Unstoppable - Russian next gen stealth hypersonic ramjet/scramjet cruise/anti-ship missiles.

Originally posted by StellarX

Originally posted by iskander
Damn fine job StellarX. You got my vote.

I just wish that support from sane well informed people could change the fact that so many on this forum are not sane, informed or interested in changing their status! Just wish i could use the Wats to drag Rogue ( and his new found ally) closer to what i would consider a intelligent discussion of the subject matter.

Oh well

Stellar

rogue, is only capable of personal attAcks , nothing more .....
you get my vote too.... and i think you should be made subjedct matter expert ..

Originally posted by StellarX

Originally posted by iskander
Damn fine job StellarX. You got my vote.

I just wish that support from sane well informed people could change the fact that so many on this forum are not sane, informed or interested in changing their status! Just wish i could use the Wats to drag Rogue ( and his new found ally) closer to what i would consider a intelligent discussion of the subject matter.

Oh well

Stellar

rogue, is only capable of personal attAcks , nothing more .....
you get my vote too.... and i think you should be made subjedct matter expert ..

Let us be wary as to not turn this into some debate on 'which member is better'.
Especially for such a volatile discussion as Rogue1 vs. StellarX might assume.

This is a thread about Russian missiles, not a question of superiority.

The intro post is a bit of a joke.

The US has had ramjet engines and similar technologies for a long time. The reality is that thus far there is not much of a conventional use for them.

They can be extremely fast, but speed always has a trade-off. Missiles need to maneuver, and do so very precisely. the greater the speed, the harder this will be. Any changes in humidity, air density, temperature, etc. can take the missile off course, and adjustments are very hard at such a speed. It increases the error rate of targeting and a ship is not a huge target in most cases. If it turns heading and releases chaff, this missile would not hit a damn thing, it simply cannot turn at those speeds.

The next missiles will rely on variable performance. What I mean is changing altitude, speed and trajectory to evade or confuse sensors and defensive projectiles. They will need the time to sort out chaff decoys from drones and other environmental defenses.

At these speeds, it is not possible.

Even if those barriers could be overcome, the next set of defenses are directed energy weapons and jamming.

I am sorry, but Russian gear has always been long on specifications and very short on actual performance. It never does what it is supposed to outside of a test environment. The reason is that they never have had decent quality control in mass production. The prototype is hand-built by engineers and tested exhaustively before trials.

Field ordinance is slapped together with corners cut and sits in inventory for years while cheap wiring corrodes and circuits fall apart.

They may test one that looks amazing, but it can't turn and in the field version it may be lucky to fly at all.

Russia wants prestige, and they can claim to having superweapons without ever fielding them. This is why the US military does not take it very seriously. They always had thousands of t-72 tanks for M-1s to destroy from 2 miles away, that was never in doubt.

What was also never in doubt was the knowledge among US planners that the Russians never had a reliable weapon for penetrating the armor of US tanks, Iraq proved that. Sure they had missiles that if fired properly might disable a US tank, it seemed that the 2 never coincided.

They never had a missile system or Fighter that could reliably bring down an F-14, F-15, F-16, or F-18. They still do not. Israel proved that over Syria, and it is as true today.

Few weapons live up to their specs in the field, so the Russians can brag all they want, but do not believe the hype.

Hey, whatever happened to those GPS jammers? Those were very effective. US engineers programmed the E-3 to detect them and target them directly. Even if they were able to disrupt US bombs (they were not), they did not survive long enough.

Very Smart....

Do you know what it takes to destroy a missile traveling at Mach 6 or whatever? A grain of sand would likely do it. If not, a small pebble.

Originally posted by mfsheldon
Do you know what it takes to destroy a missile traveling at Mach 6 or whatever? A grain of sand would likely do it. If not, a small pebble.

Good point.

Getting the pebble to the missile would be more impressive, but not as news worthy (till after the fact).

Not going to mention David and Goliath. Damn!!

Originally posted by mfsheldon
The intro post is a bit of a joke.

The US has had ramjet engines and similar technologies for a long time. The reality is that thus far there is not much of a conventional use for them.

There are plenty of uses for them but that would probably give America too large advantage in the military realm and thus rob American policy makers of their ability to scare Americans into foreign adventures that would 'secure' their interest and sometimes even their very 'futures'.

They can be extremely fast, but speed always has a trade-off. Missiles need to maneuver, and do so very precisely.

Which means that missiles may very well not be able to catch it while it drops it's nuclear (dumb bomb if it must) weaponry on some unsuspecting enemy heads.

the greater the speed, the harder this will be. Any changes in humidity, air density, temperature, etc. can take the missile off course, and adjustments are very hard at such a speed.

Why do you want to build a 'fighter jet'? Fighter jets may prevent you from losing a war but they most certainly don't win it.

It increases the error rate of targeting and a ship is not a huge target in most cases. If it turns heading and releases chaff, this missile would not hit a damn thing, it simply cannot turn at those speeds.

So the Russian mach three cruise missiles are obviously just a foolish waste of time in your opinion? What , pray tell , did the few subsonic cruise missiles fired at ships so far do to them? Does the history of anti ship cruise missiles not show that missiles apparently get trough? Would such massively higher speeds not increase these chances in your opinion and if so why on Earth not?

The next missiles will rely on variable performance. What I mean is changing altitude, speed and trajectory to evade or confuse sensors and defensive projectiles.

So they may cruise in at subsonic speeds ( if you have the time to wait and want the added range) and then accelerate to mach whatever for the final attack? Is it really that hard to shoot someone who attempts to approach you very slowly so he can properly aim his knife? The notion is in fact ludicrous and infantry combat manuals makes it quite clear that when you move you MOVE FAST and when you shoot you spray for suppression and further movement. Why cruise missiles should attempt to approach at a crawl ( giving the enemy time to deploy all their countermeasures and think about how to ward of the attack) is quite beyond me but maybe you will explain it. Remember that the Russians were fighting carriers and the more time you give a carrier to launch aircraft the harder your making it for your own surface forces.

