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

RTN wrote:That's why U.S stand off weapons have Beyond Line of Sight (BLOS) Weapon Data Link capability - to target SAM systems like the S-500.

Please stop embarrassing yourself here with such claims. You may be taking this site for any of those places where all kinds of Western retardation go, here it does not work like that and arrogant ignorance is taken for what it is. Those subsonic weapons and their carriers have low chances against isolated Pantsirs, against multilayered, integrated Russian air defence equipped with OTH detection and other high level capabilities, to use them is simply a fools errand, and you know it or at least you should.

I just dont know if users are actually being serious about what tney post or just doing it for troll purposes. Technically speaking yes you can launch LRASM from a far enough distance where the aircraft itself wont get targetted because its range is longer than the long range air defense system with said radar and SAMs. But rather if you can hit the air defense accurately or not is a seperate matter in the kosovo war NATO aircraft had 3 to 4 times the range the air defenses they were dealing with and still managed to hit aircraft. F-16Is have air to ground weapon choices along with EW capabilities that make their weapons hit far enough but the S-200 not having any EW protection capabilies managed to still hit one. If your trying anything against modern air defenses that have both EW capabilities and protection with other EW systems there is a good chance it wont even reach the air defense let alone get targetted by short and medium air defenses that are controlled by long range air defenses with stations that operate as one.

I will give photonic radars some time since they are estimating 5 years to get the software part done in which they can create SAMs that can work with them to hit aerial targets by combining OTH capabilities with terahertz detection and tracking If I read my two sources correctly to what they are implying where you can even hit the aircraft carrying the LRASM

thegopnik wrote:Technically speaking yes you can launch LRASM from a far enough distance where the aircraft itself wont get targetted because its range is longer than the long range air defense system with said radar and SAMs.

The carrier itself can be detected thousands of km before it can launch and therefore interceptors can be sent in its direction. When those are MiG-31s the chances for the carrier to reach the release point and turn back before being shot down are questionable at best.

But rather if you can hit the air defense accurately or not is a seperate matter in the kosovo war NATO aircraft had 3 to 4 times the range the air defenses they were dealing with and still managed to hit aircraft. F-16Is have air to ground weapon choices along with EW capabilities that make their weapons hit far enough but the S-200 not having any EW protection capabilies managed to still hit one. If your trying anything against modern air defenses that have both EW capabilities and protection with other EW systems there is a good chance it wont even reach the air defense let alone get targetted by short and medium air defenses that are controlled by long range air defenses with stations that operate as one.

There are totally dramatic differences, both qualitative and quantitative, between the bombing of Serbia and how a campaign vs Russia would work, and still as you say SEAD teams there had a hard time and NATO planes were shot down. How they fancy themselves bombing Russia with those primitive techniques that rely primarily on overwhelming superiority in every field and the luxury to operate close to the front without having their air bases and enabling assets destroyed is beyond me.

I will give photonic radars some time since they are estimating 5 years to get the software part done in which they can create SAMs that can work with them to hit aerial targets by combining OTH capabilities with terahertz detection and tracking If I read my two sources correctly to what they are implying where you can even hit the aircraft carrying the LRASM

No need for any revolution to hit the carriers and the eventually released missiles with the existing means, hence why the direction of development is towards long range hypersonic or directly space stationed weapons. Russia is just a few years away of having a continuous field of observation both against aerodynamic and ballistic threats, and they already have a plethora of observation means of lower grades both air, land and space based. Western people are not used to inconvenient facts anymore and they prefer pretending that their bullying of third world countries resembles how a war against Russia would look like, they are dangerous in their proud ignorance.

Lennox wrote:Correct me if I'm wrong but isnt the phrase beyond light of sight weapon data link kinda weird? Literally anything with data link can de facto work beyond LOS (if it cant, what's the point anyway), and there are countless weapons with that capability already.

Yeah, to make such a fuss about some data link is rather baffling...

