S-500 'Prometheus' and S-550 missile systems

To me the vague description of s-550 makes it sound like it would eventually take over the s-500. Will have more missiles per vehicle with smaller missiles as well as slightly better performance. Essentially what s 350 is to s 300. I agree 2ith isos

The S-400 is the standard new heavy SAM intended to shoot down planes and threats at long range... it is replacing the S-300 but the S-300 entered service in the late 1970s so there were a lot of them made and replacing them all with S-400 would be rather expensive and often not necessary because S-300s had ranges between 75km to about 200km depending on the model and in many cases they were up to the job so smaller lighter cheaper missiles make sense... which is what the S-350 are... they are smaller lighter cheaper (note cheaper than the heavy S-400 missiles that would otherwise replace the S-300 missiles) missiles able to be carried in larger numbers.

The S-500 are ABM missiles optimised to shoot down ICBM and SLBM and satellites and hypersonic targets and are huge and likely not cheap at all, but perform a necessary role because what is the point of having an IADS if the enemy can launch an ICBM with a conventional warhead into the middle and destroy the core elements of the IADS and make everything vulnerable to a much lessor attack... the S-500 means they can stop cutting off the head of the IADS and so any attack will seriously pay.

With the shorter range S-350 and the medium range S-400 and long range S-500 the next piece to upgrade would be the S-400 to make it cheaper and lighter and enable more missiles to be carried, now as I mentioned above they might achieve that by not making it lighter at all... they might add interceptor missiles to the long range missiles so one missile launched from the four tube launcher might be able to take down 6 to 10 targets 250km or 400km away depending on the missile which massively improves its ability to deal with a major attack. No one is going to attack Russia by launching a single B-2 bomber or a single B-52 or single anything for that matter. The location of the SAM battery might mean it engages B-1Bs just after they take off so not only can it take down the B-1Bs in groups at a time but also any inflight refuelling aircraft that are topping those aircraft after launch in Norway or Alaska or Japan or whereever they might be based that Russia could get their missiles.

Of course to take it a step further it might be that they decide to base the new missiles on the heavy multi stage S-500 that might carry 20 mini missiles to engage targets along its entire launch path of 600km... releasing missiles in flight to fall down and engage targets it detects on its way.

The S-500 would be even more suitable for carrying payloads of mini missiles and as long as there are enough targets it might work out even more cost effective for engaging large numbers of targets at extended ranges than the smaller S-400 missiles.

I suspect a combination of missiles would be used and that these mini missile carrying missiles would compliment the S-500... the S-550 would be worth using against a flight of tomahawks because of the altitude and capacity it could engage large numbers of missiles on a flight path, whereas an S-500 which would be very big and expensive could only engage one target.

Essentially it would be using an S-500 or large S-400 missile as a very very high speed fighter that can fly rapidly out to 400km or 600km and attack multiple targets with individual small missiles... released from very high altitude they could be 9M100 missiles with extreme lock on after launch capacity that in effect have a diving top attack flight profile coming in from very high altitude on a ballistic launch trajectory.

An air launched equivalent could use the new item 815 to do the same thing with the same payload missile.

Clearly the S-500 is derived from the S-300VM which has two different sized missiles. The S-550 could be just that.

All the versions of S-300V had two different sized missiles but they didn't give them different S numbers AFAIK. The S-300V and S-300VM and Antei-2500 and the S-300V4, which are army, army, export, and army weapons respectively didn't use different numbers for each missile.

The S-400 includes the S-350 missiles, but it is only when used on their own with their own unique vehicles are the 9M96/9M100 systems called S-350.

S-550 might be a multi missile variant of the S-500 for extra range, and uses new bits developed for the S-500, but I suspect would also use multi missile warhead versions of the 250km and 400km S-400 missiles too.

That would allow it to fulfil the role of the S-400 to fill the gap between the S-350 which wont reach many launch platforms, and the S-500 which is just too expensive to shoot down individual fighter planes with one missile.

The S-550 would have the reach of the S-500 but the ability to take down multiple targets at that range effectively meaning a flight of enemy aircraft could be engaged with one or two missiles... essentially instead of carrying more missiles it carries more warheads and can engage more targets at a time.

S-300VM did not have the capability to intercept ICBMs. However, S-500 has been designed with the intention of intercepting ICBMs.

The INF treaty and ABM treaty were in effect when the S-300V range of missiles were developed so there were no medium range BMs and intermediate range BMs and ICBMs and SLBMs were not allowed to be engaged by mobile systems.

The S-300V was designed from the outset for shooting down ballistic missiles, which is why it is different from the Air Force S-300P and Navy S-300F.