They will need the time to sort out chaff decoys from drones and other environmental defenses.

At these speeds, it is not possible.

I would argue that the speed of a attack can make up for a great deal of inferiority ( if these weapons were) as in war speed itself may ensure success. Remember that these decoys are only effective for a given time and the less time you give the enemy to distract your weapons ( firing a flare or chaff for maximum efficiency against such fast moving targets is no easy task when your relatively motion is so very small; ships are not aircraft) the better for you and frankly chaff and flares wont help distract against nuclear armed mach three enough to make it worth your while. The Russians have been planning to fight world war three and their arms were more than able to do so and still are. If one nuclear armed sunburn gets to general area of the CBG it's well and truly the end of carrier operations for a very long time.

Even if those barriers could be overcome, the next set of defenses are directed energy weapons and jamming.

Direct energy weapons have been in operation since the 70's and as far as cruise missiles goes i don't think anything other than speed and very low altitude is going to help much.

I am sorry, but Russian gear has always been long on specifications and very short on actual performance.

Just the Russians or are their societal structure , geared for war as it is, more prone to low production standards? Did the second world war give you this impression or where exactly did you get the idea that Russian equipment were not designed with these assumptions in mind? Where is the proof that their planes require more hanger time or consume a more resources in operation?

It never does what it is supposed to outside of a test environment.

As if most anything does? Please be more specific...

The reason is that they never have had decent quality control in mass production.

They have not?

The prototype is hand-built by engineers and tested exhaustively before trials.

Based on what documentation and since when is this not a world standard? Since when do factories exsist to build prototypes in?

Field ordinance is slapped together with corners cut and sits in inventory for years while cheap wiring corrodes and circuits fall apart.

Could western equipment go without maintenance for longer or shoter periods of time?

They may test one that looks amazing, but it can't turn and in the field version it may be lucky to fly at all.

Right.

Russia wants prestige, and they can claim to having superweapons without ever fielding them.

"Q: Let me ask you specifically about last week's scare here in Washington, and what we might have learned from how prepared we are to deal with that (inaudible), at B'nai Brith.

A: Well, it points out the nature of the threat. It turned out to be a false threat under the circumstances. But as we've learned in the intelligence community, we had something called -- and we have James Woolsey here to perhaps even address this question about phantom moles. The mere fear that there is a mole within an agency can set off a chain reaction and a hunt for that particular mole which can paralyze the agency for weeks and months and years even, in a search. The same thing is true about just the false scare of a threat of using some kind of a chemical weapon or a biological one. There are some reports, for example, that some countries have been trying to construct something like an Ebola Virus, and that would be a very dangerous phenomenon, to say the least. Alvin Toeffler has written about this in terms of some scientists in their laboratories trying to devise certain types of pathogens that would be ethnic specific so that they could just eliminate certain ethnic groups and races; and others are designing some sort of engineering, some sort of insects that can destroy specific crops. Others are engaging even in an eco- type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves."

So there are plenty of ingenious minds out there that are at work finding ways in which they can wreak terror upon other nations. It's real, and that's the reason why we have to intensify our efforts, and that's why this is so important.

DoD News Briefing
Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen

This is why the US military does not take it very seriously.

Sources please as i am not aware of those declarations and since i have provided masses of evidence to the contrary previously maybe you can do some work and give us some of yours.

They always had thousands of t-72 tanks for M-1s to destroy from 2 miles away, that was never in doubt.

Well they could probably after to lose five tanks for every one they destroyed but as they were designed and outfitted to operate in Eastern and Western European conditions i find it hard to believe that those are in fact the type of losses they would have come close to sustaining. Here is at least a bit of a hint as to what the T-72 could do when equiped with the armor the USSR had available in the late 80's and do attempt to remember that the T-72 was not nearly as good a tank as the T-64.

Jane's International Defence Review 7/1997, pg. 15:

"IMPENETRABLE RUSSIAN TANK ARMOUR STANDS UP TO EXAMINATION

"Claims that the armour of Russian tanks is effectively impenetrable, made on the basis of test carried out in Germany (see IDR 7/1996, p.15), have been supported by comments made following tests in the US.

"Speaking at a conference on Future Armoured Warfare in London in May, IDR's Pentagon correspondent Leland Ness explained that US tests involved firing trials of Russian-built T-72 tanks fitted with Kontakt-5 explosive reactive armour (ERA). In contrast to the original, or 'light', type of ERA which is effective only against shaped charge jets, the 'heavy' Kontakt-5 ERA is also effective against the long-rod penetrators of APFSDS tank gun projectiles.

"When fitted to T-72 tanks, the 'heavy' ERA made them immune to the DU penetrators of M829 APFSDS, fired by the 120 mm guns of the US M1 Abrams tanks, which are among the most formidable of current tank gun projectiles.

"Richard M. Ogorkiewicz"

What was also never in doubt was the knowledge among US planners that the Russians never had a reliable weapon for penetrating the armor of US tanks, Iraq proved that.

I don't even know where to start responding to such nonsense but if you bother replying maybe i will attempt to do so. To suggest that standard Russian tank guns in any given decade during the cold war could not achieve penetrations, at likely combat distances and likely targets, is simply a lie.

Sure they had missiles that if fired properly might disable a US tank, it seemed that the 2 never coincided.

Not with Iraqi gunners who had to operate tanks with tank shells with half charges after attempting to acquire their targets with hopelessly inferior equipment they had to slap onto the tanks after the Russians sold them nothing but the very very basics?

They never had a missile system or Fighter that could reliably bring down an F-14, F-15, F-16, or F-18. They still do not. Israel proved that over Syria, and it is as true today.

