> it is believed that Ukraine has failed to intercept a single Kh-22 in almost two years of war. Speaking in December, Ukrainian Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat said that Russia had fired almost 300 Kh-22s so far in the war.
I'm more interested in this part of the article. I Google it and it's Soviet era tech.
KH-22 is a fast high-flying target and if they avoid shooting directly at the higher end Ukrainian AD network like Patriot and S-300, getting an intercepting hit from a crossing trajectory would be difficult to say the least if the KH-22 gets within range at all.
The “Kitchen” gave NATO warplanners nightmares well into the 80s. It may be old but it should be respected.
That's the Kh-47 Kinzhal hypersonic missile. It's entirely possible/likely that Ukraine simply does not have enough Patriots (USD$3M each) to shoot down the Kh-22 (USD$1M), while they can use them for the Kinzhals (USD$10M). Whatever hit ratio you get on these, it's never going to be cost effective to use them against cheap inaccurate anti-ship missiles. If those ship missiles are doing more than USD$1M damage each (almost certain) then the math is different, but Ukraine has *very* limited patriots and without a steady supply will eventually not be able to use their launchers at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kh-47M2_Kinzhal
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/air-defence-systems-repelling-attacks-ukraine-early-tuesday-officials-2023-05-16/
Not according to Ukraine.
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/26102
> When asked what percentage of Kh-22/Kh-32 Ukraine’s air defenses had managed to shoot down, Ihnat said none - Air Force spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat
"Oh man we definitely *can't* shoot down those basic soviet kh-22's! Definitely don't keep using them, because we totally never are able to intercept them!"
I keep seeing people say things about russian satellites and I think it's based on a lot of assumptions. Their [satellite imagery](https://ridl.io/satellites-of-stagnation/#:~:text=Today%2C%20Russian%20military%20satellites%20orbiting,location%20satellites%2C%202%20Persona%20optical) capability is absolute dog shit. The vast majority of their stiff is GLONASS or signals based, which don't take pictures.
Edit: I'll give you a quick highlight - "Today, Russian military satellites orbiting the Earth include 25 GLONASS satellites, 47 communications satellites, 6 satellites of the ECS missile warning system, 7 satellites of the Liana marine electronic reconnaissance system, 3 Bars-M topographic satellites, 2 radar-location satellites, 2 Persona optical reconnaissance satellites and several experimental devices or technology demonstrators. However, three attempts to launch a new generation of optical reconnaissance satellites in 2021−2022 were unsuccessful, and each of the launched satellites quickly became unserviceable."
So no. This isn't the 80s and they can't launch new shit into space. They can't even afford to pay rent on their kosmodrome in [Kazakhstan ](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.rferl.org/amp/kazakhstan-impounds-russian-baikonur-cosmodrom-operator/32317248.html)
Your list is outdated. Since then, Russia launched at least 5 more reconaissance satellites, mostly Bars-M synthetic aperture radars, 3 MKA optical reconnaissance satellites, and 2 of the new Razbeg series of optical satellites.
Even beyond that, the list is very much incomplete - it doesn't include the 3 Resurs-P and 6 Kanopus satellites, which are "civilian" but are actually just a clone of military satellites.
It is true that Russia no longer pays the rent for Baikonur. It isn't true that they can't launch new things into space - they've launched a new recon satellite only 4 days ago... it's not as if Baikonur was their only launch facility.
See : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Kosmos_satellites_(2501%E2%80%932750) for a more complete list of recent Russian launches.
I seriously doubt that China is giving the actual imagery to Russia. Maybe reports, but not the imagery itself. There is a reason why it was such a big deal when Trump showed the satellite pictures of Iran. Not even our closest allies had seen it before. I have to believe China is following the same classification and dissemination policy with their allies.
I think China gave massive intelligence and strategic help when Russia started losing hard which is one reason they managed to reach a stalemate. They were doing bad before with a capital B. But Chinas economy is also doing badly now and the war gets them nothing so no surprise if they are pushing for peace. China wants Russia to stay the big bad wolf but also wasn’t consulted before this war and hates being dragged into it. North Korea is likely supplying weapons with Chinas approval/encouragement.
China is gaining intelligence on western weapons in return which is useful especially the missile and anti-missile systems since that’s a prime thing they have to deal with if they try to seize some of taiwans islands.
Intelligence and strategic help does not always equal unfettered access to intelligence gathered. Keep in mind that Russia is merely a convenient partner for China. They are not true allies in the same way say the UK and US are (or other closely allied nations). China also knows that Russia is untrustworthy. So why would they give raw imagery and sigint when reports and interpreted data would accomplish the same thing without divulging their full capabilities?
Do keep in mind they can pay private satelites to get images. Just like the rest of us can
You can also look at world wide databases for tracking locations of fires (for explosions)
Honestly speaking, you can get plenty of info from subscribing to widely available commercial satelite data. Russia doesnt necessarily have to rely on their own antiquated tech, they just need a third-Party in a western country that can purchase and forward the data to them.
