Intercepting Iskander

It feels like the invulnerability of Iskander is kind of exaggerated. After all, if it was so perfect, Kinzhal won't be made, imho.

You do understand Kinzhal is an air launched Iskander... if it was shit why would they bother making an air launched version and expand deployed forces from 12 launchers to 16 launchers per unit?

If you have a close look at the missile itself its external tiny fins are fixed... they are effectively stabilisers like the vertical tail on an air plane.

If you look at the exhaust nozzle you will see control surfaces mounted in the rocket exhaust that allows the missile to manouver by deflecting the rocket thrust like a TVC fighter plane... that is important because even the largest control surface has limits to how hard it can turn an aircraft without stalling and creating drag.

If Iskander was fairly easy to shoot down Kinzhal would be useless because it is the same missile with higher speed and longer range because it is launched above 10km altitude and at mach 2.4 flight speeds...

they easly confirming that PAC-3 can intercept Isaknder and identify it's decoys at terminal path .

Easily confirming based on what exactly?

PAC-3 has never been used against anything even remotely like Iskander or Kinzhal... America doesn't have anything like either missile to test them against.

BTW the effective range of the PAC-3 against a ballistic target is something like 20km and it can only engage ballistic targets it has no capability against normal aircraft or cruise missiles.... Iskander does not fly a ballistic path it manouvers like a hypersonic bomber aircraft which makes its trajectory impossible to model or calculate... just like the flight path of an aircraft is impossible to model because unlike an artillery shell it is not a simple ballistic path for an unpowered projectile.

A human batsman in Cricket can hit a ball that goes straight, though with faster balls it becomes instinct and guess work because their eyes and brains can't process the information quickly enough to then have time to move the bat to an intercept point reliably enough. If the ball is swinging they have even less chance of an intercept and the ball does not need to swing very much to make the difference between a clean stroke from the middle of the bat, to an edge for caught behind.

If Cricket is not your thing then think of a tennis ball that can change direction in mid flight... how hard would it be to return over the net?

PAC in gulf war failed to intercept Iraqi cruise missiles and versus scud they had to launch 30 missiles against 3 SCUDs .

The original Patriot system was never expected to engage anything like a ballistic missile so in practise they found the obvious problems... a normal SAM is supposed to hit centre of mass... on a plane that is a big meaty area with lots of fuel and engines where an explosion will break the plane from which it will certainly not recover. With a long slender missile moving at 7 times the speed of sound everything behind the warhead is meaningless... it is empty fuel tanks and rocket motors that are no longer running because all the fuel is burned up. Essentially it is dead weight slowing down the missile and not doing anything important for what is essentially a falling warhead... they fired an AVERAGE of 32 Patriots per Scud missile and there is no evidence a single Scud was actually destroyed before it hit the ground. Because the scuds were modified by the Iraqis to extend their range a lot were actually breaking up as they were coming down because they came down rather faster than they were designed to... and of course a Patriot sees the missile coming apart and goes for the big bits... engine and fuel tanks and leaves the warhead.

Ironically the S-300 which entered service in about 1977 was designed to engage ballistic targets and would have done a much much better job, but the standard Patriot was not designed for the job so unsurprisingly didn't do a good job... we were told it as amazing but that was propaganda... if it was amazing then why bother making PAC-3 a specialised Patriot variant optimised for ballistic targets?

Patriot wasn't great against cruise missiles either because of their fixed launchers and radars not being great for high or low flying targets.

As Saudi Arabia has found to its cost.

So what about intercepting a high speed target with no ballistic flight path ,low RCS ,maneuvering in the whole flight journey ,releasing decoys with the same radar signature of the target ??

The Soviets have been making large SAMs designed to intercept ballistic targets since the late 1970s, and all their current medium and short range SAMs also now have an anti ballistic missile capacity. Of course they will discuss with the makers of Iskander what that missile needs to do to evade air defences...

Well, I won't underrate western SAMs to be honest.