It was designed to shoot down Scuds and other short range battlefield missiles including Lance and Pershing... it would have easily dealt with the Scud problem in Israel and Saudi Arabia in the early 1990s...

Time to create a new thread for the S-550.

Probably a good idea to wait and see what it actually is first.

If it is just an S-400 system then it could be added to the S-300/400 thread because that is what it would be... if the internet had been running longer it would be the S-200/S-300/S-400 thread for long range general SAMs.

In Russia, we currently have an amazing development of ABM systems. There is a new S 500, S 300V4, new 53T6M missiles, Nudol and now S 550. Modernization of the Moscow ABM A 225 system.

The S 500 is already the first mobile ABM system against ICBM.

It seems that Russia is chasing the USA in strategic ABM systems in tactical systems they have always been ahead. The exit from the ABM treaty did not do the best for the US

The S 550 system can also be developed for years Nudol about which nothing.

Don Quixote meets Batman. Scud, Pershing are not ICBMs.

When the S-300V was designed and built anti ICBM SAMs were illegal because of the ABM agreement and the the INF treaty made SAMs able to shoot down targets with a greater range than scud and pershing redundant because missiles with greater range were banned too.

S-300V would not have been able to intercept a R-36 or a LGM-30 Minuteman.

The S-300V was not allowed to be able to intercept ICBMs or SLBMs... they had ABM missiles around Moscow for that job.

Even the S-400 that was developed as an upgrade to the S-300 family is not being described by the manufacturer as having the capability to successfully intercept ICBMs.

Because it started development in the late 1980s and was tested in the late 1990s, so its core development period was within the effective time of the ABM treaty which applied during the period of 1972 right through to 2002 when the US walked out of that treaty... not a huge problem because the INF treaty meant there were short range ballistic missiles and ICBM ballistic missiles and against the US nothing in between as such weapons.... medium range ballistic missiles and intermediate range ballistic missiles were banned under the INF treaty, so the only missiles the S-400 and S-300V could not deal with were either banned or ICBMs for which the Moscow ABM system could deal with.

The only operational difference between an IRBM and an ICBM is it's flight range.

Often the difference between a Short range, Medium range, Intermediate range, and intercontinental range ballistic missile is the size and number of boosters... short have no booster, medium might have one, intermediate have two and intercontinental and satellite launchers often have three boosters.

Take a booster off an ICBM and you get an IRBM or MRBM, take a second one off and you often get a SRBM.

Improvements in solid rocket fuel or scramjet technology can change the number of booster stages too.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)-Russia develops the S-550, the world's first mobile defense system capable of intercepting intercontinental ballistic missiles, two defense industry sources said.

That sounds like a definition of what we expected the S-500 to be...

"The new battery is an evolution of the S-500 and will specialize in missile and space defense. Its ability to intercept ballistic missile warheads, in particular intercontinental, as well as space means of attack, is greater than that of the S-400 or the S-500 and also of the US THAAD and Aegis systems with the SM-3Block IIB missile," a source told Sputnik.

Which sounds like the S-500 with the gloves off.... sounds like 7km/s is no longer the top speed limit of the targets it can engage... essentially sounds like they are talking about a mobile GBI system...

The sort of thing they might want to be a mobile Moscow ABM system they could deploy as a mobile system on land or at sea and perhaps by air to support allies.... a real ABM and INF changer...

Its capabilities to intercept warheads of ballistic missiles of various ranges, primarily intercontinental ones, as well as space attack weapons will be an order of magnitude higher than that of the S- 400 and S-500, as well as American missile defense systems - THAAD and Aegis with SM-3Block llB missiles "- said one of the agency's interlocutors.

But should also make the missiles big and expensive and really not very efficient for shooting down other targets like aircraft or cruise missiles so it would essentially replace the S-500 and not the S-400 as I suggested.

S-500, S-550, Nudol, mobile A-235,...

Maybe mobile A-235=S-550

Sounds like the S-550 is replacing the S-500 rather than the S-400 as being suggested... perhaps the S-550 is going to replace the S-400 in terms of export as a defence against ballistic missile attack from the west?

Countries like Iran and North Korea and Cuba will buy it along with S-350 and Pantsir to defend themselves from western attack?

There is a difference in velocity between the two missiles but it is "relatively" marginal. I think the difference is something like Mach 18 vs Mach 20 which will make the ICBM a bit harder to intercept.

Adding a little speed is not as much of a problem as manouverability... a mach 20 ICBM is easier to intercept than a mach 8 manouvering target like Iskander or Kinzhal, because a non manouvering target has a predictable flight path, while a manouvering target does not.

