Russia and its “Special Operation” in Ukraine

[bickster]

UKMoD

Killljoy = Kinzhal

[LondonLax]

My hunch would be that Russia doesn’t actually have many true hypersonic missiles and has not used one yet, rather saving them for their nuclear arsenal. 

It’s been great publicity for Raytheon Systems though. 

[pas5898]

13 hours ago, blandy said:

Absolutely. Stuff has been done right. Intelligence, fettling by the US (not Ukraine) with the Patriot system and Russian exaggeration of capabilities.

Russia invests in new hypersonic weapons

Half of the money disappears through corruption

Russia Pretend they have a hypersonic weapon

When needed it doesn't work/ failed

Someone falls out a window

 

Rinse and repeat for the majority of Russian tech.

 

[bickster]

1 minute ago, LondonLax said:

My hunch would be that Russia doesn’t actually have many true hypersonic missiles and has not used one yet,

The Russians have claimed to be using them since March 22, confirmed to have been used on April 11th 2022 and plenty of times since (and the sources for that are all on the Wiki page for the missile)

There's even a quote from Biden saying they are very hard to defend against

Russia using their Kinzhals isn't disputed by anyone (but you obviously)

I do agree that they likely don't have that many

[Guest av1]

19 hours ago, blandy said:

There's two sub conversations going on here - it started with mention of Patriot shooting down hypersonic missiles, and whether Ukraine fettled the software/hardware to improve its efficacy. Patriot doesn't use "a wall of fire" it uses single missiles with proximity fuses, and the missile seekers are guided by Radar. The challenge is that with the patriot and the incoming hypersonic missile having a closing speed of maybe 4 or 5 times the speed of sound there are all kinds of technical hurdles to overcome to give a high probability of intercept.

The second part of the convo was around a wall of lead barrage. It's typically used, for example on naval platforms as a last line of defence against (slower) anti-ship missiles, typically coming directly towards the ship at low level (to avoid early radar detection). The multi barrel guns fire off rounds incredibly fast and in a narrow cone pattern, but they don't have much endurance of fire - they get super hot and also use up ammunition incredibly quickly and are emptied within a second or so, I think. Transfer that situation to a descending hypersonic missile descending near vertically and not directly towards the gun(s) (unlike a ship borne defensive gun). The timing of firing, when you're at a tangent to the missile path, in order to intercept and destroy in is one more a huge technical and aiming challenge. It's like standing on a hilltop with a shotgun and trying to hit a supersonic jet whizzing past, but much harder.

So, like you say, perhaps balloons (maybe in the shape of clowns, or bears) and re-purposed cricket or tennis nets are the next best thing?

Very interesting, thanks.
 

Given then how incredibly difficult all that sounds, do you believe that the West have somehow found a way, or is it more likely that Russia are telling porkies about hypersonic missiles? 

[bickster]

29 minutes ago, av1 said:

Given then how incredibly difficult all that sounds, do you believe that the West have somehow found a way, or is it more likely that Russia are telling porkies about hypersonic missiles? 

Its a bit of both. US have found a way AND Russia has overstated the missiles capabilities. It isn't an either / or

[blandy]

7 minutes ago, av1 said:

Very interesting, thanks.
 

Given then how incredibly difficult all that sounds, do you believe that the West have somehow found a way, or is it more likely that Russia are telling porkies about hypersonic missiles? 

The context is that the starting point was “Russia has these hypersonic missiles that they claim are impossible to shoot down” and the US has previously said “really hard to shoot them down”. Then we moved to some more information, which was that (if the reports are correct) a number of these missiles were shot down and also that a patriot system was itself hit.

From there, we moved on to “Ukraine must have fettled the Patriot system”. And also a separate tangential discussion about the general difficulty of hitting these hypersonic missiles, which kind of loops back to what the US said previously. 