Well when it comes to over rating SAMs the west is pretty good... I remember reading that the British Navy was going to kick Argentine butt because the Sea Wolf and Sea Dart are amazing.... the Sea Cat and Sea Slug were terrible but the new dart and wolf were amazing and could hit individual 114mm artillery shells so how could a missile hit a British ship.

After quite a few were hit by French sea skimming missiles the British basically said it was OK because the Soviets didn't have any sea Skimming missiles.... HAHAHAHAHAHAHA...

(The 7 ton Granit and the 4.5 ton Moskit were in service at that time... the max altitude a Moskit reaches is 300m to spot the target and then it drops down to below 7m above the waves at mach 2.2 to defeat the AEGIS system with the Standard SAM which at that time could not engage targets below 7m...)

Anyone got any comments on European SAMs as opposed to US?

Can't be worse... are probably better... though the US Navy Standard seems to be good...

If you look at the exhaust nozzle you will see control surfaces mounted in the rocket exhaust that allows the missile to manouver by deflecting the rocket thrust like a TVC fighter plane... that is important because even the largest control surface has limits to how hard it can turn an aircraft without stalling and creating drag.

That means the PAC-3 radar can't draw a clear pattern to Iskander path ? i mean no pattern like Negative parabolic equations figures ?

PAC-3 has never been used against anything even remotely like Iskander or Kinzhal... America doesn't have anything like either missile to test them against.

They said  LRPF will be near to Iskander characteristics , i'm wondering why US is not making a similar Iskander ?

Did they really need it , Russia made such cabability to counter the US defences on her borders but Russian SAMs are not on the US borders .

Easily confirming based on what exactly?

They said PAC-3 did well in Yemen war   , you know these guys most of times are idiots

Even when the missile hit the oil fields in Saudi Arabia , they said the PAC-3 was on the PTL mode not the STL mode and it was directed to Yemen borders .

it has no capability against normal aircraft or cruise missiles.

Even the latest upgrade has no such cabability ? on her website ,lockheedmartin mentioned  "against enemy tactical ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and aircraft " . I guess it hit some UAVs in Yemen

 With a long slender missile moving at 7 times the speed of sound everything behind the warhead is meaningless... it is empty fuel tanks and rocket motors that are no longer running because all the fuel is burned up.
Essentially it is dead weight slowing down the missile and not doing anything important for what is essentially a falling warhead

So why they didn't just make the design to seperate the WH ? why keeping the whole body connected to WH till it reach the groung and blow up and slowing down the missile .

If the ABM hit that mass center, is there any probability this could leads to blowing up the WH too ?

First of all, it is kinda simplification to say that Kinzhal is just air launched 9M723. It probably has many improvements, we don't know.

We don't know enough to say either way but the speed it entered service at suggests most of the testing and design issues had already been addressed.

What we definitely know is that Kinzhal is air launched and it's engine works for longer time.

We know it is air launched but we know nothing about its propulsion except that it is likely a solid rocket fuel system.

Being launched above 12km altitude already moving at speeds of mach 2 or faster means any solid rocket powered item is going to fly much further and much faster.

A solid rocket motor is a fixed thing... it burns at rate x for y amount of time. Launch the rocket from the ground and x and y don't change but the speed and altitude the rocket reaches will be vastly different, which means the max range and max speed it can attain will also be different.

So, automatically, it has about 2,5-3 times more kinetic and potential energy than land based Iskander. And probably that will allow Kinzhal to have more sophisticated trajectory.

It is designed to perform the same task over distances three times greater... it wont be performing loop the loops... it will be accelerating and climbing to as high and as fast as it can manage and then it will coast as far as it can and then light up its second stage fuel for terminal manouvering to penetrate the targets defences...

That means the PAC-3 radar can't draw a clear pattern to Iskander path ? i mean no pattern like Negative parabolic equations figures ?

Its path will be like an aeroplane and not a ballistic target so projections of potential intercept points could be anywhere...