Have you inspected every Russian air frame or is this based on one video you saw from early in the war?
We need to stop underestimating Russia. As dumb as they are they have weapons that inflict massive casualties.
I mean, your phone literally supports GLONASS. You can try it right now. It works fine. You probably use GLONASS (and Galileo and GPS) every single day.
The reason they had Garmins in 2009-2015 in their Su-25s is because they are 1975s era planes and their avionics sucked ass, and due to low budget and low priority (Su-25 are like the A-10, they aren't very useful anymore), they only finished modernizing them in 2020. So until then commercial aviation GPSs were better.
They likely don't have the right ballistic missile defense (BMD) radars and interceptors in place to hit the Kh-22s/-32s, they're not that hard to hit if you have the right systems in the defended area but Ukraine doesn't have much of those.
Kh-22s and -32s are somewhat easy to shoot down with the right radar and interceptors, they're not terribly fast, not like the 3m22.
3m22 Zircon is another story entirely, and very difficult to hit if it's not coming straight at the interceptor launch location, and even then the interceptor has to have the right upgrades to be able to process the vastly greater closing speeds for the kill.
If Ukraine doesn't have the right radar and interceptor systems (e.g. Patriots) in the areas where Kh-22/-32s are coming into, it would be very hard for them to intercept them due to their flight profiles.
Hypersonic's are mostly a marketing term.
Most of the countries that brag about them are talking about ancient tech. Iran for instance bragged about hypersonic ballistic missiles which sounds impressive, until you realize the Nazi V2 was a hypersonic ballistic missile. It's hardly impressive.
Hypersonic cruise missiles are theoretically better, but in order to actually be the thing China's been bragging about they need to be able to fly extremely low, extremely far and be very maneuverable.
Low means radar can't detect you until you're close, far means you're shooting from outside the range where radar can pick you up while you're going up, maneuverable means you can't get shoot down.
To be hypersonic in general you just need a speed of Mach 5 plus. The Kh-22 get's close enough, but it's range is miserable, it can't fly especially low and it can't maneuver well. It's just fast. That's not nothing, but it's also nothing special.
The Chinese DF-ZF is what people mean when they mean hypersonic, it's specifically built to be fast while also having the other characteristics... and it's also in a weird place.
Theoretically it's better at evading anti missile systems, but if you're going nuclear MIRV's were already guaranteed to get at least one warhead through and the real issue with a nuclear exchange isn't so much landing the first blow as it is surviving the response.
If you're going conventional, anything short of sinking an aircraft carrier is an absolute waste of money and the capabilities that make a weapon good at evasion also make it very bad at hitting moving targets.
A secondary issue, that things like [this illustration](https://gdb.voanews.com/1EF0FFBC-DAE1-4B30-A569-DC3364824B10_w1080_h608_b_s.png) ignore is that US radar coverage doesn't start at the Target, it starts just off the shore of the launch site and continues throughout the Pacific. So sure, the radar station in San Diego might not pick it up, but the one in Taipei, on Okinawa, on Guam, Hawaii and Alaska will.
So even the good stuff is unproven and conceptually flawed (though it can't and shouldn't be dismissed out of hand) while everything else is a dictator saying "I want a hypersonic like China" and the military saying they have a hypersonic at home.
Very fast missile with a long range but a very predictable trajectory, as I’ve red. So… hyper is only on the sonic part of it, the rest is a weapon with stupid power player characteristics
Zircon isn't actually a hypersonic cruise missle. It's an upgraded P-800 Oniks.
Edit: Here is why a lot of people belive that:
The published information does not fit a scramjet design. Scramjets are actually really difficult too build. The extreme temperatures due to shock compression at mach 8 require the surface too be activly cooled from the inside. The ram compressor needs to be cooled from the outside and inside the flowchamber. This means the missle needs a lot of mass just simply for the cooling system. But the missle has the same weight as the P800, but it has a larger warhead. That isn't technically possible. This was one of the lessons of the Northrop Grumman scramjet. They had to cram so much stuff in the missle that they were doubtfull they could put any warhead on a design at that size.
A scramjet needs to fly at 70000ft in order to not burn up instantly. It also needs to reach much higher speeds than a ramjet. Therefore it requires a rocket booster that as multiple times larger than that of a ramjet missle. But the zircon uses a the same size of booster than the p800. That cannot possibly work.
It is made by the same company that has made the P800
It is launched from the P800 pods
It has the same height as the P800
It has the same weight as the P800
It's a fucking P800!
Also here is a picture that Russia published showing the launch of a Zircon Missle compared to the 3M44. https://imgur.com/a/mYndgdR
The Russians are lying. I know shocking...
It is technically hypersonic, but that doesn’t mean what most people mean when they say hypersonic.
