Oreshnik missile system (IRBM)

He agrees on the analysis done here almost point by point. If this new weapon does not make Westerners engage their few remaining neurons, I don't know what else can be done...

While I have not researched enough into the physics of the process, from a military value perspective I still don't see what would be the downside of putting an appropriate kind of high explosive inside of the penetrator.

Lets say the penetrator is 100kgs... removing 50kgs of metal and replacing it with 50kg of HE would make it probably 3 to 4 times bigger in volume, so you either make it longer or fatter or both, which means it slows down faster in flight through the air... but what do you get for this 50kg of HE?

When do you set it off?

When you set it off the structure will be broken which will massively reduce penetration performance... it essentially becomes an APHE round... a smart fuse that detects the decelleration could be used to set off the HE when it gets close to stopping, but even then the HE explosion will accelerate the walls of the projectile to perhaps half the speed they are already moving in the direction of travel.

A tiny charge of maybe 2-3kgs down the centre of the projectile with the sides prefragmented into balls or cubes where the HE charge essentially spreads the masses out sideways before impact on a soft target might make sense... but again timing will be critical... do it too late and it will be penetrating the target... you might as well have replaced that small HE charge with more metal fragments and just have it act like a frangible round that shatters as it penetrates to spread damage internally.

If the target is an area target spreading the fragments early just means the fragments will be travelling slower when they hit the target. Small fragments will rapidly slow down in the airflow because of their light weight...

For area soft targets the best warhead would be nuclear.

For deep bunkers the best penetrator will be all metal... but instead of having 6 x 500 kg penetrators, having 6 x 100kg penetrators in each warhead bus would spread the damage and ensure deep penetration on any target.

It has mass, so contributes to the kinetic potential, while a LOT of additional useful energy that can be set off at the right moment for maximum damage.

In this case they likely had a good idea of the underground structure of the target so hitting it hard and in the right places is more likely, but against targets they don't have accurate information on I would say the chance of setting off a HE charge at the perfect time would be impossible... not only would you need an indepth knowledge of the layout of the underground structure, but also knowledge of how thick each floor structure is in regard to floors and ceilings to determine where the warhead is in each structure for setting off any explosive charge... which as I have mentioned is really only a fragment spreader compared with the flight speed of this munition.

At least theoretically, and provided technical feasibility exists, it makes full sense. These are highest-end weapons which are strategic in practice, not cheap anti tank ones where high costs are unpractical.

There will be a range of strategic targets they might find this weapon useful for engaging... maybe even including underwater targets using super cavitating penetrators that can reach down a few hundred metres under water to hit cables or pipes. There might be gas storage facilities or bunkers or undergrounds... imagine hitting a major river where an underground tunnel goes underneath... hitting the river and penetrating to the underground tunnels underneath flooding a major underground system with river water... especially if that underground is used as a shelter for WWIII...

Then of course you will have bunkers and nuclear power stations and even dams or other structures holding back the sea or large bodies of water that could be shattered...

There is enormous scope for warhead types for different targets and they could perhaps customise warheads or use smart design or smart fusing to allow a standard design to be used effectively in a variety of roles, but I suspect just standard all metal would be the simplest and cheapest to start with.

I am not familiar with the studies of critical speed levl that Garry mentioned.

It was an issue about next generation tank development and was published in the mid 1990s in a west german magazine called MilTech.

I will try to dig it out...

Note it was a german article regarding german work possibly while they were working on improving the 120mm smoothbore so they didn't have to use DU rounds which led to the longer barrel L55 gun... not to mention talk of 140mm and 130mm calibre guns...

The issue I am remembering had multiple articles on range of topics including future armour types including electric armour, and of course future power plants for the vehicles, as well as the future of guns.

It certainly did not mention the T-14, which is why I think it was in the 1990s rather than the 2000s... and talked about increasing calibres and increasing velocities and it mentioned either 2.5km/s or 3km per second as a boundary where the extra energy needed to increase velocity started to increase much faster than the penetrator performance increased. In comparison increasing the weight of the projectile tended to increase penetration and effective penetrating range with less energy increases required.

It is probably not an accident that Zircon and Hazelnut impact at speeds in the same ball park of 3-4km/s and that much higher speeds have not been the goal.

We have seen six separate warhead clusters releasing 6 penetrators each, so that is 36 separate penetrators... presumably lighter or fewer penetrators could have been used to increase the speed, and of course lower speeds could have been achieved with even more or heavier penetrators... they made a choice.

We are speculating about the weight of each penetrator but the fact is we do not know.

Considering a tank fired APFSDS is generally about 5-8kg in weight the sort of 100 to 150kg penetrators we are speculating about are actually rather huge... for all we know they might be 25kg or 50kg penetrators...