They said LRPF will be near to Iskander characteristics , i'm wondering why US is not making a similar Iskander ?

They also said Patriot was the best SAM in the world before Desert Storm and that it was even better than S-300.

Did they really need it , Russia made such cabability to counter the US defences on her borders but Russian SAMs are not on the US borders .

They had Honest John and Lance II equivalents at the time of Soviet missiles... but the Soviet missiles got better and the US Army cut funding to such weapons completely because they thought their Air Force would do all that sort of lifting for them.

They said PAC-3 did well in Yemen war Very Happy , you know these guys most of times are idiots

Yeah, because the benchmark of high tech IADS penetrating attack missiles are the Houthie rebels... NOT.

PAC-3 didn't even notice cruise missiles and drones even after they destroyed their targets... part of an air defence systems requirement is to cover 360 degrees and not be under flown or over flown...

You can't stop what you don't see.

Even when the missile hit the oil fields in Saudi Arabia , they said the PAC-3 was on the PTL mode not the STL mode and it was directed to Yemen borders .

It failed... it did not protect the targets it was protecting... but it was PAC-2 that failed because BMs weren't used... PAC-3 failed when Iran threatened and warned the US it was going to launch ballistic missile attacks on US air bases in Iraq and then attacked them with BMs with not a single missile shot down... despite being warned of the attack before hand... the distances involved mean the weapons would not be much more potent than an extended range Scud type weapon... certainly something PAC-3 or THAAD should have been able to deal with... clearly not... partly because THAAD is too expensive to deploy widely enough to cover all the targets that need protection...

Even the latest upgrade has no such cabability ? on her website ,lockheedmartin mentioned "against enemy tactical ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and aircraft " . I guess it hit some UAVs in Yemen

Have not seen any reports suggesting such, and if it got any kills they would have it on their website...

Besides it would be like using a Ferrari to create road kill...

So why they didn't just make the design to seperate the WH ? why keeping the whole body connected to WH till it reach the groung and blow up and slowing down the missile .

You are asking why they didn't completely redesign the missile structure to gain a minor increase in range, when simply adding more fuel and increased energy fuel to extend range got them a rather bigger increase in range.

The simple fact that they were coming in too fast and sometimes broke up did not effect their performance on target... it was a problem that didn't need fixing... certainly not something that needed a lot of money spent on it for such a minor gain.

If the ABM hit that mass center, is there any probability this could leads to blowing up the WH too ?

Not really... hitting the centre mass of an object moving at mach 7 means unless the Patriot was coming from behind and catching up on the Scud the patriots fragments from its exploding warhead would shred the body of the rocket but would not catch up with the warhead before they slowed down and lost energy to do damage... catching from behind meant the missile would have exploded at the extreme rear of the missile and blown fragments into the engines instead... remember this is the portion of the trajectory of the Scud where the fuel tanks are empty... vapour remaining means an explosion would be possible, but not a catastrophic one, and the engines have not been burning for a minute or two and the Scud missile itself is now falling towards the target.

No matter how many fragments you pumped through the structure, it wouldn't matter... it is already falling...

An S-300 missile launched at the target would treat it like a ballistic missile and direct its warhead to intercept the nose of the ballistic target and send the 150kg warheads worth of fragments through the warhead of the incoming target... the closing speed would be mach 6 plus mach 7, so the energy involved means no level of armour protection around the warhead could possibly keep it safe and it would detonate mid air shattering most of the missile into small mainly harmless pieces which will rapidly slow down and fall to the ground.

S-300 was designed from the outset to engage ballistic missiles.

Dunno about tochka but it did intercept scuds. But I think it only intercepted a few as some others dropped in the empty desert.

Was not aware of a single successful interception of Scud in Desert Storm, and not a single Scud launcher was destroyed on the ground before launching its missile... the story of scud hunters and the patriot in DS is largely propaganda.

PAC-3 might have intercepted Scud like missiles after DS, but failed to protect US personel in Iraqi bases against ballistic missiles so it is not great.