Like the difference between intercepting a bomb from a cruse missile and the warhead of an artillery shell... the former has waypoints like an attacking bomber, while the latter has a ballistic path leading directly from the artillery gun that fired it.

The artillery shell might be supersonic all the way and rather small with a small radar cross section but is predictable.

ICBMs/SLBMs that Russian and US too has in their arsenal are armed with Maneuverable Reentry Vehicle (MaRV). So they can maneuvere as well while simulataneously capable of autonomously tracking ground targets.

Intercepting these MaRVs equally difficult.

No it is not.

Re entry Vehicles (RVs) have evolved over time... the first ones were simple because there was usually just one warhead and it fell on the point of aim and boom.

As RVs got smaller and more compact they were able to fit more and more into each missile, now it might come as a shock but some city targets are enormous and just making the bomb bigger is not an efficient way of dealing with bigger cities.

A 1 Megaton bomb would do terrible damage but as you increase the power the damage does not expand at the same rate... a 10 Megaton bomb does not destroy 10 times more area...

If you are hitting a super hard target like a bunker then a bigger bomb that penetrates is better, but for an area target lots of smaller bombs are actually more efficient in the same way a cluster bomb is.

If you drop a 10 MT bomb in the middle of London where the bomb lands is destroyed completely, but it is also destroyed completely when a 1MT bomb lands there too. The area of complete destruction is not different by a ratio of 10... it might only be double the area is totally destroyed for a warhead ten times bigger.

So for city killer missiles they realised going for more warheads was more efficient than just going for bigger ones.... 4-5 x 250 Kiloton nukes spread across a very large and flat city will do much more damage than one really big bomb and smaller bombs are easier and cheaper to make.

The first city killer missiles at MRVs or multiple reentry vehicles.

Think of the warheads as being bombs and the warhead bus they were carried in to the target area was a bomber... it lined up the target as precisely as it could and then released all the MRVs in a pattern to scatter them around the point of aim to spread the damage... the MRVs just fell.

The next step in technology were MIRVS, or multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles... this involved an upgrade of the warhead bus that carried the warheads. The warheads were still like free fall bombs but the bus had more fuel and on its flight path to the final target area it could wobble its flight path and release a warhead as it went past it so it could hit targets on its way to its final targets... the RVs still just fell like bombs, their accuracy was determined by the accuracy of their release from the warhead bus... the problem was that the bus could not go too far off its trajectory so targets a long way from the flight path of the missile were safe... the missile itself had to essentially fly over the target to engage it.

MaRVs as opposed to MRVs are Manouverable Re entry vehicles, but that does not mean they are like Iskander or Kinzhal.

It means they can leave the bus and fly a much greater distance to hit targets further off the flight course of the missile they were launched from... the RVs need to essentially steer themselves towards their target and they have some propulsion capability of their own but that is only to leave the trajectory of the missile they were released from to hit targets further away than an MIRV could hit.

They do not dodge air defence systems... they are more like air released cruise missiles that find their target themselves.

The do not perform tricks to evade interception and therefore can be intercepted by normal existing air defence systems...

MIRV or MARV - either way the trajectory of the warhead would not deviate all that much.
The Avangard glide vehicle is quite something else though!

Yes, MIRV and MaRV were designed just to hit their target, but Avangard and Iskander and Kinzhal and Thunderbird are designed to detect and evade enemy air defences...

The S-550 is just the S-500ABM version renamed.

But Putin and Shoigu said S-350 and S-500 and S-550 will be produced going forward...

S-500 against aerodynamic targets
S-550 against ICBM warheads/Satellites

If that were the case then S-500 would be replacing the S-400 and the S-550 would be replacing what we thought the S-500 was.

Based on the S-300/S-350 difference perhaps the S-500 is a heavy ABM system that is mobile of course but also strategic in nature, while the S-500 is a more mobile system oriented to ABM defence and not air defence so it would operate with S-400 and S-350 batteries... as well as Pantsir and TOR for self defence.

The S-550 conceptually being the equivalent of THAAD but obviously considering S-300V is better than THAAD in some areas that it would be vastly superior.

In the sense that the S-550 is a dedicated mobile ABM system that might include scramjet stages to extend flight range and speed.

I would expect scramjets to be incorporated into their SAMs and AAMs to extend flight range and speed considerably while making them smaller and lighter.

Jesus christ we are speeding up the process of nuclear annihilation soon.

S-500 and S-550 would not be allowed under the ABM treaty of 1972 and probably not be allowed under the INF treaty either as they are probably able to fly ranges in excess of the 500km limit for the INF treaty... like the SM-6 ABM missiles used in AEGIS Ashore in Europe and Asia... but it is all OK because the US broke or withdrew from those treaties so it must be safe....