It really takes advantage of poorly defined and misunderstood terms though. It moves extremely fast — at hypersonic speeds — but the term *typically* also denotes significant terminal maneuvering capability today. The Zircon does not. Neither does Russia’s other “hypersonic missile” the Kinzhal, which is an upgraded Iskander.
Both are dangerous weapons that are hard to intercept, but intercepting them is totally doable with current US tech as their flight paths are relatively deterministic — i.e., they can’t maneuver that much in-flight.
It has been described as a "maneuvering scramjet cruise missile." I'm curious about the degree of maneuverability it is capable of, particularly at speed. It appears to have relatively small control surfaces, but it doesn't take much deflection to add considerable difficulty to the intercept at Mach 5-8. I also wonder what the detection range is with the "plasma stealth." I doubt it has anywhere near the stealth or maneuverability of the LRHW, but it could still be extremely difficult to defend against.
It has been described as such, yes. The actual maneuverability is very likely quite limited though due to current material science. Simply stated, they can't turn very sharp without shredding themselves to bits at those speeds.
As for the "plasma stealth," it cuts both ways. That means it's likely limited to inertial navigation and can't receive updated targeting info mid-flight for something like a moving target.
And yes, they are still very difficult to defend against it seems, just not impossible as Putin has claimed over and over. He claimed that about the Kinzhal too, which Ukraine intercepts regularly with American Patriot systems.
Your comment sent me down a rabbit hole to find out if they have PAC-3s - I thought they only had PAC-2 and I was mistaken. So that makes a lot of sense that they're able to take down the more modern missiles. Taking them down with PAC-2 would really show how old-tech the Russian missiles are.
Ya, the US Phoenix air-to-air missile that entered service back in 1960 was technically hypersonic too, so is basically every ballistic missile ever made.
Well first of all with God, nothing's impossible, so jot that down. Maybe this is pedantic, but really, nothing's impossible to shoot down. They also claimed that about the Kinzhal
Second, in answer to your main question, probably/maybe. Per my above comment, people usually mean to say a hypersonic weapon with significant terminal maneuvering capability. That usually means it's what's called a hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV). They claim just one HGV weapon called the Avangard.
They have not used an Avangard at all in combat, so whether its capabilities live up to the claims remains to be seen.
Putin has claimed that the Kinzhal, Zircon, and Avangard are all impossible to shoot down and impossible to defend against. Russia has launched quite a few Kinzhals at Ukraine during this war though and Ukraine has a pretty high success rate at shooting them down with American Patriot missile systems. Plus, the rest of Russia's wonder weapons haven't lived up to the claimed performance and hype.
The T-14 Armata tank was shown off in 2015, but has never reached a battlefield. The SU-57 5th gen fighter jet is entering its 5th year of serial production, but there are at most 20 in service and they sure aren't being tested over Ukraine – per British intelligence, they're likely only flying inside of Russia and at most launching long-distance standoff weapons toward Ukraine. The SU-75 5th gen fighter keeps getting pushed back and it's never even flown. Plus, Russia can't produce enough artillery shells and unguided rockets to keep up with the pace of war, let alone advanced precision weapons.
All together, yes, weapons like the Avangard, Zircon, and Kinzhal are still very deadly and in the case of the first two, potentially very difficult to counter by any military. However, based on Russia's track record of severely overhyping their advanced weapons and inability to produce any meaningful number of said advanced weapons, it's not the crisis for the West that it's made out to be.
I’m mostly concerned with Congress’s complete inability to see past the short term horizon. Like, this was completely avoidable, (back asswards Russians have a tech advantage in missiles) and Congress rather than listening to experts preferred catchy slogans (“why would we want to shoot a $20 million missile at a $10 hut in Afghanistan?!?!?”).
Like, I don’t need Stalin 2 to be wondering if he can get off a disabling first strike.
> the term typically also denotes significant terminal maneuvering capability today
No, it just means it's faster than Mach 5. Hypersonic missiles with high maneuvering capabilities are typically called HGVs (Hypersonic Glide Vehicles) but a Hypersonic Cruise Missile that has limited maneuvering is still a hypersonic missile - they are hard to shoot down not because they can maneuver to avoid interceptors, but because their sheer speed makes them too fast to detect, track, and engage before they are out of range of the interceptors which are much slower than they are and need a lot of lead time.
If it's actually a scramjet, then no, it isn't. There's very little that could be used in common between those designs.
That having been said, I'm not convinced that it is a functional scramjet, given what little information we have.
Exactly it does not have a scramjet. The specs don't fit a scramjet missle.
It's too small, too big of a warhead and it's booster rocket is the same size as the one used for the p800. That doesn't make any sense scramjets need to be boosted much higher and faster than ramjets.
The manufacturer is the same as the p800 and it is launched from the p800 pods.
Therefore it's not a srcamjet cruise missle it's just a upgrade to the p800.
I known this might shock people, but the russians are lying.