My understanding is the last time they needed to defend against hostile attack large low flying anti ship missiles were used for which the PAC-3 was useless.

Ives wrote:

ahmedfire wrote:

I remember i checked some Yankees recently , alot of trolls there ,they easly confirming that PAC-3 can intercept Isaknder and identify it's decoys at terminal path .

PAC in gulf war failed to intercept Iraqi cruise missiles and versus scud they had to launch 30 missiles against 3 SCUDs .

Actually since that , PATRIOT didn't face any real strong targets , all these Yemini should be easy to intercept , they have unique ballistic path that easy to be mapped and intercept by any recent ABM systems , and also PAC-3 failed to intercept some of them +some UAVs .

So what about intercepting a high speed target with no ballistic flight path ,low RCS ,maneuvering in the whole flight journey ,releasing decoys with the same radar signature of the target ??

First, where did you see such claims?

Second, didn't Patriot intercept Tochka-U in middle east?

No actually it killed many coalition soldeirs in 2015 .

45 Emirati troops were killed when a Tochka missile hit a base in Marib province, east of the capital, Sanaa, in September.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-35091675

Its path will be like an aeroplane and not a ballistic target so projections of potential intercept points could be anywhere...

So the Patriot software can't process such quick random pattern changes which means it can't specify a confirmed intrecept point and they will launch dozens of PAC missile to increase the PK .

They had Honest John and Lance II equivalents at the time of Soviet missiles... but the Soviet missiles got better and the US Army cut funding to such weapons completely because they thought their Air Force would do all that sort of lifting for them.

If US made such cabability now , it should be with ICBM ranges or else it will be deployed in Europe because it can't reach to Russia from US lands .

part of an air defence systems requirement is to cover 360 degrees and not be under flown or over flown...

Agree with u the PAC launcher angle is a flaw , but keeping 3 or 4 launchers in different angles could solve this issue , it's better also to use Pansir in a group for more system protection .

PAC-3 failed when Iran threatened and warned the US it was going to launch ballistic missile attacks on US air bases in Iraq

AFAIK US did not have Patriot deployed at the Ain al-Asad air base in Iraq.

Was not aware of a single successful interception of Scud in Desert Storm, and not a single Scud launcher was destroyed on the ground before launching its missile... the story of scud hunters and the patriot in DS is largely propaganda.

Here i found more data , yes i guess all intercepts had failed .

https://fas.org/nuke/guide/iraq/missile/scud_info/scud_info_s05.htm

So the Patriot software can't process such quick random pattern changes which means it can't specify a confirmed intrecept point and they will launch dozens of PAC missile to increase the PK .

Well if I throw a ball to you and I lob it up in the air so as it falls under gravity it ends up reaching you a chest height so it is easier to catch... you see the ball coming it is being thrown up into the air but you know gravity will start pulling it down... your eyes will follow the ball and if it looks like I have thrown it up too high you will start moving back so you can catch it... if it is low and looks like it is going short you move forward in the hope to catch it... but basically you know roughly the path or trajectory it will be taking so you can work out interception points for yourself simply by observing how it is moving and how fast it is moving.