Once again you have not apparently read any history beside some newspaper headlines and if you want to engage on this issue feel free to respond so i might disprove this stupid notion.

Few weapons live up to their specs in the field, so the Russians can brag all they want, but do not believe the hype.

It's much the same for all weapons deployed by most armies but i guess your bias demands that the Russians be uniquely disadvantaged in this area.

Hey, whatever happened to those GPS jammers? Those were very effective. US engineers programmed the E-3 to detect them and target them directly. Even if they were able to disrupt US bombs (they were not), they did not survive long enough.

Which is why they cost less than the bombs they are meant to distract and will be deployed in their tens of thousands in a real shooting war.

Very Smart....

If you have ten of them it's not going to change a war but i presume you are largely ignorant of their true effectiveness when deployed as they were intended to be.

Do you know what it takes to destroy a missile traveling at Mach 6 or whatever? A grain of sand would likely do it. If not, a small pebble.

And i suppose the atmosphere trough which ICBM's travels contain no dust grains as we all know rain drops don't require such for formation.

What few people realise is that the Russians do not 'sell' their best technology at any given time to those who are under attack and normally sell only what they themselves no longer have much use for in the current decade. To suggest that the USSR sold the best it could to those countries that tried oppose US aggression is fallacy of the first order and to suggest we measure the effectiveness of contemporary ( the US were normally fighting stripped down decades old equipment operated by people who where simply not trained to use them as effectively as possible) Russian equipment by looking at the exported equipment the USAF/IAF normally had to contend with leads to the type of assumptions you have been making.

Monkey model was the unofficial designation given by the Soviet Military to versions military equipment (armored vehicles, airplanes, missiles) of significantly inferior capability to the original designs and intended only for export.

The monkey model was exported with the same or a similar designation as the original Soviet design but in fact it lacked many of the advanced or expensive features of the original.

Performance and capabilities of monkey model equipment were so degraded from the original as not to be in any way representative of the original design capabilities

en.wikipedia.org...

Before you respond i suggest you look at some of the conflicts in question and try discover WHY the Russian equipment did not always serve it's users well. Attempt to consider if a trained Israeli or American crew could have done much better or if the equipment was simply being used ( sold to people with few choices) long after it should have been scrapped. Maybe you will discover the state of those Iraqi tanks or the type of equipment the Russians did not include in the export versions of their planes and tanks...

Stellar

Which means that missiles may very well not be able to catch it while it drops it's nuclear (dumb bomb if it must) weaponry on some unsuspecting enemy heads.

If this is a nuclear delivery system, then that is different, but what makes it better than a ballistic missile? You make the argument that speed is somehow a silver bullet, but I just do not see the logic in your defense. So you do manage to cut the reaction time, but a carrier battle group will still have plenty of time to fire defensive missiles. Given that most US missiles kill by filling the air with shrapnel in front of the oncoming missile, this will mean that a higher speed missile will simply make the explosion that much more impressive. A slower missile is more likely to survive an impact with said shrapnel, or simply maneuver around it. A supersonic missile can have benefits, but avoiding interception is not one of them.

Why do you want to build a 'fighter jet'? Fighter jets may prevent you from losing a war but they most certainly don't win it.

I wish I understood what you are talking about.

So the Russian mach three cruise missiles are obviously just a foolish waste of time in your opinion? What , pray tell , did the few subsonic cruise missiles fired at ships so far do to them? Does the history of anti ship cruise missiles not show that missiles apparently get trough?

I am not saying it is a waste of time, but the title of this post is "unstoppable". This is a joke. A missile traveling at Mach 3 with the weight and payload we are talking about will be both stoppable and avoidable. My comment about a pebble destroying one of these missiles is correct. If I simply filled the air with chaff this missile would be destroyed by its own speed once it enters the cloud, forget about the fact that it will not be able to maneuver at low altitude to hit moving ships. Aside from the USS Stark (freak accident), how many US ships have been hit by anti-ship missiles?

Is it really that hard to shoot someone who attempts to approach you very slowly so he can properly aim his knife? The notion is in fact ludicrous and infantry combat manuals makes it quite clear that when you move you MOVE FAST and when you shoot you spray for suppression and further movement. Why cruise missiles should attempt to approach at a crawl ( giving the enemy time to deploy all their countermeasures and think about how to ward of the attack) is quite beyond me but maybe you will explain it. Remember that the Russians were fighting carriers and the more time you give a carrier to launch aircraft the harder your making it for your own surface forces.

I thought we were talking about anti-ship missiles? Even at Mach 3, any ship in a US battle group will have time to maneuver, launch countermeasures, etc. The very speed of the missile will create a signature so large just due to the wake. At such speeds, it could not fly at low altitude reliably. It wou

Remember that these decoys are only effective for a given time and the less time you give the enemy to distract your weapons ( firing a flare or chaff for maximum efficiency against such fast moving targets is no easy task when your relatively motion is so very small; ships are not aircraft) the better for you and frankly chaff and flares wont help distract against nuclear armed mach three enough to make it worth your while.

If it is nuclear tipped, what is the point? Just drop the warhead from above via ICBM. This does nothing to change the equation. Nuclear attack on a CBG is suicide because the counterattack would be from sub-based forces. As I said in my very first post (did you read it closely?) this has no conventional use. Speed = detection. Nextgen conventional anti-ship weapons need to maneuver and be stealthy. This is neither.

Not with Iraqi gunners who had to operate tanks with tank shells with half charges after attempting to acquire their targets with hopelessly inferior equipment they had to slap onto the tanks after the Russians sold them nothing but the very very basics?

They never had a missile system or Fighter that could reliably bring down an F-14, F-15, F-16, or F-18. They still do not. Israel proved that over Syria, and it is as true today.