In 99% of all cases we will see a head-to-head engagement of the incoming missile and the interceptor. In that instance even a VW Golf can crash a Formula 1 car.

Most of the time the interceptor SAMs are located around the target being defended so in that sense the speed of the interceptor missile is not critical... it is like the difference between soccer and tennis and cricket... in soccer the goalie stands in the net and the person kicking for goal tries to get the ball past the goalie into the net which is huge... on purpose so the goalie can't just stand in one place and stop everything... in tennis it is similar one person cannot cover the whole court at once so the person returning the ball will try to hit the ball into a part of the court the other player can't reach to return the ball. In comparison Cricket you are using a bat to protect wickets and you don't have to move the bat far or fast to cover the wickets.

But as an interceptor flight range and flight speed means you can get to calculated intercept points faster and easier so a manouvering target is less of a problem for a faster interceptor because as new interception points are calculated a faster interceptor that is still powered with its engine running can get to a new interception point faster than a slower or shorter ranged missile. meaning more opportunities for an interception.

That's why U.S stand off weapons have Beyond Line of Sight (BLOS) Weapon Data Link capability - to target SAM systems like the S-500.

AGM-158D (previously JASSM-ER+) WDL upgrade features a BLOS Weapon Data Link capability similar to the LRASM. LRASM features both LOS and BLOS data-link capability.

A very early model TOR missile could shoot down such a threat even though it entered service in the 1980s...

BTW line of sight and beyond line of sight are meaningless when talking about long range cruise missiles... they target coordinates rather than individual vehicles or targets and just fly to certain coordinates and then either explode or start to search for their target... Russian anti ship missiles did that in the late 1970s... Russian corvettes did it recently in Syria...

Because those are dumb RVs that just fall on the trajectory they are released on by their warhead bus.

Obviously the Avangard manouvering reentry vehicle will have propulsion or control surfaces or both so that it can manouver when it is released.

BTW why do you think it is difficult for missiles to use side thrusters in the atmosphere.... when fired vertically into the air the TOR SAM uses side thruster rockets near its nose and tail to roll it into the direction of its target before its main motor lights up and accelerates it away after its target.

The Dragon III ATGM used by the US only had side thruster rockets to propel it in flight...

The TOR had side thruster rockets around its circumference so it could be rolled in any direction at launch but not all rockets were fired so as it approaches its target if the miss distance is going to be big, if the target is manouvering hard, remaining rocket thrusters can be fired to move the rocket closer to the target before the main warhead is set off.

That's your speculation. Avangard RV may or may not have control surfaces and side thrusters. Details about its design has not been released.

It is logical common sense... they have already said it reentered the earths atmosphere and accelerated from mach 26 to mach 27.... acceleration on earth is fixed as 1 g the distance it would have to drop to accelerate 1 mach is enormous and would be countered by the addition of air resistance which is relative to speed... think if it as standing in water... you can feel the water but it does not push you, but if you try to move in water it resists rather more than air does. The faster you try to move the more it resists. That is why more powerful ammo like 50 cal Browning rounds shatter when fired into water because the stopping force is enormous, while a low power pistol bullet will travel a few metres in water and generally retain its shape. If you accelerated that pistol bullet to mach 5 it would shatter too, and if you reduced the speed of the 50 cal bullet to subsonic it would actually be quite dangerous to people under water for quite a few metres.

It is a manouvering RV optimised to evade enemy air defence... but you are saying it has no propulsion and no control surfaces to manouver... does it use alien anti gravity waves to move?

It can't put up a sail because that would be a control surface.

BTW I have never seen a B-21 but I can tell you it will have jet engines and it will have some way of shaping its wings to allow it to manouver in flight...

At those speeds, they’d add too much drag or be ripped off when maneuvering.

A side thruster is not a big long rocket tube that sticks out the sides of the RV like the bristles on a hair brush, they are internal sideways facing rockets that can be fired on command when they are pointing in a suitable direction.

Also how many times did the US space shuttle fly into space and then come back into earths atmosphere and not have its wings ripped off?