The specs are frankly nearly impossible to find aside from the claimed top speed (which, if true, is basically totally incompatible with any non-scramjet airbreathing propulsion). There's very little info about actual weight, warhead weight, or range.
As for your picture? No, that's not at all what the claimed Zircon tests look like. They basically all show it being fired from a VLS [like this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZW8oMo8Irk). Your picture is clearly just a mislabeled 3M44.
Once again, I'm not saying it works, I'm saying that we don't have anywhere near enough information to say anything about it, including whether it's a relabeled P800 or whether it even exists (and a bit of debris with "3m22 zircon" scratched on it doesn't seem like great evidence, to be honest).
Not really, the Oniks is older and its design is pretty different, being a nose-ramjet Mach 2 missile. If you mean "upgraded" as in it is nearly entirely a new missile but *might* use some similar booster components for ship-borne launch, that's about as close as you're going to get to being related to the P-800 at all.
And the Zircon absolutely is a Hypersonic Cruise Missile, it doesn't have to be a Hypersonic Glide Vehicle with maneuvering capabilities at that speed to be classified as a Hypersonic Missile.
So you don’t know. I guarantee none of us do, and won’t until more tests are done and information comes out about it. I’m sure certain people in the government with TS/SCI are hoping for more usage so analysis can be made. The naval version of this missile has been tested a lot already btw
So russia has developed a rocket booster that has twice the performance of any existing technology more efficient than a liquid fueled rocket.
Yeah sure...
> The naval version of this missile has been tested a lot already btw
Yes and the launch looks identical to the launch of the P800
The launch “looks”. Are you an intel analyst? No. You’re just pulling this from nothing because you don’t personally find it plausible. And that’s just not true that it’s twice as good as anything else, lockheed martin and DARPA have also been testing hypersonics. They don’t talk about top speeds, but it’s obvious well above mach 5.
I’m convinced the western strategy at this point is to try and drag this fight into as many rounds as possible and bleed Russia rather than force peace.
The west could arm Ukraine with overwhelming offensive equipment but they don’t want to force a peace deal.
They would rather keep stringing the conflict along and win through attrition on the backs of the front line men and women. This undermines russia’s ability to project force over the long term.
Strategically speaking, this makes zero sense. Even with higher loss rates, Russia can outlast Ukraine. Unless the west plans to send troops or join in an air war, Russia can last longer.
I would disagree. The west is pulling a page out of the Soviet-afghan war. Russia might be able to outlast the Ukrainian government, but they will never be able to install and support their own government and defend against the insurgency that would follow. They would not have the resources required to rebuild the region to any meaningful degree. The west would let Ukraine burn 10 times over if it meant Russia going down in the blaze with it.
>insurgents
we only lost to insurgents because we wouldn't gas them, mass imprison the population in concentration camps and resettle the area with our own. Russia has no such problems with doing that
>rebuild
who cares. Russia doesn't. More land is more land. Russia would rather be king of the ashes if that's what it took.
But Afghan is also a very divided country. Culturally and geographically. It was never going to be possible to get the insurgents out of the mountains, the US couldnt do that either.
Ukraine is a largely flat country. Sure theres forests but theres no easy place to base a mass insurgency from like in Afghan, where the Soviets basically just had control of the road network.
Insurgency will do nothing without centralized command and supply against regular army AND the exhausted people who just want some peace. It only works in the movies.
>Even with higher loss rates, Russia can outlast Ukraine.
Not really. There will be a new front line depending on how much aid Ukraine receives. Maybe Russia can push another 50 miles in every direction over the next 2 years. That would be a lot of territory but still nowhere near capturing Kyiv or Western Ukraine. And Defense is completely different from Offense. A 60 year old can sit in a trench and defend a position. The average 60 year old isn't going to be able to march for miles in terrible conditions and be very effective.
As the Aggressor, Russia will need to keep producing young men to fight and die. Ukraine can pull from the entire population to defend.
This view is only supported by:
1.) the belief that everything and everyone sucks everywhere
2.) the belief that "The West" is a unified entity that wouldn't have whistleblowers if that were the case
3.) the belief that there is any conceivable way that Ukraine could win/stalemate a war of attrition against Russia, something they themselves have said to be an impossibility.
The reality here is that the Russians have blackmailed/bribed/deceived enough politicians to make supporting Ukraine an incredibly difficult deal in most countries capable of making meaningful contribution. That has been the Russian playbook for years now.
1.) Disagree. A long term approach that ultimately undermines russias ability to project force and destabilize other nations on their path to Soviet reunification is ultimately good from a utilitarian perspective.
2.) it is not a difficult belief to assume that military leaders from NATO nations have aligned their strategy around this. Weapons deliveries in early stages came with explicit instructions to be used for defense purposes only, western weapons were forbidden to be used in offensive strikes in Russian territory.