Once again you have not apparently read any history beside some newspaper headlines and if you want to engage on this issue feel free to respond so i might disprove this stupid notion.

I will make it easy. How many of the above aircraft have been shot down with a Russian missile? The Israelis used F-15's to destroy the Syrian airforce (with Russian trainers) without a single loss. Serbians shot Russian missiles day and night, with no effect. An F-117 was downed by cannon fire, but not a missile.

If you have ten of them it's not going to change a war but i presume you are largely ignorant of their true effectiveness when deployed as they were intended to be.

I know they did not work. Your only defense is that Russian weapons are never used correctly. It is a tired defense. Why is it that US weapons always are? Consider that for a moment?

All you have to do is look at combat readiness throughout the Cold War. Russia always had lots of submarines, but could never deploy more than one-third at any given time. Why is that? The same was true of their tanks. I will not even mention the death traps they called Backfire bombers.

I could cite hundreds of post Cold War interviews with Russian commanders and soldiers saying the same thing.

Do you know what the US response was to Russian reactive armor? Nothing. They said shoot it below the turret. The problem with reactive armor is that it often sets off adjacent armor packs and pretty soon you have a turret so mangled that it is useless. The shock damage of a non-penetrating round was enough to disable a T-72. In many cases, the reactive armor blew off the main gun tube. That is just wonderful.

History and experience says that I am right.

What is often overlooked in evaluating Russian quality and effectiveness is the time honored practice in that country of stating unrealistic figures to themselves in order to fulfill quotas, goals, etc.

Many a 5-year plan was achieved by simply lying about results rather than doing the book-keeping in a rational way.

To say that the Russians never gave or sold thier best stuff to thier client states is no doubt true, one remembers the Indian Air Force equiped with Soviet aircraft kicking the crap out of Pakistan's American stuff.

Nevertheless, people here tend to overestimate the Russians the same way the CIA used to; no source is informed well enough to provide a fully accurate appraisal of thier capabilities.

To say that they can sortie a dozen boomers or shoot more than a handful of hypersonic cruise missiles at any given time is so speculative as to be a topic for idle fantasy.

Originally posted by Sexomatic
You have voted iskander for the Way Above Top Secret award. You have two more votes this month.

awsome post mate......i like what you posted ...and most of what you said is true

Amen to that, oh yeah, usually when I hear a new Russian weapon mentioned, there is ALWAYS Russian bashin, man the rusty military comments are so getting old, don't diss Russia, Russia is just as militarily capable as US. The 2 are both very powerful and instead of focusing all those high tech and powerful weapons on each other, they should work together to bring some good, much needed change to this world

Stop the rambo vs Russia Rocky vs Drako bullcrap, the Cold war is over damnit!

Just because they take a different approach to things doesn`t in the slightest means its `poor` or `underrated`


a still remember the picture of an F-15 trailing smoke in the Balkans after being hit by aground fire (or maybe even a missile - can`t remember the exact on that one)


`a grain of sand or a pebble will down this`


the range of a grain of sand is feet - a s pebble is feet, so that won`t help really , and if you claim that it would just blow up - the X43A did mach 9.6 in teh atmosphere with a scramjet and didn`t go bang

Originally posted by Harlequin

`a grain of sand or a pebble will down this`


the range of a grain of sand is feet - a s pebble is feet, so that won`t help really , and if you claim that it would just blow up - the X43A did mach 9.6 in teh atmosphere with a scramjet and didn`t go bang

Yeah its not like those missiles are made out of butter!

Thanks for making this an unreadable thread. The topic was lost by two retards that think everything they read is solid. I work in the intelligence community and know without a doubt that most of what you read is propoganda. Especially when it comes to weapon systems. LOL... Taking Stats from a page like FAS or the like and then figuring out which country is better is about as ignorant as you get. I remember arguing with my father "SOT-A" when I was younger about how the HIND could hold 144 (Im probably wrong now and dont care, I was still looking at boobies in the sears catalog at that time) rockets and the apache couldnt hold as many so the HIND must be better. Dad and I still laugh at that conversation. (I cried to momma!) Anyhoo, my point is, its nice to have a cool little discusion about which system is better and whos country has the ability to out tech another country. The facts still remain. You will never, no matter how many Wiki/STAT/White papers you read, know the true capabilities of any armed forces. There are too many variables involved. And for my fianle, The US and Russia have enough nuclear weapons to wipe out human life on earth. We ALL F'n SUCK!

[edit on 6-4-2007 by Iblis]

Iskander,

Russias militar spending is not going to be enough to beat the US military budget or even come close to it which is over 500 billion dollars and this is not even counting the spending going on in Iraq. the US spends more on its military then russias entire GDP. Russias military (while improving..) is simply not in americas league. No one is, so russia shouldnt feel left out. (sorry just had to get into this wang measuring contest)

Also the US has a defense capability that moves at the speed of light that pretty much makes these so called "invincible" missiles obsolete. Its called "lasers". We lead in this area as well. We have a modified 747 airborn laser and in the not so distant future F22s as well as the JSF 35 will be outfitted with a laser of their own for offensive capabilities as well as defensive ones.

also one thing that I think is worth mentioning is the next technological revolution which will involve the convergence of nano, bio, information and materials technology and will further bolster the US military and put us that much further ahead of the "closest competition". The US is the leader in this technology (as it is in most fields) and it looks to stay that way for the foreseeable future. the US accounts for some 40% of the worlds spending on R&D. as for "black projects". A successful military doesnt let its secrets out. Which is probably why you dont hear much about the US black projects.

Has anyone here ever seen the documentary labled "star wars in Iraq"?

EDIT Cant get yvid to work so heres the links..
www.youtube.com...