The do have some idea of the forces and stresses involved so a wing structure or control surface could be designed and made that does not break off and they can design it to generate as much drag as they want... in fact spacecraft bringing people back from orbit often use enormously high drag structures called parachutes... once a lot of the speed has bled off...

MaRVs are pre-programmed to "bob and weave" or to take a deceptive trajectory at the appropriate points during re-entry.

Why? When they were making them there was only one ABM system operational on the planet and that was around Moscow as allowed by the 1972 ABM treaty. There was not Soviet Union wide ABM system that needed to be penetrated.

For the same reason there were no anti stealth fighter radars being developed in the 1950s because there were no stealth aircraft to look for.

But their ability to do so is almost certainly pretty limited due to lack of energy available for radical maneuvers and the relatively short time between entry interface and detonation.

Pick a flight path... a straight line from the US ICBM fields to Russia. There are three main areas they will want to target.... european Russia and northern russia and far east russia... an ICBM launched at targets in the far east wont be hitting any targets in the european part of russia though they might be targeted at far north targets on the way past.

No target in the far north or far east would require evading an ABM system because they weren't defended with them.

The missiles headed for european russia would be going for sevastopol and st petersberg and the northern fleet as well as moscow an a lot of population centres... the only warheads headed towards moscow will have to worry about an ABM system.

MaRVs will be burning all their fuel to reach targets off the flight path of the missile they were launched from because that missile will be flying straight and will be aimed at its primary target what ever that might be. On the way warheads will be released to be directed at other targets and they might just need to drop down out of its ballistic path or more likely it might have to fly several hundred kms left or right.

Another factor is that if you take a missile like Trident... it carries 6 warheads but they wont all be fired at the same target because what if the missile that is taking all the warheads for Moscow is intercepted?

If you launch 24 Tridents from one submarine it might have four primary targets and those might be Moscow and St Petersberg and Sevastopol and Murmansk.... so of the 24 tridents in one sub 6 missiles will be directed at each of those four targets, but each of those missiles has 6 warheads on board, so for the six missiles headed to St Petersberg one warhead from each missile will actually be aimed at St Petersberg, one warhead might be aimed at Kaliningrad on its way over from the northern atlantic ocean, so that leaves four more warheads in each of the 6 missiles that are available for targets in the general area, like population centres or important sites like a major Army base/storage area, or a large airfield which might need 3 or 4 warheads to ensure it wont be operating any time soon.

As you can probably tell from this there is a lot of coordination involved but the 6 missiles headed for Moscow will likely all be heading for Moscow because it has an ABM system with 100 interceptor missiles so that Trident submarine will fire 6 missiles each with 6 warheads at Moscow to ensure it gets hit hard and every Trident submarine will do the same and it will be the same with bombers and cruise missiles and land based ICBMs... lots of warheads from lots of different platforms will be cross targeted so that if one missile or one sub gets destroyed all the targets will get hit anyway.

The Soviet ABM missiles generally used nuclear warheads so bobbing and weaving would not really be enough.

The Soviet ABM was not intended to save Moscow... it was intended to delay its destruction so the leadership had time to launch the counter strike that destroyed the west.

Avangard is basically a MaRV.

No it isn't. It is more like a glider that can manouver and evade ABM systems.... that is its purpose.

I didn't say MaRVs do not have propulsion, I said they don't have control surfaces because hypersonic speed will tear it apart.

So how do the control surfaces on the US Space Shuttle remain in tact... it reenters the atmosphere at actual orbital speeds which is actually faster than most missile RVs...

The people who make re entry vehicle would know how to make control surfaces that were effective and also strong enough to not be ripped off in the slip stream.

If A-135, S-500 or S-550 intercepts a Trident that will be a boost phase intercept. So none of the RVs will be released by the Trident. Then how will they fire any RV?

