Russian special military operation in Ukraine #52

Arrow wrote:Kinzhal in the terminal phase does not fly 10M, but probably at a speed below 5M.

Its gonna slow as it hits denser atmosphere for sure, so from 25K m it will slow from M7 down to about M3. But the rapidly changing speed makes it even harder to intercept.

So India denies supplying 155mm artillery shells to Ukraine... they supplied it to a European country who handed them over to the nazis.

Patriot has a range of 40-60km against ballistic missiles, a kinzhal flying at Mach 7 would only give them 17-25 seconds,

Which version Patriot are we talking about? The steep trajectory of Ballistic missiles means more often than not the effective intercept range is probably half that.

Kinzhal and Iskander are not ballistic missiles.

You are aware of the fact that the Kinzhal missile is diving onto the target from a height of 20+km and is therefore accelerating?

And it is not just falling... the control surfaces are inside the rocket exhaust so the rocket motor is burning all the way to impact...

Quite wrong here Hole. I thought you were smarter than this No Basic physics.

You are confusing a few things. Terminal velocity is the speed a falling object achieves... so a human being is not going to fall at supersonic speeds except when falling above the thick lower atmosphere where the thin are does not slow you down... when you reach the thicker air as you descend you slow down more but that is based on your shape which is not low drag like a missile, and your density which is not particularly heavy.

A Kinzhal missile is aerodynamic and will be coming down point forward and with its rocket motor running.

Quite frankly, I suspect that Khinzhal has an effective plasma screen due to its extreme speed, and the plasma is effective as absorbing incident EM radiation (ie radar waves), similar to a re-entering space capsule returning to earth. Plenty of reports that Ukies (and their NATO leash holders) are unable to track the missiles once launched from the MiG-31Ks and this is entirely consistent with such a screen.

Most of their radars are set up to track aircraft, so depending on the scan rates if you imagine someone plotting the location of a radar return every 4-5 seconds... if you detect a target 500km away on your first scan, and then 4 seconds later you scan that airspace again and that target is no longer there but there is another target that is 12km closer to you at 488km, and then 4 seconds after that that contact is not there but a contact at 476km range is there. Keep in mind that this missile is flying towards you so we are not talking about an aircraft sized target, but something the size of a manhole cover...

It is not like what you see in computer games where the screen is nice and blank and there is a clear dot moving on the screen... there will be large numbers of dots and shapes that appear and disappear with every sweep... A turn of a few degrees in any direction will shift the next appearance by quite a significant distance and where it is between those four second sweeps is anyones guess.

The best air defence in the west has been on US Navy ships and includes AWACS and fighters as well as SAMs and guns and also jammers and decoys and radar and IR systems too, So the Soviets and Russians have been building up attack missiles capable of penetrating such airspace for 60+ years.

Further proof that Russia is not some weak enemy of drunks that get by on ancient western weapon flawed copies.

IMHO these examples lends more credence that Khinzhal has plasma stealth and it severely degrades the performance of (already shitty) Western AD complexes.

I am not sure about plasma stealth, but it is certainly too fast to be intercepted, but it is not just fast... it detects incoming threats and actively employs strategies to evade interception by releasing jammers and flares and manouvering to avoid interceptors.

I was talking about free fall and air friction impact.

Which does not apply when talking about Kinzhal or Iskander.

Even if it is powered it will loose speed. If it can achieve mach 10 where there is no air then it can't accelerate above mach 10 in the air.

Engine thrust plus gravity means losing speed is not a certainty. The altitudes it operates there is air, and the faster you move the higher the drag in air so eventually the thrust and the drag will equalise and the missile will stop accelerating and maintain a speed... for the Kinzhal that is about mach 10, for Iskander (which uses the same rocket motor but is launched from the ground) that would be about mach 6-7.

It isn't the speed that makes it safe... S-400 can intercept targets moving at 4.8km/s, it is the ability to change flightpath unpredictably... think of it in terms of a comet... one second it is going to hit in the ocean and then next they work out it is going to hit a city 30km away if they work out the new target 5 seconds from impact then there wont be time to redirect any interceptors already launched to intercept the target and those interceptors can't cover 30km in 5 seconds either...

It can still run its engine but that will be to limit the speed dicrease and not to accelerate.

How do you know that? At the speed it is travelling when we talk about manouvering we don't mean looping and dogfighting with incoming SAMs... a ten degree turn at 3km/s will shift the flight path dozens of kms... it will likely take 2 seconds for the intercepting side to work out there has been a change in flightpath, and by the time they work out the new interception point and signal the interceptor missiles to turn and get to this new position in the air the incoming threat might already have turned back and turned a different direction, meaning those interceptor missiles are now going the wrong way and will have to turn again... but the enormous speed of the incoming threat means very little time to change intercept points and for your interceptor missiles to get there.

Remember the missiles you are firing don't have the ability to hover so if they get there early they can't wait for the target, and if they get there late they can't turn and chase it down.