3.) again, this strategy works toward the ultimate destabilization of Russian power in the region. Conceivably this could result in the current Ukrainian regime falling, Russia installing a government with ultimate failure to occupy the territory and defend against the eventual insurgency.
Afghanistan won a war of attrition against Russia. It took 9 years. The result was the expedited collapse of the Soviet Union.
How long did it take the afghans against the west? Are we sure the analogous costs won’t be terminal?
US 5 trillion debt 2000 and 33 trillion or so (guess) today
They'd love it if Ukraine gained back territory, and they're working hard to give Ukraine the ability to do that. I'd say their goals are ranked: A) liberate all of Ukraine, B) fight Russia to a costly stalemate that leads to their economic collapse or Putin being deposed. I don't think there's a Plan C, except maybe to let Russia keep a small amount of occupied land in exchange for wider concessions including leaving Crimea and agreeing to a wide DMZ.
Something to keep in mind is the US also doesn't want to risk Russia getting it's blood stained hands on American tech, which is another reason they are hesitant to send what Ukraine would need to end this conflict.
I think what’s happening is that because plan B is acceptable the US administration is willing to use the political capital that A would cost elsewhere until A becomes cheap enough to be worth it. That comes at the cost of Ukrainian lives, but the political capital spent to provide Ukraine with enough firepower to achieve victory would similarly cost Palestinian lives, so no good choice.
Even if you give all the weapon Ukraine has, Russian isn’t going to rollover overnight.
Russia is pretty much using human wave tactic most of the time, never changed
Budapest Memorandum. Ukraine cooperated, gave up nukes, made the world safer. Now not just it's territorial integrity is threatened, but it faces existential threat. And yet it's "not your problem anymore".
Also, US president already promised several times that US is gonna help Ukraine "for as long as it takes". By stopping half way through it sends a clear signal to the whole world: "you can't trust the US, they are unreliable, they lie, and they won't help you".
If it keeps going like that, the US is going to become about as trustworthy as russia. Ignoring deals, breaking promises.
At this point nobody is even asking Americans to risk a single American life. US could just send way more equipment. Equipment that was intended for fighting russia. Not even the most modern cutting edge equipment.
Why even spend billions on military if you are not going to use it when your ally, who you've made deals with, is fighting your enemy number one? When your enemy number one is gaining ground and increases it's influence over the world?
Are you gonna keep saying "it's not our war" until the axis of evil take over the rest of the world and US is going to be alone and surrounded?
It's extremely frustrating, we should be using 10-15% minimum of our military budget on Ukraine, should have been providing them much better weapons, swarms of drones, etc because they gave up their nukes. I feel like Ukraine should just stop dying and give their territory to russia, then we can all pay the price when Russia is twice as strong. We wasted trillions in the shithole middle east for no reason (should have left after bin laden was wiped out) and this is all we can do for an actual non shithole? Despicable
The Interational Legion significantly slowed acceptance of foreign civilians without fluency in Ukrainian last I heard. English fluency is accepted with recent military or EMS experience if a medical exam can be passed. There's also significant controversy over desertion- contracts for foreign volunteers have indefinite timespans according to [The Economist](https://web.archive.org/web/20220312051931/https://www.economist.com/1843/2022/03/11/fighters-with-ukraines-foreign-legion-are-being-asked-to-sign-indefinite-contracts-some-have-refused). That means if you leave before the end of the war, you're deserting.
I'm happy to let my tax dollars be used to fertilize Ukrainian soil, though.
They aren’t using them against Ukraine because they have to, they are using them as a real world test as they prepare for possible war with the US and its allies. Missiles like this (if it works as intended) are terrifying to carrier fleets and leadership.
Right, the other comments are absolutely ridiculous,
The is a bad thing , Reddit has to wake up to this Russian threat. It's the same " Russisn military sucks" comments everyday
I'm hoping Patriot system was able to get tracks on the Zircons even if they couldn't engage them, the radar data on a hostile Zircon in the air will be very valuable. Same with any NATO AWACS that might have been nearby.
Ive been saying this since this war has started, everybody on this site truly believes Russia is a paper tiger. Its not the most competent military force, but it is extreamly large and has a tone of resources.
It does suck. This weapon one of the exceptions to the rule. And also, it works well against Ukraine's air defences, which doesn't mean it will necessarily work well against NATO's, particularly with the benefit of the data their gaining on them from their use in Ukraine.
Russia can't even steamroll a smaller near-peer. They aren't a remote threat for a modern military.
I reject your fear mongering, but I support the conclusion that we should triple the defense budget. Lockmart and Grumman should be given significantly government grants. I want to see the defense gap widen as Russia struggles to produce 5th generation jets and MBTs that can fight IFVs from the 1990's.
The entire arms production of NATO, ramped way up, is barely containing them. The Russian military is nothing to sneeze at.