If, on the other hand, instead of throwing a ball or hitting it with a bat for greater distance... I release a powered drone with its own motor and it flys straight and level when it leaves my hand towards you... where do you move? If I am trying to send the drone to you it is fine... stay where you are and assume it will fly straight to you, but if I am trying to get past you... avoiding your reach then you can bet your ass that when it is 20m or 30m away from you it will change direction and go around you... left or right... or just climb and go over you... you really don't know and really can't tell... but this isn't a drone and you are not a person... you control high speed missiles that can't turn hard corners because they are very fast... once launched they might turn 15-20 degrees after they have accelerated to full speed, and this drone isn't some propeller powered thing that is easy to track with the human eye... the Iskander is moving at mach 7 to mach 8... so we are talking over 2km per second... Kinzhal is moving faster at mach 10 or so... which is about 3.2km/s... a turn of 5 degrees might shift the intercept point in 10 seconds time about 20km to one side or another... but when tracking the target you notice a change in flight path but you really don't know how far it is going to turn until it stops turning... once it stops turning you can then calculate the new intercept point... can the missile you already launched reach this new intercept point in time... 0.5 seconds out means a miss of over 1.5kms... even with a nuke warhead that might not stop the target... if your interception missile can no longer get to an intercept point in time then you need to recalculate and launch another missile... but what if the target then turns 10 degrees back the way it turned... new interception point just shifted 40km in a fraction of a second... there is no interceptor of any type that could change positions that fast... remember 0.5 seconds early is just as bad as 0.5 seconds late because these interceptors can't stop and wait... manouvering hypersonic targets are an enormous problem... not totally impossible but you can bet your ass that funding for lasers is being increased dramatically around the world because a laser can be directed at most targets even when manouvering hard... they just need to get a lot more powerful and more efficient and cheaper to use...

If US made such cabability now , it should be with ICBM ranges or else it will be deployed in Europe because it can't reach to Russia from US lands .

They would base them in Europe or Japan or North Korea... the US has no interest in fighting WWIII anywhere near home soil.

And for the record their ICBMs and SLBMs are not much different than they were in the 1980s, but with S-500 entering service soon and of course the constant upgrades of the Moscow ABM system and possible expansion to include other cities and major military centres/ports, their need for ABM defeating ballistic missiles is probably greater than Russias.

Agree with u the PAC launcher angle is a flaw , but keeping 3 or 4 launchers in different angles could solve this issue , it's better also to use Pansir in a group for more system protection .

It is a huge flaw.... either you point them all in the most likely direction of attack and risk the enemy noticing that and attacking from behind meaning all your Patriots are useless till the launchers can be turned, or as you say point the launchers in each direction... which means for a battery of four launchers you can only effectively use a quarter of your available missiles if the threat comes from only one direction....

AFAIK US did not have Patriot deployed at the Ain al-Asad air base in Iraq.

They had hours warning and they were expecting retaliation... what is the point of having anti ballistic missile SAMs if you don't have enough of them?

Here i found more data , yes i guess all intercepts had failed .

Patriots hitting patriots... Scuds landing in open terrain... the Scud has poor accuracy... the operational use for Soviet Scuds during WWIII was to launch them at enormous area targets like HATO airfields with the use of Chem weapons so HATO forces at the airfield had to operate with Chem and bio warfare suits on which greatly reduces their effectiveness... or they would use nuke warheads which means precision accuracy is also not needed.

When the Iraqis increased the flight range of their missiles they made them much less accurate... in actual fact if the US had simply done nothing and let the Scuds fall where they may and used the money spent on all those patriot missiles not fired to pay for the damage caused they would probably have saved a lot of money and perhaps had enough left over to build a few schools and hospitals...

Iraqi was able to launch a handfull at one time. Soviet union could launch tens or even hundreds in one salvo.

The Iraqis managed to launch rather a lot but there was no coordination of targets and accuracy was simply not good enough to make conventional payloads effective for anything except a propaganda tool, but you are correct in what you are saying about the numbers and way the Soviets would use theirs to make it more than just a token weapon of fear.

The Soviets would have very specific targets and nuke warheads.

Houti missiles reached Saudi bases many time and everytime they killed 50-100 soldiers.

Tochka and Iskander have the accuracy to make conventional warheads effective, but the requirements to find targets makes them much harder to use effectively... it is to the credit of the Houti that they have done so well... I suspect their human intel is excellent...

US in the gulf war had their aviation exposed on saudi airbases and all at less than 1000km from iraqi border. If iraqi had a missile with 10m CEP equiped with cluster submunition and a range of 1500km with 150 launchers and 400 missiles in stock, US would have lost pretty much all it aviation since they send 2000 fighter jets there.

Agree, and something for American fanbois to be very worried about... it is not going to be cheap having to develop and build up their air defence the way the Russians have theirs...