Also, I think MTHEL would have something to say about your "unstoppable missiles".
Speed of light > Mach 3+
www.youtube.com...
And this is just what they have declassified. I can only imagine what is still "classified".

Also when the US won the cold war many USSR scientist immigrated to the US for work here. Im willing to go out on a limb here and say whatever the soviets had been working on that was previously unknown to the americans is probably well known now. Also after the USSR collapsed it was found out that the USSR was some 10-15 years behind that of the US military tech. Today it is estimated to be at about double that. The two best weapons the USSR had was MAD, and smoke and mirrors, making us think they had capabilities they most certainly did not have. The USSR military was a poor mans military, albeit a powerful one.



[edit on 123030p://4604am by semperfoo]

[edit on 123030p://4804am by semperfoo]

Originally posted by Russian soldier

Originally posted by Sexomatic
You have voted iskander for the Way Above Top Secret award. You have two more votes this month.

awsome post mate......i like what you posted ...and most of what you said is true

Amen to that, oh yeah, usually when I hear a new Russian weapon mentioned, there is ALWAYS Russian bashin, man the rusty military comments are so getting old, don't diss Russia, Russia is just as militarily capable as US. The 2 are both very powerful and instead of focusing all those high tech and powerful weapons on each other, they should work together to bring some good, much needed change to this world

Stop the rambo vs Russia Rocky vs Drako bullcrap, the Cold war is over damnit!

Russias armed forces are improving Ill give you that. And they do have some neat tech. Its just to bad that the US and russia dont work more closely together so we can help one another instead of threaten one another.

Originally posted by mfsheldon
If this is a nuclear delivery system, then that is different, but what makes it better than a ballistic missile? You make the argument that speed is somehow a silver bullet,

I suggested that speed is as important in this regard as it is in the rest of warfare ( meaning very). Nothing is a given but i believe the history of naval combat ( in the missile 'era') tells us that they are in fact deadly even without speed and that countermeasures are rarely deployed effectively or even at all. I think the Russian naval strategy of deploying 'missileers' delivering big warheads at high speed were correct and that they would have by the early mid 70's closed the Atlantic within a week and for good.

but I just do not see the logic in your defense. So you do manage to cut the reaction time, but a carrier battle group will still have plenty of time to fire defensive missiles.

Define ' plenty of time' as last i checked there were still line radar guided and thus line of sight... At mach two ( assuming E3's to give early warning so all weapons are on standby) ships on the perimeter only have about a minute to start tracking and engaging the missiles meaning best case destruction of missile at about 15-20 km's from the first ship with defensive missiles... If any missiles leak trough their nuclear warheads will be sufficient to shut down carrier operations and thus largely end the threat from any given CBG.

Given that most US missiles kill by filling the air with shrapnel in front of the oncoming missile, this will mean that a higher speed missile will simply make the explosion that much more impressive.

If they explode in the path of the missile and don't fragment too fast or too slowly; it's not as simple as you suggest as the experience against scuds proved...

A slower missile is more likely to survive an impact with said shrapnel, or simply maneuver around it.

I don't see how a slower missile is more likely to deliver it's warhead as there is relatively far more time to effectively deploy countermeasures. The one thing you never let the enemy have is more time than you need yourself and designing slow speed missiles is in my opinion quite dumb and it should be asked why the main US surface to surface weapon is still the 1977 'harpoon'..

From FAS...

Moskit is the aircraft variant of the naval missile 3M80 (SS-N-22 Sunburn, the designation 3M80 apparently referring to the Mach 3 speed of 1980 weapons) used on "Sovremennyy" destroyers (eight missiles on each) and on "Tarantul [Tarantula] III patrol ships (four missiles on each). The 3M82 "Mosquito" missiles have the fastest flying speed among all antiship missiles in today's world. It reaches Mach 3 at a high altitude and its maximum low-altitude speed is M2.2, triple the speed of the American Harpoon. When slower missiles, like the French Exocet are used, the maximum theoretical response time for the defending ship is 150-120 seconds. This provides time to launch countermeasures and employ jamming before deploying "hard" defense tactics such as launching missiles and using quick-firing artillery. But the 3M82 "Mosquito" missiles are extremely fast and give the defending side a maximum theoretical response time of merely 25-30 seconds, rendering it extremely difficult employ jamming and countermeasures, let alone fire missiles and quick-firing artillery.

The aircraft version, officially called ASM-MMS and apparently also Kh-4, is intended specially for Su-27K (Su-33) carrier-based fighter aircraft. It was for the first time shown to the CIS leaders in February 1992 in Machulishche and then to the public in August 1992 at the Moscow Air Show in Zhukovskiy.

And while the Moskit is far newer that is not my point as most Russian ship board cruise missiles were designed to the same general lines.

A supersonic missile can have benefits, but avoiding interception is not one of them.

Not giving the enemy any time to effectively respond is in my opinion the best, to say nothing of the cheapest, of defenses.

I wish I understood what you are talking about.

You mentioned *****************

I am not saying it is a waste of time, but the title of this post is "unstoppable". This is a joke.

I don't like that kind of title's myself but it's not a joke if it's at least largely accurate which happens to be what a few western defense analysts believes...

A missile traveling at Mach 3 with the weight and payload we are talking about will be both stoppable and avoidable.

How do stop so much mass when your counter fire will come so late in it's approach? Why were Kamikaze planes so successful at first?

My comment about a pebble destroying one of these missiles is correct.

It's not even close to correct and you have not in fact done anything to support it. How is it that patriot missiles found it's so hard to destroy scud warheads ?

If I simply filled the air with chaff this missile would be destroyed by its own speed once it enters the cloud, forget about the fact that it will not be able to maneuver at low altitude to hit moving ships.