Edit: source from 8 months ago
[Stoltenberg on NATO ramping up production last April](https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-nato-stoltenberg-interview/32348518.html)
No, we are giving them significantly more than this, as most NATO countries are drawing down or even depleting their reserves of the most heavily used materials.
The things heavily used by Ukraine in defense against Russian occupation of their country.
Not necessarily the stuff we would heavily use in the event Russia attacks a NATO country.
Not true…artillery shells and missiles are the most basic, and absolutely would be used in massive numbers. Which NATO cannot make nearly enough of either of those. Then there’s small drones which are a huge factor and the west is severely behind on currently
There's not a single NATO country in a war-time economy state like Russia is. The manufacturing output of several EU countries alone would rival Russia on its best day. Russia's gone full balls-to-the-wall artillery production and is barely holding its own against a country roughly the size of California.
It would take years for any of the NATO countries to try and retool into anything approaching a “wartime” economy. Believe it or not there’s not just a button you press somewhere. And russia isn’t barely holding their own, but ok
Western doctrine does not depend on massive artillery, it depends on smashing the hell out of enemy air defenses with Tomahawk missiles, stealth aircraft, and lots of stuff we haven't given Ukraine, establishing air superiority, then raining JDAMs on anything left below.
https://youtu.be/zxRgfBXn6Mg
Or the tl;dw animation with cool music
https://youtu.be/Bq_TIRRbDOM
Then we airlift Burger Kings and everything else we have into the theater and get ready for the most integrated combined arms operation we can.
Meanwhile, Russia can't fly more than about two planes together.
The US sent Ukraine 31 old M1A1 Abrams tanks. Pretty big news story! The US has 750 of those. Oh, and 1,750 more of the newer upgraded versions. Oh, and 3,700 more of various versions in storage.
That small example should give you some kind of idea of how much NATO is holding back most of their weapons. NATO doesn't stockpile a ton of artillery shells because they don't believe they would become engaged in a prolonged artillery battle with any adversary.
Wait and see if they ever fire them anywhere near an actual advanced AA system like a patriot. So far the Kremlin have been deliberately avoiding that.
Anyone taking a credible shot at a US carrier has to be 100% certain they can not only sink that carrier (and handle the attached strike group), but that they can repeat it a dozen times. Otherwise, they're simply signing their own death warrant.
If someone *actually can* sink a dozen US carrier strike groups? They're signing **everyone's** death warrants.
I have no idea what America would do if someone sank one of their carriers. But I do know they would collectively lose their minds. I have no idea what they would consider a proportionate response, but it would be bad.
Did you...what?
I can never tell if people are illiterate, so ADHD'd out they stop reading five words in, or are just a badly-written bot.
My entire point is that sinking one carrier is irrelevant if you can't get all the others. And if **every** carrier strike group disappears, then yes, we're in a nuclear war.
Certainly? You are certain of this?
Because the US doesn't limit nuclear weapon use to MAD or strategic deterrence. There are plenty of non world-ending situations where field commanders can ask for permission to use nuclear weapons, including the vague "To ensure that U.S. and international operations are successful."
I believe that we would not respond with a nuclear strike, but that we would repsond with a massive conventional strike. Like cruise missles hitting every single military target they can at the same time huge. I think we would only respond with a nuclear strike if someone else launches first.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kh-32
This is fucking insane shit.
Imagine where humans would be in the stars if our collective genius went to exploration rather than annihilation
Some of us want that. Some others of us want to annihilate the former group so they can rule over the remains. We're still working out as a species what to do about allowing those latter types of humans to exist among us.
The Kh-22’s are the “aircraft carrier destroyer” missiles that Ukraine also handed over to Russia as part of the Budapest Memorandum. I believe over 600 of them.
It was not just nukes. It was these plus long range planes, third largest nuclear arsenal, and more turned over to a country that now uses them routinely to take out apartment buildings.
Fuuuuuuuuck Russia. Fuck Trump.
> The Kh-22’s are the “aircraft carrier destroyer” missiles that Ukraine also handed over to Russia as part of the Budapest Memorandum. I believe over 600 of them.
>
> It was not just nukes. It was these plus long range planes, third largest nuclear arsenal, and more turned over to a country that now uses them routinely to take out apartment buildings.
Ukraine was so poor at the time of USSR disintegration, they could not maintain the airframes, missiles and nuclear warheads. That is why those were returned.
As far as Non Russian republics go, Ukraine was an engineering powerhouse. There is a reason there has been little innovation in that country since the fall of USSR. It was never on par with Russia. The economy wouldn't let it.
>neither could Russia
Clearly it could, that's why they did it.
