryB

It is one thing to be able to engage a target out in space that has a predictable path and time table - like a satellite. It is a completely other ball game with the Iskander traveling at high speed through space for a few seconds until it re-enters the atmosphere. The only way they can catch the Iskander is when it get's launched from the ground and that is virtually impossible anyway unless they know the launch position.

I think the SMO proved beyond any doubt that the Iskander is impossible for any western air defense missile to intercept.

Not so with the Russian systems

It is one thing to be able to engage a target out in space that has a predictable path and time table - like a satellite. It is a completely other ball game with the Iskander traveling at high speed through space for a few seconds until it re-enters the atmosphere. The only way they can catch the Iskander is when it get's launched from the ground and that is virtually impossible anyway unless they know the launch position.

So ATACMS is flying at perhaps mach 3 to mach 4, is that also too fast to intercept because there is not enough time?

To be clear a purely ballistic target with even greater range than the Iskander can easily be shot down, in fact S-300V models of the latest versions can shoot down 4.5km/s targets, and S-400 can hit 4.8km/s targets, while S-500 supposedly is able to hit 7km/s targets... will these targets give an hours warning?

Ironically the version of Iskander that gives the most warning would be Kinzhal because when a MIG-31 takes off you can put your air defence systems on alert.

The ability of weapons to hit things outside the atmosphere is the same problem for ballistic warheads and satellites... manouvering in a vacuum requires different control surfaces and thrust options.

I seem to remember seeing a model of an R-77 with the small triangular wings for internal carriage and low drag long range flight that had a mesh of side thruster rockets just behind the warhead... the idea being that in the last milisecond of the interception the seeker will continue to track the target but the tiny control fins might not be able to turn the missile far enough and fast enough to get a direct hit... hense firing rockets on one side of the missile to shunt it closer to the target before the warhead explodes is the solution to that problem... the rocket thrusters have a fixed and known thrust rating and so the distance the missile is missile will determine the number and position of the side thruster rockets that are fired and when.

From the sublime to the ridiculous... the US ATGM that the Javelin replaced was called the Dragon III, and it had only side thruster rockets... I seem to remember about 60 of them. The missile was blown forward and out of the tube and the rolling missile fired off two rocket stubs that happened to be aligned with the bottom at the time as the missile rolled in flight. Any course corrections would also result in the ignition of a side positioned rocket thruster to steer one way or another. As you can imagine its range was barely 1.2km and a bad operator that can't hold the sight steady, the missile can run out of rockets before it reaches its target and just flys into the ground.

It was a terrible design, so I understand why they like Javelin despite all its problems and costs.

A missile in space also has to deal with the problem of centre of gravity because the dragon III was kept point forward by its fins and the airflow over it, but in a vaccuum side thrusters near the rear would likely spin the missile to a funny angle... which wont matter in the vaccuum, but the missile would need to be corrected to be pointing point forward when to comes down into the atmosphere... too shallow an angle and it might skip back into space, or just enter sideways and be ripped to pieces in the sideways mach 7 airflow.

Most air defence systems get little warning... drones and cruise missiles might not be detected till they are very close... they still get shot down.

GarryB wrote:So ATACMS is flying at perhaps mach 3 to mach 4, is that also too fast to intercept because there is not enough time?

Maybe you did not read my post till the end - or you misunderstood?
The very last sentence...

Mir wrote:Not so with the Russian systems  

Meaning that the Russian AD systems can do such interceptions whilst no western system is capable of doing so.

In fact Israel can be considered as having the most power layered AD system in "The West" but even they have shown to have failed miserably against old but modified Scud technology. On the other hand Russian AD proved to be very capable of destroying any ballistic threats.

Arrow wrote:

Israel was hit by 200 ballistic missiles. No AD system can defend against that. Russian AD has never been in that situation. That is, it has not defended itself against a simultaneous attack of 200 ballistic missiles. A maximum of a hundred drones, decoys, and cruise missiles. The Russians have vast experience in intercepting ballistic missiles and would probably do better. However, 200 such missiles can saturate even the most heavily defended areas in Russia.

Saturation is a good point, but by just looking at the dismal interception rate the Israelis achieved from actual live footage all over the net - their systems performed poorly. I think I saw about three actual interceptions vs the so called 200 missiles? The sheer number of successful impacts on the ground proves the point.That is well below par in my book. If the system was any good you would have at least seen a good couple of interceptions - but there were virtually none against old SRBM tech. Very few SRBM's were actually hypersonic.

200 incoming targets is a large number but with modern day high speed processors and multiple radars systems one would have expected better results against 1980's missiles.

A single 91N6 type surveillance and tracking radar for the S-300, 400 and 500 AD systems can track at least 300 targets. Many other types of surveillance radars can also be integrated into the system as well.

Meaning that the Russian AD systems can do such interceptions whilst no western system is capable of doing so.

I would argue that a US naval carrier group with AEGIS cruisers and full supporting cruisers etc etc would be capable of intercepting weapons moving that fast, but not necessarily also manouvering targets... which they clearly didn't anticipate as being a problem.

Their Army based defences are pathetic...

Israel was hit by 200 ballistic missiles. No AD system can defend against that. Russian AD has never been in that situation.

You say that with such confidence, but the reality is that a real AD is not one air defence missile battery trying to cover an entire country... those 200 ballistic missiles will be aimed at probably 40-50 targets, which means probably 4-5 missiles per target, which is easily defeatable with S-300 level missiles, and the S-300 is being repalaced with the S-350 with rather more missiles each with ARH so they can engage rather more threats on their own.

Every Soviet or Russian AD missile has been replaced with a system that uses more missiles ready to fire, often smaller and lighter and often cheaper eventually if not initially.

The SA-9 has four missiles, the SA-13 has 6, the SA-19 has 8, the SA-22 has 12... and also the option for quad pack mini anti drone missiles for a potential 48.

The SA-8 had 6 missiles ready to launch, while the first model SA-15 has 8, and the current model has 16.

The SA-13 is also being replaced by the SOSNA, so 6 are replaced with 12.

The S-300 had the same four large missiles as the S-400 but the S-350 has 12 missiles per launch vehicle with the 9M96 and 36 with 9M100 missiles...

The only ones that have not increased massively are the rather big missiles, which is understandable, but they are working on mini missiles to be mounted on large weapons to engage multiple targets at extended ranges with SAMs and AAMs.

New systems with airburst 23mm and 30mm and 57mm shells should make air defence even more effective and that does not take into account air power and jamming/decoys.

200 missiles trying to sink one ship means your air defence is working because the enemy has no confidence in getting through any way other than simply trying to make you run out of ammo.

200 threats crossing the front line going for different protected targets where the targets are actually military and are defended by more than just a single vehicle... actual batteries of air defence systems and those 200 threats are probably going to struggle against Russia.