These missiles are very aerodynamic and are designed to fly through the air efficiently so their terminal velocity is going to be rather faster than you appear to think, and with the combination of rocket thrust and gravity accelerating it downwards it is not going to slow down that much... why do you think spacecraft need parachutes?

Why do meteorites create enormous holes in the ground?

Achieving mach 10 in dense air is not easy and burns a lot of fuel.

That is very true and if these missiles flew at sea level all the way to their targets they would not be flying at anything more than maybe mach 3 or mach 4, but when diving on a target you get a gravity assist and rocket thrust assist so you are not going to lose a lot of speed in the 6 or 7 seconds of flight through the thicker parts of the atmosphere in a steep dive.

Manouevring can be done without any engine when entering the atmosphere.

The Kinzhal and Iskander have fixed external fins that are rather small for low drag, and both manouver through the use of vanes in the rocket exhaust flow to act as thrust vectoring so no matter what speed they are moving at their control surfaces wont stall.

The missile is quite small. I doubt it has enough fuel for having propulsion all the way.

These missiles are about 4 tons and while it is a very aerodynamic shape if it does not have propulsion all the way then it wont be able to dive on the target and hit it.

More likely it is using a system that turns it off and on when needed.

Solid rocket fuel powered weapons are well known for their ability to throttle thrust up and down and also shut down and start up again.... NOT.

In the very last 10km I suspect it speed dicrease a lot. Mach 5 would be still very good.

Even if that were true a mach 5 manouvering target is a difficult target too.

The Ukrainians and Americans have said they can't intercept Kh-22Ms let alone Kh-32s or Zircons or Iskanders or Kinzhals, and while they talk about shooting down Kalibrs and Kh-101s and Gerans it seems the targets keep getting hit so I would even question that...

But then again air defence is hard and needs a lot of resources and systems all working together and the Ukraine has not had that for quite some time.

Russian air defences are astounding in comparison, but still needs work and improvement regarding some smaller drones.

An ICBM warhead free falls from about 100km and hits the earth (impact speed) at about 7km/s

And it does so because it is a pointy aerodynamic shape and the 6-7 seconds of actually thick air of the atmosphere is not enough to slow it down very much.

Things like Comets appear to actually explode above the ground like the Tunguska incident... the forces on objects not designed to reach the ground are enormous and are destabilising, but obviously Russian missiles are designed to reach targets on the ground.

The ICBM warhead reaches 7 km/s before entering the atmosphere. It slows down in the atmosphere and is smaller near the ground.

Not much smaller.

A dive is characterized by high speed and usually by a strongly increasing airspeed in the course of the dive.

Some of the first "supersonic" people were in aircraft diving in WWII in aircraft that could not get to supersonic speeds in horizontal flight due to engine power and drag, but in a dive they could go rather faster, though their aircraft might disassemble itself on its way down...

The dense atmosphere is 0-10km in altitude. It doesn't have time to slow down too much. It goes through those 10km in matter of few seconds.

At mach 10 Kinzhal takes just few second more to go through the atmosphere and impact the target.

Kinzhal will be flying at 30-50km altitude so in a dive it will have more time to accelerate through the thin air than to decelerate in the thicker lower air.

They admit themselves they can't shoot them down.

In addition, Kinzhal must slow down so that the active radar can clearly see the target. At a speed of 10M in the atmosphere, the plasma can disrupt the radar signal.

If it had an active radar seeker then the easiest way to defeat it would be to jam that radar. Optical and inertial/Glonass guidance gives better accuracy and more immunity to interference... if the plasma blinded its radar then no ground based or missile mounted radar should be able to detect it either...

The thing about Kinzhal just like the Kh-22/-32 is that they dive down onto their target
from above the radar (so to say). The radar can detect them far away at a large height (maybe)
but when the missile is closer your usual radar can´t track it anymore.

The whole idea of using speed is that you have to fly high to fly fast so they accepted from the outset that the enemy will detect their attack from an enormous range, so the purpose of the high speed is to make interception more difficult. The west went for stealth instead.

Nobody uses or plans to use Mach 3 bombers because such a speed makes the design and operation of such an aircraft expensive and it does not make you safe from enemy air defences at that speed. Flying 4 times faster in something that can manouver (which just means does not have a predictable flightpath) makes it viable again but to get a strategic aircraft up to such speeds would be very very expensive so at the moment it is cheaper to use missiles that fast... scramjets are more efficient than rockets.

Kinzhal is not powered by a terminal stage rocket engine. Same with Iskander. This is even visible in the photos from the Iskander impact. Only Cirkon can has propulsion throughout the entire flight segment.

Kinzhal and Iskander use control surfaces inside the rocket exhaust to manouver... when the rocket motor shuts down it cannot manouver at all.