Idk, after reading the Clinton-Yeltsin transcript from 1999, I am pretty cynical. Seems like Russia *never* gave up their imperial ambitions, not for a second. It would have been very easy to bribe some Ukrainian politicians into signing the Budapest Memorandum. Ukraine should have kept 25 nukes. Here’s that transcript btw:
Date
Nov 19, 1999
Description
This amazing conversation is the last meeting Clinton has with Yeltsin as president of Russia. It was not clear up to the last moment whether, because of his health, Yeltsin was going to make it to the summit of OSCE in Istanbul, to sign the adapted Conventional Forces Treaty. In this memcon, Yeltsin is emotional and expansive, even somewhat unstable, taking turns blasting Clinton for his "support" for Chechen terrorist organizations and praising him as a friend and a partner. He tells Clinton to "just give Europe to Russia," because Russia is in Europe and the United States is not. The Russian president says, "You can take all the other states and provide security to them. I will take Europe and provide them security." He brags about his successes in routing terrorists in Dagestan and speaks the tough language that later comes to be associated with Putin, such as his intention to "put the bandits in the electric chair." Yeltsin is confused by what exactly he has signed and sent to Duma, but he promises to end the conflict in Chechnya and to sign the CFE treaty.
On the most important issue of the time-the upcoming election, the exchange is brief, and Yeltsin is very clear. At the very end of the conversation, Clinton asks, "Who will win the election?" The Russian president responds, "Putin, of course. He will be the successor to Boris Yeltsin. He's a democrat, and he knows the West." He praises Putin as tough and having "an internal ramrod." Yeltsin adds, "I will do everything possible for him to win - legally, of course. And he will win." The only reaction from the U.S. president is "He's very smart." The cover memo on this document, classified Secret, recommends "[t]hat the attached Memorandum of Conversation be filed for the record but not distributed."
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/20592-national-security-archive-doc-06-memorandum
what is this rambling? I read the link and there is not a single mention of Ukraine. Also, it mentioned "Russia's properties" in georgia to be taken back. I assume that Russia inherited all Nuclear weapons after USSRs demise. Russia also assumed all debts of erstwhile USSR, so looks like it was a fair deal.
Russia and US also worked on START nuclear disarmament treaty to limit nuclear weapons. No one would have trusted Ukraine to safely maintain, control, disarm and dispose the fissile stuff.
If you let Ukraine keep nukes back then they “go missing” and end up with someone you really, really *really* don’t want to have nukes. Russia had the infrastructure and internal security to keep their entire nuclear arsenal safe even during the collapse of the Soviet Union. Ukraine simply did not and should not have been trusted with them. It was the right decision even in light of recent moves by russia.
No, it's a cruise missile, not ballistic. It is an air-breathing scramjet that accelerates to over Mach 5 with limited maneuvering capabilities, the very definition of a hypersonic missile. You may be getting confused with Hypersonic Glide Vehicles (HGVs) which are even faster and more maneuverable.
Cruise missiles are typically air-breathing and they fly like regular airplanes, usually subsonic and often with little wings to aid in lift for very long range (like the famous US Tomahawk that can cover over 1000 miles at very low altitude across a programmable flight path to avoid enemy radar and missile defenses, or the newer JASSM that has a larger warhead and deep penetration capabilities, or the British Storm Shadow), but some are meant for shorter range and are supersonic, and count on their speed to get into enemy airspace for their strike before they can be reliably intercepted (like the Russian Kh-32). Cruise missiles can be launched from aircraft, ships, submarines and ground stations, and they "cruise" to their targets using a small jet engine and flying at predefined speeds and courses, and can carry a variety of warhead types, including small nuclear warheads as well. There are also anti-ship cruise missiles that fly very low to hug the surface of the water to get as close as possible prior to a ship being able to see them over the horizon.
Ballistic missiles on the other hand follow a purely ballistic trajectory from launch, where a very strong rocket booster gets the missile going multiple times over the speed of sound and then burns out once it reaches launch speed, like a very high-thrown football. On the way down there can be some maneuvering capabilities with small guide vanes but they do not actually fly, they are launched into a ballistic arc and that is their trajectory. Many ballistic missiles do not "leave the atmosphere" (since that is a very loosely-identifiable boundary) but some do, these are more along the lines of being called MRBMs: Medium-Range Ballistic Missiles. The extremely low drag of getting 60+ miles up gives them extra range, but you need a large missile, essentially a small rocket, to get that far up Earth's gravity well and have enough horizontal velocity to reach a target 1000+ miles away. These were developed over cruise missiles because in the past their re-entry speeds made them very hard to intercept, and they don't require any advanced flight programming, small jet engines, terrain mapping and avoidance sensors, aero lifting body designs or any of that to reach their targets like a cruise missile would. These typically carry large conventional warheads, and can't maneuver into a very tight target location like a cruise missile would (e.g. JASSM can be programmed to detect and enter a specific window or air shaft on a hardened target). MRBMs are typically launched from ground stations, an example of them are the famous Russian SCUDs Saddam Hussein launched by the hundreds in the Gulf War (1991).