It will be interesting to find out.

@GarryB

I have checked and, curiously, at the named speeds 1 kg of KE penetrator has almost identical energy density as TNT, which is not even one of the most energy dense explosives. So, the additional energy provided by any efficient explosive is indeed comparable to the kinetic one. One additional element to consider is that those desirably heavy penetrators are the payload of an IRBM, for which weight is not desirable at all.

In the end the idea is very simple: there is a wide variety of targets and for most of them a horrendous penetration capacity is not the best solution at all. With some kind of controllable explosives the warhead would be much more flexible and, depending on the properties of the explosive being used, more effective in general. Being more explicit, imagine a hypothetical explosive, specifically developed for penetrating warheads, with 50% mass density of the penetrator and say 200% of energy density of TNT, it would already have 50% more energy per kg than the penetrator alone, not to speak abut the ability to release it at the right time, which is even more important.

Maybe this was just a pure KE warhead, maybe there are others for surface targets, we know almost nothing about real data and capabilities of the weapon.

I have a hunch it will be ready for display on Victory Day

This would dispel many doubts about the range, payload.

What doubts?
It was launched from Astrakhan region and hit a target in Dnjepropetrovsk.
Measure the distance.

lyle6 wrote:Meanwhile the US just got embargoed by China on the most valuable semiconductor feedstocks

That's interesting, can you provide a source which outlines further details of this development?

Unfortunately, Russia is currently pursuing such a policy that they will not show Oreshnik anytime soon. Previously, they showed every ICBM launch, etc. This would dispel many doubts about the range, payload

They showed it working and no doubt US experts are combing over the debris and will be sending back reports to the US.

Giving them too much information would help them to create countermeasures and equivalent weapons... let them keep guessing.

On the day of victory you can see possibly empty TEL with container. I meant the test of the missile during the test and the movie of it.

You wont be happy till they send you the schematics... get used to disappointment.

Missile expert Pavel Podvig

Anti Russian anti Putin tool of the west... it would make more sense to post what Putin said about the weapon than the opinion of this CIA paid tosser.

A NYT report on the missile and the attack... let me guess... it hit civilian factories and no one was injured or killed and all it did was punch some holes in the roof based on satellite imagery... but surely if that was the case Kiev officials would be dragging western media into the buildings to show there was no damage and that it was a factory making baby milk formula... and now innocent babies in Ukraine are going to die because mean old Putin (didn't) destroy the only factory in the Ukraine... except they claim he didn't destroy anything because hazelnuts are weak...

The conundrum of Russia... and Putin... in one breath all powerful, and in the next on the brink of collapse.

The warheads will likely remain secret as it should, but the Oreshnik will definitely be displayed.

Back in the day the Soviets loved displaying their big missiles - and it worked as it scared the west. They even showed experimental ICBM types.
Mind you - good quality images of the Pioneer IRBM was kept under wraps until the INF Treaty - but it's capabilities was widely known in the west.

The whole point is to flaunt it. It's a superweapon. It's meant to deter.

Stop with this nonsense. They showed Topola M, Yars, Bulava, Sarmat. They will keep the IRBM based on Yars a big secret. You won't see the warhead part anyway

They also revealed how many aircraft they were producing each year as they were delivered.... but they don't give numbers now.

A new IRBM would be kept secret so the west does not know what it is looking for in satellite images and how many they have and where they are deployed.

Scary new weapons are even more scary the less the enemy knows about them... there is no START treaty that covers IRBMs or MRBM or SRBM so Russia is not obliged by treaty to reveal any information at all to the west about these systems and it would be smart to not tell them anything at all... keep them guessing.

Do they feel safer now the INF treaty is gone?

I rather suspect that Germany might change its mind about US missiles being based on their territory... but who knows... they are so whipped.

The whole point is to flaunt it. It's a superweapon. It's meant to deter.

Rather more scary if they don't know what it looks like... then they can introduce a whole range of new trucks with huge tubes on them and drive them around the place...

What is the conclusion, is the fact that the scale of damage caused by shock and pressure increases massively with the speed, even if the slug used for the job was half the weight.

Soviet tests for paint chip sized objects moving at near orbital or faster speeds showed a 75mm thick sheet of aluminium armour would not protect a satellite, but ironically two sheets 2mm thick and spaced 50cm apart would protect a satellite. Effectively the super high speed meant the impact on the outer sheet vapourised the penetrator and the metal sheet but when the vapourised material hit the inner sheet it still had high velocity but it lacked the mass to penetrate the inner sheet despite it only being 2mm thick too. Ironically a much slower but heavier projectile would have motored through both sheets and destroyed the satellite.

Now, double the speed, and put a tungsten od DU penetrator instead of aluminum ...

And remember that doubling the speed does not double the energy....