So what I guess is that the US may have improved or modified the Patriot system software and or hardware to adjust for the new threat from these hypersonic missiles in Ukraine.  I also guess that the tweaks have generally been successful in improving the effectiveness, however it would appear, perhaps, that given all sides accept that a patriot system was damaged that there’s not (and never really can be) any guarantee that they will always hit the incoming missiles and planes and drones.  I’m just speculating here, completely, but anyway, here’s a theory:  Knowing there is a threat of hypersonic missiles, Patriot may have been adjust so that instead of the Patriot missile sensor detecting when it is very close to the target missile and a proximity fuse detonating the warhead and thus destroying the target, the distance at which that triggering happens has been increased to account for the faster speed of the kinzhal missiles, so the warhead explodes sooner and the kinzhal, moving so fast, then flies into the exploding ball of steel and is destroyed. The timing needs to be spot on and to be spot on the velocity of the target has to be measured accurately by the patriot radar and processing. Terrific…er, but what if the incoming threat is a slower moving missile or aircraft? The patriot would then be exploding too far away to be effective. So then, you either need to use Patriot only on Kinzhals, and to use other defence systems, like the ones Germany and Norway have given Ukraine, against more standard threats, or for patriot to be able to identify what type and speed of threat it’s shooting at and adjust the proximity detector settings automatically and accordingly.

On the Russian claims, yes they have these kinzhal missiles, for sure. How many? Not that many. Claims about their actual capabilities and specifications are almost certainly exaggerated, wildly exaggerated, or just media guesswork. Speaking of guesswork, that’s mainly what my posts are, too.

 

[GarethRDR]

22 hours ago, blandy said:

A missile traveling at extreme velocity creates a number of difficulties - firstly you have to be able to track it accurately in order to determine its trajectory, and that is difficult with the speed it's going and the processing time and computing necessary. Then you have to take that predicted trajectory and calculate where it will be at a specific moment, and that moment will be extremely fleeting, with almost no margin for error. Then you have to very accurately place the intercepting item (whatever that is, a missile or "lead" or whatever) in the exact position you've calculated, at the exact moment that the hypersonic threat is going to be there. You have to account for wind speed and direction, variations in the precise velocity of your intercepting agent, variations in guidance accuracy, the precise timing of any explosive triggering in your missile (does the fuse always trigger after 0.1 second, or does it sometimes take 0.2 secs - because in that 0.1 sec difference the threat has moved - something travelling at 1000 mph moves 45 metres in a 10th of a second, and you've missed... and so on.

African or European missile?

[blandy]

3 minutes ago, GarethRDR said:

African or European missile?

What? I don’t know that…..ahhhhhh

[tonyh29]

 

2 hours ago, av1 said:

Very interesting, thanks.
 

Given then how incredibly difficult all that sounds, do you believe that the West have somehow found a way, or is it more likely that Russia are telling porkies about hypersonic missiles? 

most / all ballistic missiles are hypersonic and reach speeds of /over  Mach 5  , but these are glide missiles at low altitude and able to avoid radar detection for longer rather than conventional ballistic missile ,  but the first ones used in Ukraine back in March  , the US reportedly tracked them in real time  , might be a case of they used that data to work out a way to stop it  ? or it could just be a case of tracking the MiG 31's based in Akhtubinsk that are modified to launch them and using that information as well ? 

Edited May 17, 2023 by tonyh29

[Guest av1]

1 hour ago, blandy said:

The context is that the starting point was “Russia has these hypersonic missiles that they claim are impossible to shoot down” and the US has previously said “really hard to shoot them down”. Then we moved to some more information, which was that (if the reports are correct) a number of these missiles were shot down and also that a patriot system was itself hit.

From there, we moved on to “Ukraine must have fettled the Patriot system”. And also a separate tangential discussion about the general difficulty of hitting these hypersonic missiles, which kind of loops back to what the US said previously. 

So what I guess is that the US may have improved or modified the Patriot system software and or hardware to adjust for the new threat from these hypersonic missiles in Ukraine.  I also guess that the tweaks have generally been successful in improving the effectiveness, however it would appear, perhaps, that given all sides accept that a patriot system was damaged that there’s not (and never really can be) any guarantee that they will always hit the incoming missiles and planes and drones.  I’m just speculating here, completely, but anyway, here’s a theory:  Knowing there is a threat of hypersonic missiles, Patriot may have been adjust so that instead of the Patriot missile sensor detecting when it is very close to the target missile and a proximity fuse detonating the warhead and thus destroying the target, the distance at which that triggering happens has been increased to account for the faster speed of the kinzhal missiles, so the warhead explodes sooner and the kinzhal, moving so fast, then flies into the exploding ball of steel and is destroyed. The timing needs to be spot on and to be spot on the velocity of the target has to be measured accurately by the patriot radar and processing. Terrific…er, but what if the incoming threat is a slower moving missile or aircraft? The patriot would then be exploding too far away to be effective. So then, you either need to use Patriot only on Kinzhals, and to use other defence systems, like the ones Germany and Norway have given Ukraine, against more standard threats, or for patriot to be able to identify what type and speed of threat it’s shooting at and adjust the proximity detector settings automatically and accordingly.