First of all the S-500 and S-550 are new and are going to make things rather different.... the A-135 and its replacements are located near moscow only, the missiles directed at Moscow wont carry on and hit anything else so the warheads can be deployed 1,000km short of reaching Moscow which means when the A-135 or later missiles are launched the warheads will have been released from the warhead bus and will need to be intercepted individually.

This is also where the technique of different missiles hitting multiple targets comes in... if you had a Trident with 6 warheads all going for Moscow when released at 1,000km they will all be going to the same place so will remain relatively close together so a nuclear armed interceptor could get the all at once with one detonation. If the 24 missiles from one Trident submarine are launched on 24 slightly different flight paths so they can cover more targets then one warhead from each missile heading to Moscow will be coming from a rather different angle so one interceptor could not possibly get them all with one explosion.

The huge advantage of the S-500 and S-550 however is that they can be forward deployed and use their range to intercept targets before the RVs are released, so instead of 6 targets per Trident plus decoys it is one target per trident.

This is why Russian missiles use MaRVs and now Avangard gliders because they are released early on in the flight and fly separately to the target area, so to get the all at once you would have to engage them as they are launched... which was the idea behind the ABL... but its limited range would require the aircraft to fly within Russian air space to reach the ICBMs Russia would be launching and they are too vulnerable to fly that close.

Russian ships like Cruisers and perhaps Destroyers will be able to carry S-500s which could intercept western missiles midcourse and get them while they are still in their warhead buses...

If any MaRV, U.S or Russian can carry out such maneuvers that you just described then I'm afraid even a S500, S-550 won't be able to intercept them. A-135? Well.

A minor change of flight path is not enough to evade interception... we are not talking 90 degree 100g turns... if the target is 100km to the side of the main flight path of the missile the warhead that is going for that target might be ejected from the warhead bus 1,000km short of the target and it might peel away from the straight flight path of the missile and turn perhaps 3 degrees and then continue 1,000km with that three degree turn meaning it is 100km off course and therefore directly heading towards its target... before the air defence system even started launching missiles to intercept they would see the original weapon bus passing 100km away from the target and they would also see the RV released to hit them which they could also launch missiles to intercept.

The Avangard will be flying like a plane and performing turns left and right, speeding up and slowing down... a much harder target and moving at about 10km per second a half second miss means even a nuke warhead would not be effective unless you use really powerful nukes... in which case you will likely be doing as much damage as if you did nothing and let their missiles hit you.

Avangard is basically a MaRV. I didn't say MaRVs do not have propulsion, I said they don't have control surfaces because hypersonic speed will tear it apart.

HTV-2 and Avanagard are both HGVs one was a failure lasting 9 minutes of its planned 30 minutes flight due to temperatures reaching 3,500 degrees farenheit while the avangard was a success for handling 2000 celsius or 3600+ farenheit temperatures. One is carried by the Rubezh and the other was carried by the minotaur where both get released at 100km altitudes. MaRVs only get released after the ballistic missile re-enters to earths atmosphere. This is common knowledge here

If A-135, S-500 or S-550 intercepts a Trident that will be a boost phase intercept. So none of the RVs will be released by the Trident. Then how will they fire any RV?

There is midcourse interception but I am assuming that S-550(higher heights than S-500) and A-235(missile heights can do so) can perform that, S-500 deals with RVs assuming thats what they mean by hypersonic vehicles

I don't entirely agree with everything said on that video but it is not bad.

First of all he showed the Army S-300V as being the S-300 the S-400 evolved from when it clearly evolved from the Air Forces S-300P.

If anything the S-500 seems to be an evolution of the S-300V.

The S-500 will not replace S-400 for the same reasons the THAAD wont replace Patriot.

Unlike the western systems however a lot of the new systems and equipment developed for the S-500 will likely be introduced into S-400 batteries to replace older equipment and systems to further improve performance.

It mentioned the 9M96 missiles as being part of S-400 when technically they are now S-350 missiles, and I suspect there are some modified S-500 missiles that are going to become S-550 missiles optimised for specific roles.