Relative to the missile's speed ships are as good as motionless in the water and any maneuvering after the missiles comes from the radar horizon is largely futile. Chaff has absolutely no capacity to destroy these missiles ( the heated air sheath around the missile will either evaporate it or simply blow it away) and to suggest as much shows little knowledge as to the function of chaff... Nuclear armed cruise missiles do not have the 'maneuver' anyways and this is apparently the point most do not remember considering. I don't think there is much evidence that a naval war third world war would have even started out with conventional weapons.

Aside from the USS Stark (freak accident), how many US ships have been hit by anti-ship missiles?

Since when are we talking about US ships? Do you believe that the US navy are the only one dealing with these problems? What about the experience of the Royal Navy or the Israeli's?

I thought we were talking about anti-ship missiles? Even at Mach 3, any ship in a US battle group will have time to maneuver, launch countermeasures, etc.

Only in your over active imagination. Fact is those shipboard defenses are dated and never had the capacity to deal with such high speed weapons effectively.

If it is nuclear tipped, what is the point? Just drop the warhead from above via ICBM.

In the 20-30 minutes minutes it takes a ballistic weapon to arrive ( given you knew where it was to start with) a CBG CAN maneuver and at the outbreak of a general war they will most certainly not move in the strait lines you require for ballistic tracking and engagement. I mention the nuclear warheads because a American task force has it's main strike weapons in the carrier and a carrier is unlikely to be able to operate aircraft after experiencing the blast effects of a nuclear warhead some 10 or 20 km's away. The Russians designed their surface strike forces for quick and decisive mass strikes as this is what some American Admirals had to say about that strategy.

At the time, we were not ready for war. Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, former Navy Chief of Operations, said at the Australian Naval Institute Seminar in February, 1979: “It is the professional judgment of senior officials in the United States that our Navy has only a 35% probability of winning a conventional naval war against the Soviet Union. Our military knows this, and so does theirs. About the only people who do not know it are the general public in the United States and Australia. Nor do they know that a nuclear exchange in 1981 on present trends would result in about 160 million dead in the United States.”

www.the7thfire.com...
a_and_End_of_Communism.html

s also well known that the cantankerous Late Admiral Hyman Rickover, US Navy (Retired) did not think much of his own carrier-centered navy. When asked in 1982 about how long the American carriers would survive in an actual war, he curtly stated that they would be finished in approximately 48 hours. Former President Jimmy Carter, a former US Navy officer, and Annapolis graduate, was also none too keen on the big carrier Navy, either. Vistica mentioned that Carter did not want any more new carriers, and for the existing fleet to be cut dramatically.

The Late Rear Admiral Eugene Carroll, US Navy (Retired), himself a former aircraft carrier skipper, was also an outspoken critic of the Navy and its infatuation with big aircraft carriers and its collective fear of change. He once said that if the United States continues on its path to build ever larger and ever more expensive aircraft carriers, it will eventually degenerate into a “bankrupt nation.” The most damning comment ever made by a senior officer was that of the Late CNO, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, US Navy, who in 1971 confessed that with the advent of long-range Soviet anti-ship missiles, if there had been a US-Soviet conventional naval war, the US Navy “would lose.”

Continued source

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[edit on 8-4-2007 by StellarX]

Originally posted by StellarX
Originally posted by mfsheldon
If this is a nuclear delivery system, then that is different, but what makes it better than a ballistic missile? You make the argument that speed is somehow a silver bullet,

I suggested that speed is as important in this regard as it is in the rest of warfare ( meaning very). Nothing is a given but i believe the history of naval combat ( in the missile 'era') tells us that they are in fact deadly even without speed and that countermeasures are rarely deployed effectively or even at all. I think the Russian naval strategy of deploying 'missileers' delivering big warheads at high speed were correct and that they would have by the early mid 70's closed the Atlantic within a week and for good.

but I just do not see the logic in your defense. So you do manage to cut the reaction time, but a carrier battle group will still have plenty of time to fire defensive missiles.

Define ' plenty of time' as last i checked there were still line radar guided and thus line of sight... At mach two ( assuming E3's to give early warning so all weapons are on standby) ships on the perimeter only have about a minute to start tracking and engaging the missiles meaning best case destruction of missile at about 15-20 km's from the first ship with defensive missiles... If any missiles leak trough their nuclear warheads will be sufficient to shut down carrier operations and thus largely end the threat from any given CBG.

Given that most US missiles kill by filling the air with shrapnel in front of the oncoming missile, this will mean that a higher speed missile will simply make the explosion that much more impressive.

If they explode in the path of the missile and don't fragment too fast or too slowly; it's not as simple as you suggest as the experience against scuds proved...

A slower missile is more likely to survive an impact with said shrapnel, or simply maneuver around it.

I don't see how a slower missile is more likely to deliver it's warhead as there is relatively far more time to effectively deploy countermeasures. The one thing you never let the enemy have is more time than you need yourself and designing slow speed missiles is in my opinion quite dumb and it should be asked why the main US surface to surface weapon is still the 1977 'harpoon'..

From FAS...

Moskit is the aircraft variant of the naval missile 3M80 (SS-N-22 Sunburn, the designation 3M80 apparently referring to the Mach 3 speed of 1980 weapons) used on "Sovremennyy" destroyers (eight missiles on each) and on "Tarantul [Tarantula] III patrol ships (four missiles on each). The 3M82 "Mosquito" missiles have the fastest flying speed among all antiship missiles in today's world. It reaches Mach 3 at a high altitude and its maximum low-altitude speed is M2.2, triple the speed of the American Harpoon. When slower missiles, like the French Exocet are used, the maximum theoretical response time for the defending ship is 150-120 seconds. This provides time to launch countermeasures and employ jamming before deploying "hard" defense tactics such as launching missiles and using quick-firing artillery. But the 3M82 "Mosquito" missiles are extremely fast and give the defending side a maximum theoretical response time of merely 25-30 seconds, rendering it extremely difficult employ jamming and countermeasures, let alone fire missiles and quick-firing artillery.