After nearly 2 years it's finally okay to admit this in public now, so why even provoke the fight in the first place

It was the myth that the Russian Army is weak and its economy is fragile and relies on western countries buying its energy and raw materials, while HATO armies are strong and powerful and with HATO money and ammo and weapons the Ukrainian army with training since 2014 will walk all over Russias big but flawed military.

If they knew then what they know down this war would not have happened and Russia would have gotten a bit more respect.

Russia is rather better off without the west no though... most of the western tentacles stealing money and resources and energy from Russia have been cut, and Russia is not making more profits selling these things to the rest of the world at a more honest price.

Why does the engine have to run all the time?

Because its ability to manouver requires engine exhaust to be deflected by the control surfaces inside the rocket exhaust.

A better question to ask is WTF would a 500km range missile weight 3.8 tons.... do they not know how to make rockets properly?

It is a solid rocket motor... please share with the group how you shut it down and then start it up again later if you need it?

Although I believe that Iskander/Kinzhal flies powerless in its terminal phase.

You can believe anything you like, but please explain how it actually hits its targets if there is no exhaust for the thrust vectoring system to steer it?

The west is having a meltdown that India will jointly manufacture weapons with Russia. Piers Morgan devoted an entire show to this topic.

That quote it hilarious... it seems a democracy cannot trade with Russia... except the US continues to buy Russian Uranium fuel and Europe continues to buy Russian oil and gas, so it is more do as I say but not what I do... to India.

a possible penetration aid, which fits into six canisters at the base of the warhead. Preliminary evidence suggests that some of the decoys emit thermal signatures, while others are equipped with jammers to counter active seekers. The decoys may also present an enhanced radar signature to spoof ground-based radar.

So your search radar sweeps around once every 6 to 7 seconds... when it releases a radar decoy you get multiple radar returns fanning out from the flight path... which is which?

While likely to have a range of roughly 500 km if carrying a 700 kg warhead, the missile’s range can be doubled depending on the size of the warhead used and its trajectory – a point tacitly admitted in 2007 by the then-commander of the Artillery and Missile Forces of the Russian Army, Colonel General Vladimir Zaritsky. The terminal descent onto a target is conducted vertically, giving little opportunity for successful interception.

Range could probably be massively extended if it just climbed and flew a ballistic path, but it would become a very easy target to shoot down which would make it ineffective.

mtlb suicide drones? Could this be why T-55s and T-62s are being sent to theater? How hard would it be to turn them into drones?

My understanding is that the upgraded T-55 and T-62 vehicles are basically used as relatively short range artillery in the direct and slightly indirect firing role.

There have been one or two reports of old tanks being used already.

Would work better with vehicles not given upgrades though.

Its gonna slow as it hits denser atmosphere for sure, so from 25K m it will slow from M7 down to about M3.

In a dive with its rocket motor running?

Manouvers to evade interception don't need to be 90 degree turns that really would bleed speed... a simple 10 degree turn would not reduce speed very much at all but will shift the intercept point by a significant distance in an instant... something already launched interceptors might not be able to change their trajectory quickly enough to compensate for.

You can just put two or three solid block of fuel and burn them when you want. 1 for start, 2nd to boost the range and 3rd when for the last 20km.

Which is the exact opposite of what you said before that they are just falling with no rocket power at all...

The current model of the R-77 is supposed to use a three stage rocket motor... the first being a high energy fuel to accelerate and climb to altitude so it can cruise further and faster, with a second stage cruise burning motor that basically just overcomes drag and maintains flight speed for several minutes and then when it gets close to its target it turns on its radar and lights up its third stage so it is powered during the terminal attack.

1.5 ton Russian cruise missiles fly 3,500mk to their targets and this is a 3.8 ton solid rocket powered missile...

The result has been decided, it is only a matter of how long before the west accepts defeat and unplugs the patient from the machine keeping them alive.

This terrorist attack against civilians killed two dozen people and injured 100 more, in comparison Russian attacks on Ukrainian military targets have been devastating and has been taking out ukrainian soldiers which Kiev is struggling to replace.

All this time you have been saying Russia needs to end this, but Russia does not need to end this, what they need to do is finish this in a way that creates a solution rather than a temporary fix that the west can open up again in a few years time.

The Russians have withstood the mighty counter offensive of the Ukraine with heavy losses to Ukraine, they have not revealed what they intend to do, whether it is keep the meat grinder grinding or to change tactics and attack on different fronts.

They have been building up fuel and ammo and weapons and drones and aircraft and missiles for a new offensive and have not actually used the troops it mobilised yet... they have barely begun to fight.

When they do decide to attack it will likely be in multiple points along the line so that Kiev struggles to support all parts of the line at once and in quite a few places they will have to fall back, which will make those falling back horribly vulnerable to artillery and air strike and drone attack...

There is a real chance of a withdrawal becoming a rout and a collapse of the military...

Who knows what is in store for Russia but turning away from the west is the best thing that could have happened to them and BRICS is only just getting started.