On the Russian claims, yes they have these kinzhal missiles, for sure. How many? Not that many. Claims about their actual capabilities and specifications are almost certainly exaggerated, wildly exaggerated, or just media guesswork. Speaking of guesswork, that’s mainly what my posts are, too.

 

Thank you for the reply, very interesting. 
 

If I’m honest the technical stuff is many levels above my comprehension, but I’ve taken from that that it’s a mixture of improvement/modification from the West (US) sprinkled with a healthy dose of  Russian lies/exaggeration. 
 

Im still amazes me that I get a better informed answer on most subjects, on what is essentially a fans football forum than I get from most media outlets. Love you VT 

 

 

[Chindie]

The kinzhal isn't really a hypersonic missile, at least in any capacity that is useful to describe it as such. Its marketed as such to make it sound more high tech than it is. It's basically an air-launched ballistic missile that operates without launching into the atmosphere, and has manoeuvrability and speed boosted up. It's a good bit of kit but the Russians are marketing it as something more special than that to make it sound like they're developing stuff in line with the US and China's weapons. They aren't.

They want to make it sound like it's a hypersonic glide vehicle, which is a missile that initially operates on a ballistic trajectory but on reentry adjusts it's trajectory to glide very low and very fast, erratically, to avoid interception. These are incredibly complex to develop and even the US doesn't have an operational one yet. The Kinzhal however is essentially a development of a concept the US was **** around with 40 years ago.

[magnkarl]

5 hours ago, Chindie said:

The kinzhal isn't really a hypersonic missile, at least in any capacity that is useful to describe it as such. Its marketed as such to make it sound more high tech than it is. It's basically an air-launched ballistic missile that operates without launching into the atmosphere, and has manoeuvrability and speed boosted up. It's a good bit of kit but the Russians are marketing it as something more special than that to make it sound like they're developing stuff in line with the US and China's weapons. They aren't.

They want to make it sound like it's a hypersonic glide vehicle, which is a missile that initially operates on a ballistic trajectory but on reentry adjusts it's trajectory to glide very low and very fast, erratically, to avoid interception. These are incredibly complex to develop and even the US doesn't have an operational one yet. The Kinzhal however is essentially a development of a concept the US was **** around with 40 years ago.

Agreed. As I stated earlier on these missiles the name is a joke. Just like most Russian gear.

[Mandy Lifeboats]

Worth a quick read.  

Russia is exporting more gas and oil than ever. But thr revenue from it has halved.  

"Russia admits problems...."

https://www.ft.com/content/c99fc8e9-35d5-42c6-9361-5012d5dec581

Edited May 17, 2023 by Mandy Lifeboats
Added details

[Enda]

8 hours ago, av1 said:

 

Im still amazes me that I get a better informed answer on most subjects, on what is essentially a fans football forum than I get from most media outlets. Love you VT 

 

Seconded.

Thanks to all you nerds sharing military technicalities with us. Much appreciated.

[LondonLax]

7 hours ago, Mandy Lifeboats said:

Worth a quick read.  

Russia is exporting more gas and oil than ever. But thr revenue from it has halved.  

"Russia admits problems...."

https://www.ft.com/content/c99fc8e9-35d5-42c6-9361-5012d5dec581

Though if you look at the graph their revenue for energy is in line with historical norms whilst non oil export revenue is way up. It seems the 2022 glut was an outlier. 

[Genie]

1 hour ago, LondonLax said:

Though if you look at the graph their revenue for energy is in line with historical norms whilst non oil export revenue is way up. It seems the 2022 glut was an outlier. 

Hmmm check the source…

[bickster]

 

[foreveryoung]

1 hour ago, bickster said:

 

How much explosive shall we put in, this much, a little more, a bit more, ahhh, stick it all in. 

[bickster]

1 minute ago, foreveryoung said:

How much explosive shall we put in, this much, a little more, a bit more, ahhh, stick it all in. 

Certainly put in enough to vapourise an armoured vehicle, there is literally nothing left