The aircraft version, officially called ASM-MMS and apparently also Kh-4, is intended specially for Su-27K (Su-33) carrier-based fighter aircraft. It was for the first time shown to the CIS leaders in February 1992 in Machulishche and then to the public in August 1992 at the Moscow Air Show in Zhukovskiy.

And while the Moskit is far newer that is not my point as most Russian ship board cruise missiles were designed to the same general lines.

A supersonic missile can have benefits, but avoiding interception is not one of them.

Not giving the enemy any time to effectively respond is in my opinion the best, to say nothing of the cheapest, of defenses.

I wish I understood what you are talking about.

I misunderstood your original question. What i should have said is that without a pilot there is not very much you can not make a missile do ( in terms of maneuver) given you thought it was important.

I am not saying it is a waste of time, but the title of this post is "unstoppable". This is a joke.

I don't like that kind of title's myself but it's not a joke if it's at least largely accurate which happens to be what a few western defense analysts believes...

A missile traveling at Mach 3 with the weight and payload we are talking about will be both stoppable and avoidable.

How do stop so much mass when your counter fire will come so late in it's approach? Why were Kamikaze planes so successful at first?

My comment about a pebble destroying one of these missiles is correct.

It's not even close to correct and you have not in fact done anything to support it. How is it that patriot missiles found it's so hard to destroy scud warheads ?

If I simply filled the air with chaff this missile would be destroyed by its own speed once it enters the cloud, forget about the fact that it will not be able to maneuver at low altitude to hit moving ships.

Relative to the missile's speed ships are as good as motionless in the water and any maneuvering after the missiles comes from the radar horizon is largely futile. Chaff has absolutely no capacity to destroy these missiles ( the heated air sheath around the missile will either evaporate it or simply blow it away) and to suggest as much shows little knowledge as to the function of chaff... Nuclear armed cruise missiles do not have the 'maneuver' anyways and this is apparently the point most do not remember considering. I don't think there is much evidence that a naval war third world war would have even started out with conventional weapons.

Aside from the USS Stark (freak accident), how many US ships have been hit by anti-ship missiles?

Since when are we talking about US ships? Do you believe that the US navy are the only one dealing with these problems? What about the experience of the Royal Navy or the Israeli's?

I thought we were talking about anti-ship missiles? Even at Mach 3, any ship in a US battle group will have time to maneuver, launch countermeasures, etc.

Only in your over active imagination. Fact is those shipboard defenses are dated and never had the capacity to deal with such high speed weapons effectively.

If it is nuclear tipped, what is the point? Just drop the warhead from above via ICBM.

In the 20-30 minutes minutes it takes a ballistic weapon to arrive ( given you knew where it was to start with) a CBG CAN maneuver and at the outbreak of a general war they will most certainly not move in the strait lines you require for ballistic tracking and engagement. I mention the nuclear warheads because a American task force has it's main strike weapons in the carrier and a carrier is unlikely to be able to operate aircraft after experiencing the blast effects of a nuclear warhead some 10 or 20 km's away. The Russians designed their surface strike forces for quick and decisive mass strikes as this is what some American Admirals had to say about that strategy.

At the time, we were not ready for war. Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, former Navy Chief of Operations, said at the Australian Naval Institute Seminar in February, 1979: “It is the professional judgment of senior officials in the United States that our Navy has only a 35% probability of winning a conventional naval war against the Soviet Union. Our military knows this, and so does theirs. About the only people who do not know it are the general public in the United States and Australia. Nor do they know that a nuclear exchange in 1981 on present trends would result in about 160 million dead in the United States.”

www.the7thfire.com...
a_and_End_of_Communism.html

s also well known that the cantankerous Late Admiral Hyman Rickover, US Navy (Retired) did not think much of his own carrier-centered navy. When asked in 1982 about how long the American carriers would survive in an actual war, he curtly stated that they would be finished in approximately 48 hours. Former President Jimmy Carter, a former US Navy officer, and Annapolis graduate, was also none too keen on the big carrier Navy, either. Vistica mentioned that Carter did not want any more new carriers, and for the existing fleet to be cut dramatically.

The Late Rear Admiral Eugene Carroll, US Navy (Retired), himself a former aircraft carrier skipper, was also an outspoken critic of the Navy and its infatuation with big aircraft carriers and its collective fear of change. He once said that if the United States continues on its path to build ever larger and ever more expensive aircraft carriers, it will eventually degenerate into a “bankrupt nation.” The most damning comment ever made by a senior officer was that of the Late CNO, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, US Navy, who in 1971 confessed that with the advent of long-range Soviet anti-ship missiles, if there had been a US-Soviet conventional naval war, the US Navy “would lose.”

Continued source

Continued

[edit on 8-4-2007 by StellarX]

If Zumwalt was correct, the only way the US Navy could handle the Soviet Navy was through the use of nuclear weapons, which in turn would provoke a Soviet response, and then, in all likelihood, both sides would be destroyed. Apparently, Admiral Thomas Moorer, US Navy, was worried also. When Soviet and US ships confronted one another in the Mediterranean during the October War of 1973, Goldstein and Zhukov observed: “Soviet battle groups were using the actual U.S. aircraft carriers in the area as virtual targets, an act comparable to holding a cocked pistol to an adversary's temple. Adhering to a kamikaze-like, "battle of the first salvo" doctrine, the Soviet force of 96 ships was poised to launch approximately 13 surface-to-surface missiles (SSMs) at each task group in the U.S. 6th Fleet deployed in the Mediterranean. U.S. Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, then chief of naval operations, recalled a Washington Special Action Group meeting at the peak of the crisis, during which Adm. Thomas Moorer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, estimated: "[W]e would lose our [expletive] in the Eastern Med [if war breaks out]."

www.g2mil.com...