The extended development time for the S-500 is understandable because a missile can't use control surfaces to manouver outside the atmosphere like the S-400 and S-300 could so the interception portion of the missile would need to be able to manouver and track a target on its own... likely with thrust vectoring rocket engines.

It is not easy to get thrust vectoring working at such pressures and temperatures of rocket exhaust in a vaccum.

Delaying the S-500 so S-400 could be produced for exports is ridiculous, they will likely continue to be produced together and most export customers wont need or be allowed to have S-500s anyway... an S-500 means you can shoot down satellites, but only having one system and nothing else would make it rather vulnerable to attack... if you have a battery with a hundred missiles or so it would be easy enough to launch an attack with slightly more cruise missiles than the system has SAMs to defeat it.

Russia does not earn most of its money from oil and gas sales and weapons sales, their economy in other areas is expanding.

They have the best air defences because they are surrounded by western enemies spending 100 times more on attack than Russia can afford to spend on defence...

Sensible countries would just buy most Russian air defence systems and end up protected but so many countries are fixated with making their own and improving their own economies building other peoples designs, which just makes them more expensive so they can't afford to have sufficient numbers of systems.

Most value in economies is not tangible and as money does not go through the Russian stockmarket like the US or UK markets they don't appear to be successful, but looking at their spending and the returns from their spending, their GDP is not a good measure of Russia as a country.

Sure they have problems but in the last 10 years they have gone from a miss matched conscript army that look like a motley group capable only of lynches, to a modern professional force that any country would be proud of... and all this on the GDP less than a quarter of the UK... so lets compare military forces, or the financial situation, what sort of reserve funds does the UK have?

My friends wife is scared to death because she is a teacher and her UK pension is a ponzie scheme... you pay while you work for your retirement, but that money you pay in goes to retired people now, so when you retire you basically rely on people paying in to the scheme to fund your retirement... what a mickey mouse outfit... what idiot thought that was a good idea?

The talk on honesty and ethics is misplaced.

Before WWI the Russians bought the Maxim machine gun design and the licence to produce it, and they made it in enormous numbers. They licence produced all sorts of other things including artillery and trucks and tanks and aircraft. They famously bought British Rolls Royce jet engines.... the Nene and the Derwent... which they later improved with their own engine technology and know how to further improve performance of these engines...

What this narrator is calling theft is better called a difference of opinion regarding IP (intellectual property).

I am sure the English would love to have IP rights to the English language and charge countries around the world that use their language for the use of it, both privately and internationally... but if they tried we would just call it New Zealand English and American English and Australian Engwish... are we being dishonest?

Did we steal their language?

You can't sell someone something and not expect them to learn from it.

Russia has some very smart people... smart with theory, smart with materials and production, smart with integration... getting a licence to produce French Thermal Imagers meant they got their hands on the technology involved so they can use their own knowledge and skills to further improve and upgrade, or simply adapt the technology.

The Chinese copied Russian laser rangefinders and target markers but they didn't copy them correctly... they used different materials, which led to a situation where Russian hunters buying cheap Chinese laser target markers found they didn't work when it got really cold.

There will be Chinese engineers being held back because they don't know how some fundamental idea works... give them something that works and they can adapt the ideas for themselves... sometimes it is better and sometimes it is not.

On the AK-47 there is a small spring and pin that delays the hammer so the hammer cannot go forward if the bolt carrier is not fully forward. It stops the hammer hitting the firing pin and firing the round before the bolt is fully forward and locked in place... and out of battery explosion can lead to shell case fragments jamming the rifle and blocking the chamber for loading another round till the fragments are removed again.

My old Chinese Type 56S copy of an AKM had a triangle of metal added to the bolt carrier so the hammer could not reach the firing pin until the bolt carrier is fully forward and the bolt is locked.

A much more elegant solution to be honest... and all it requires is leaving a bit more steel on the bolt carrier.

Russia will sell S-500 to both China and India, but China will probably get a rather less capable system than India gets because they know it will be copied.

Russia is building an early warning air defence system for China, so the S-500 will likely be part of that.