Putin did say the US could buy S-400s if they want them... perhaps they should buy Pantsir too...

@Garry ,thanks for your informative replies.

there is no interceptor of any type that could change positions that fast.

Even S family ,THADD and SM-3 ?

Even S family ,THADD and SM-3 ?

Imagine a Kinzhal is coming directly at you... it is flying at maybe 50km altitude and moving at 3.2km/s... as mentioned 200km away it turns to the right 5 degrees... so you launch a missile... it flys off at about 1.5 to 1.8km/s heading to an interception point... the closing speed is about 5km/s and 10 seconds before impact the target turns 10 degrees back again so five degrees in the other direction to its current course of its original course... it takes 2 seconds to determine the actual turn distance and how far the interception point has actually moved and the shift in trajectory moves the actual intercept point 20km to the left... you send the new coordinates to your missile so it now has 8 seconds to change course and move 20km to the new intercept point... 8 seconds at almost two kms per second means it can move at best 16 kms but most of that movement will be forward rather than lateral movement because it will take energy and time to turn from heading forward to then turn sideways to intercept the target.

Firing a second missile might be the only option... but all the target did was two turns... one of five degrees and one of ten degrees... what if it is performing a corkscrew roll... climbing and diving and randomly changing height and lateral direction... I mean at 50km altitude I suspect only THAAD would be able to intercept it, and even then THAAD is a hit to kill weapon so the simple solution of a radar proximity sensor and side facing solid rocket thrusters around the centre of mass of the incoming target means as the interceptor comes in for the impact the side thrusters could shift the missile sideways 20m or so very very quickly... at a speed faster than any conventional control surfaces on the target could and also faster than any control surfaces on the interceptor could too...

The Russians already use side thrusters on their missiles to improve accuracy in the terminal phase... most of their laser guided shells and rockets use side thrusters to maximise effect on impact... TOR missiles use side thrusters on launch to orient the missile towards the target no matter what its approach direction... it does not use them all... remaining rocket pulse motors are used in the terminal phase to get as close as possible to the target before impact... larger heavier SAMs like S-300 and S-400 have specially fused warheads that direct the explosion and fragments towards the target at the best possible time based on information about where the target is in the final fractions of seconds of the intercept...

To be clear this is a problem that needs to be solved even for S-500 and new model S-400s... that is what makes manouvering hypersonic threats dangerous to everyone.

Of course more dangerous to those whose enemies have hypersonic manouvering missiles like the west, but then Russia is only an enemy because the west makes it so so fuck them...

I was searching an i found this 2018 declare from the Commander of US Strategic Command after Putin announced the Kinzhal .

"We don't have any defense that could deny the employment of such a weapon against us," Hyten said.

China and Russia are 'aggressively pursuing' hypersonic weapons — and the US doesn't have any defenses

@Garry ;

regarding decoys , AFAIK it works good against PESA radars but Patriot has AESA one , AESA radars can discriminate the real warhead from decoys .

Using a variety of beamforming and signal processing steps, a single MAR was able to perform long-distance detection, track generation, discrimination of warheads from decoys, and tracking of the outbound interceptor missiles

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_electronically_scanned_array

Yeah... it does not matter... it is like saying you can determine whether the bullet coming at your chest is a hollow point or a full metal jacket round... knowing the difference does not help you stopping it... Iskander is nearly impossible to intercept because of its speed and its ability to manouver... not because it can launch decoys.

That is like saying the S-400 SAM system has been improved... they have added a sonar vehicle so it can detect missiles underwater... the response to both claims is... so what... decoys and underwater threats were never the real problem.

During one of the conflicts in the middle east the Patriot got its first aircraft kill... I believe it was a Tornado... It also got its first take down when it automatically targeted another friendly aircraft who launched an anti radiation missile and took out the tracking radar...

I rather suspect Patriot would be horribly vulnerable to a decent anti radiation missile like Kh-58 or ALARM... if it sees the targets in the first place...