This does nothing to change the equation. Nuclear attack on a CBG is suicide because the counterattack would be from sub-based forces.

The striking power of the American navy is in it's carriers and if their no no longer functioning convoys can't be protected and that's the end of reinforcing Europe. A nuclear attack on American surface forces is all the Russians ever needed to effectively do for their grand strategy to succeed.

As I said in my very first post (did you read it closely?) this has no conventional use.

I read it closely enough to realise that you do not even have a lay persons ( like mine) understanding of these weapons.

Speed = detection.

This missile is not much slower than a hunting rifle's bullet so please do not tell 'speed = detection' as it that changes anything. Knowing that someone is shooting at you is absolutely no guarantee that you can evade it.

Nextgen conventional anti-ship weapons need to maneuver and be stealthy. This is neither.

Maneuver is what you do when you do not have the benefit of speed and stealth is what you attempt to do when you speed wont be enough. Since we know that stealth 'technology' is largely a bunch of nonsense ( especially when it comes at the cost of so many other considerations) we are stuck with speed or, when that can not be achieved, maneuver.

Originally posted by mfsheldon
I will make it easy. How many of the above aircraft have been shot down with a Russian missile? The Israelis used F-15's to destroy the Syrian airforce (with Russian trainers) without a single loss.

You might not have realised this but there have actually been some other air wars beside those Americans and Israeli's have been involved in. I suggest you look at Indian record for instance or what Russian Sam's managed to do to the IAF on occasion... I know your impressions comes from watching CNN but maybe it's best to take into account that CNN covers what it chooses and how it chooses.......

Serbians shot Russian missiles day and night, with no effect. An F-117 was downed by cannon fire, but not a missile.

The F-117 were downed by missiles and a number of allied aircraft were in fact damaged. The fact that so few were shot down is largely due to the fact that they simply flew at 'safe' altitudes were the relatively aged Sam's could not effectively counter them. The fact that they were forced to fly high enough to make their ground interdiction campaign such a failure proves that even properly operated 1960's era Russian weaponry can still force a massively 'superior' enemy air force to fly at altitudes where they are not a serious threat to your ground forces. That all being said the Serbs claimed dozens of destroyed NATO aircraft and considering just how ineffective the NATO campaign was ( before it resorted to second world war style terror bombing) i am still exploring that issue as 1 destroyed aircraft is most certainly not any reason for NATO to fail so badly.

I know they did not work.

List the wars in which Russian air defense or aircraft 'did not work' with the types and relative training of the forces involved. These vague claims you make mostly exposes your your motives and general ignorance and does nothing to quantify or clarify the 'why'.

Your only defense is that Russian weapons are never used correctly.

That is not my only 'defense' but by employing your logic the Pakistan's performance proves that the F-16 does not 'work' either.

Many potential enemies of the USSR and its client states have had a chance to evaluate the MiG-23’s performance. In the 1970s, after a political realignment by the Egyptian government, Egypt gave their MiG-23MS to the United States and the People's Republic of China in exchange for military hardware. These MiG-23MS helped the Chinese to develop their Shenyang J-8II aircraft by borrowing some MiG-23 features, such as its ventral fin and air intakes, and incorporating them into the J-8II. In the U.S., these MiG-23MS and other variants acquired later from Germany were used as part of the evaluation program of Soviet military hardware. The Dutch pilot Leon Van Maurer, who had more than 1200 hours flying F-16s, flew against MiG-23ML Flogger-Gs from air bases in Germany and the U.S. as part of NATO's aerial mock combat training with Soviet equipment. He concluded that the MiG-23ML has superiority on the vertical plane over early F-16 variants, is just slightly inferior to the F-16A on the horizontal plane, and has superior BVR capability.

The Israelis tested a MiG-23MLD that defected from Syria and found that it had better acceleration than the F-16 and F/A-18.

Another MiG-23 evaluation finding in the U.S. and Israel reports was that the MiG-23 has a HUD that doubles as a radarscope, allowing the pilot to keep his eyes focused at infinity and work with his radar. It also allowed the Soviets to dispense with the radarscope on the MiG-23. This feature was carried over into the MiG-29, though in that aircraft a cathode ray tube (CRT) was carried on the upper right corner that can act as a radarscope as well. Western opinions about this "head-up radarscope" are mixed. The Israelis were impressed, but an American F-16 pilot criticizes it as "sticking a transparent map in front of the HUD" and not providing a three-dimensional presentation that will accurately cue a pilot's eyes to look for a fighter as it appears in a particular direction.

en.wikipedia.org...

Which is quite interesting given the US quest for BVR combat...

It is a tired defense. Why is it that US weapons always are? Consider that for a moment?

As above i suggest you list all the wars of the last six decades with equipment numbers and relatively training standards of each sides. If you want a proper discussion start involving some 'facts' as these vague claims of US 'superiority' is leaving me quite bored. Why the US so frequently gets involved in multi year wars using it's own equipment against third world countries who imports knock-offs from the 60's is any one's guess but you don't see me going around calling US equipment pathetic or US servicemen incompetent.

All you have to do is look at combat readiness throughout the Cold War. Russia always had lots of submarines, but could never deploy more than one-third at any given time.

Source please.

Why is that? The same was true of their tanks.

Start listing your sources and possible consider that there are quite logically strategic reasons for always keeping a large part of your fleet in port ready to deploy en-mass while the opponents ships are scattered all around the globe...

I will not even mention the death traps they called Backfire bombers.

Death traps? Source?

I could cite hundreds of post Cold War interviews with Russian commanders and soldiers saying the same thing.

Then please start as i can cite hundreds proving the opposite. You may in fact benefit from reading some of the following to get some idea of how much extensively i can source my claims.

ttp://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread144543/pg1

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