Helping making China safer from surprise attack is not a concern for Russia... would be sensible of India to ask Russia to do the same for them...

Russia does not want to control China... that is why Russia and China don't like the US because the US wants to control Russia and China and India.

The US wants to be in charge of everything and everyone to make sure it gets an easy free ride in everything with everyone.

Russia and China are not interested in blackmailing one another, they just want to do business with whomever they please.

Russia is not going to punish China for trading with the US just like it is not going to punish India for trading with the US, but the US is trying to punish or bully India into not trading with Russia or China.

Russia and China want to challenge US hegemony, but they don't want to replace US hegemony with their own... or that of the EU or anyone else.

If you pay proper attention Russia is only imposing sanctions in response to sanctions from others and is not using arms and energy as a weapon against anyone... they were even prepared to sell S-400s to Turkey, who is much more likely to hand secrets to the US and EU and HATO.... but that is OK because they got an export model that is not the same as what Russia has anyway.

China can copy lots of things but they still buy engines from Russia for their planes including planes to export. Their light MiG-21 like cheap fighter uses a modified RD-33 engine... so they are not able to copy an engine the Soviets were making in the 1980s.

Copying is not as easy as it sounds and is much harder and more expensive, but if you don't have your own ideas it is often the best option.

Russia has accepted that China will copy their stuff, but a few sales often are enough to inject money into those programmes so upgrades and new generation replacement systems can be funded from the profits.

I watched that 11:30 min. video.
I want my 11:30 minutes back.

Apart from all the errors, the narrator (with an Indian accent) is naturally biased towards India.

Just posting this, I don't really know what to make of it... tens of thousands of km???? That would allow to hit even geostationary orbit, it would need to be a HUGE liquid fuel system, maybe something based on some heavy ICBM?

First S-550 air defense systems enter service in Russia — source

The source described the new system as "an absolutely new and unrivalled mobile system of strategic missile defense"

MOSCOW, December 29. /TASS/. Russia’s new S-550 air defense system has successfully passed state trials and entered combat service, a source close to the Russian defense ministry has told TASS.

"The S-550 air defense system has successfully completed state trials. The first S-550 brigade has entered combat duty," he said.

The source described the new system as "an absolutely new and unrivalled mobile system of strategic missile defense," capable of "hitting spacecraft, ballistic missile reentry vehicles and hypersonic targets at altitudes of tens of thousands of kilometers."

According to the source, the new system becomes a part of Russia's comprehensive missile and air defense, comprised by Pantsir systems (low-altitude), long-range S-350, S-400 and S-500 systems and S-550 (in space).

Official sources have not yet confirmed this information to TASS.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said at the ministry’s conference call on November 9 that at defense industry meetings in Sochi in November Russian President Vladimir Putin had put emphasis on the importance of delivering S-350, S-500 and S-550 air and missile defense systems to the Russian troops.

Head of the Rostec state tech corporation Rostec Sergei Chemezov said at the Dubai Airshow 2021 that the S-550 would feature a longer-range target detection and missile interception capability.

A source close to the Russian Defense Ministry told TASS earlier that the S-550 system was not an attempt to revive an eponymous Soviet-era project, although some unimplemented concepts of it were used while creating the modern version.

https://tass.com/defense/1382133

Don't want to comment much on this before we get some more information, but this would mean to end the militarization of space, before it even gets started....

there are some GEO stationary orbits that have 35,000km+ altitudes so I wouldnt go that far if they say just 10,000kms

thegopnik wrote:there are some GEO stationary orbits that have 35,000km+ altitudes so I wouldnt go that far if they say just 10,000kms

This is TASS in English, I did not translate it. They say 'tens' in plural:

at altitudes of tens of thousands of kilometers

This is from the Russian version:

The completely new system has no analogues and is capable of hitting spacecraft, intercontinental ballistic missile warheads, and hypersonic targets at altitudes of several tens of thousands of kilometers.

https://tass.ru/armiya-i-opk/13321835