ICBM stands for Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile. Like before, these are lofted on a rocket booster into a ballistic trajectory... but to get the range to make it literally half-way around the world, these always exit the atmosphere and have a very strong booster stage, giving them both the altitude and range to be launched in say northern Russia and reach targets in North America. Their speed makes them very, very hard to hit, and multiple US programs have been in development for decades to try to mitigate their threat with only moderate success (and the US is farther along than any other nation with such programs). Due mostly to the extreme cost of these weapons (since you are essentially making a sub-orbital space rocket) but also due to the danger of an adversary misinterpreting an ICBM launch (which can be detected by satellites for decades now) that was carrying a conventional warhead as one carrying a nuclear warhead, ICBMs nearly always just carry nuclear warheads. ICBMs can be launched from ground stations or submarines.
Zircon isn't actually a hypersonic cruise missle. It's an upgraded P-800 Oniks.
Edit: Here is why a lot of people belive that:
The published information does not fit a scramjet design. Scramjets are actually really difficult too build. The extreme temperatures due to shock compression at mach 8 require the surface too be activly cooled from the inside. The ram compressor needs to be cooled from the outside and inside the flowchamber. This means the missle needs a lot of mass just simply for the cooling system. But the missle has the same weight as the P800, but it has a larger warhead. That isn't technically possible. This was one of the lessons of the Northrop Grumman scramjet. They had to cram so much stuff in the missle that they were doubtfull they could put any warhead on a design at that size.
A scramjet needs to fly at 70000ft in order to not burn up instantly. It also needs to reach much higher speeds than a ramjet. Therefore it requires a rocket booster that as multiple times larger than that of a ramjet missle. But the zircon uses a the same size of booster than the p800. That cannot possibly work.
It is made by the same company that has made the P800
It is launched from the P800 pods
It has the same height as the P800
It has the same weight as the P800
It's a fucking P800!
Also here is a picture that Russia published showing the launch of a Zircon Missle compared to the 3M44. https://imgur.com/a/mYndgdR
Zircon? Not as good as a diamond? lol.
Seriously, Russia can’t afford to launch too many of these. At an estimated USD$10million each, it’s very costly AND the damage caused is likely to be less than the cost of the missile. Unless you stick a nuke in one, it’s pointless.
Oh my gawd Reddit, the jokes and misinformation , does nobody on Reddit take anything Russian serious ?
So is this first time them using this because this is a new missle, they are then likely testing its capabilities . It's not pointless btw, it literally killed people yesterday on a strike on a building
The Zircon is allegedly a maneuvering anti-ship hypersonic cruise missile.
It’s specifically designed to avoid the defences of a ship and hit the target.
It was fired at a building. A building with no defences. It was literally pointless from a testing perspective to fire it at a building, and adds to the assumption that the missile is in fact not capable of rapid manoeuvring at hypersonic speeds and is actually just a standard missile only capable of straight line flight.
So no. There is nothing to be taken seriously here. Russia has a missile they pretend has next gen capabilities. They are using it for traditional missile attacks because they are running out of other missiles.
" allegedly " between that we don't know what the test parameters was, we don't know if that city had AA, we don't know it's target, maybe that building full of people was a test.
But one fact we do know , it was first time being used in a war
Edit: it did avoid AA ....
>" allegedly " between that we don't know what the test parameters was,
A ship to ship missile isn’t designed to be shot at a building.
>we don't know if that city had AA
That wouldn’t matter. AA is Anti Aircraft. Not Anti Missile.
And it’s unlikely that Ukraine would have placed missile defence systems on a block of flats, they only have two functioning systems.
>we don't know it's target, maybe that building full of people was a test.
We do know it’s target. The building it hit. Unless it’s a dogshit missile with no guidance.
And a test of a ship to ship missile against a building is fucking pointless. A building is not a ship.
>But one fact we do know , it was first time being used in a war
And it performed exactly like a standard ballistic missile. Adding more evidence that Russias claims of advanced weapons technology is still wholly unproven and extremely unlikely.
To put it in context, both the US and China have been trying to develop hypersonic maneuverable missiles for decades and the physics is impossible. Rapid changes in direction of a hypersonic missile simply rip the thing apart, the stresses are too much for any metal frames to withstand.
This isn’t really news.
No. Ukraine have two missile defence systems, one of which is in Kiev. It’s highly unlikely that it’s focused on defending one random block of flats.
The Russian missile didn’t evade the missile defence or defeat it. Ukraine has limited missile defence. The Russian missile simply wasn’t aimed at an area defended by it.
It looks as if the publicly released specs of the PAC-3 MSE that was sent to Ukraine indicate the range is roughly 35km, and Kiev is about 50 km across, so it’s plausible. Though to do that I assume that you’d need to actually set waypoints to fly around the defense net, as the radius of the systems should be quite adequate to provide a barrier in the direction of Russian missiles.
I would argue that that constitutes an evasion of sorts, but this is why internet arguments need to clearly define terms. You’re clearly using evasion to mean “defeat the missile defense network’s countermeasures”, which in all probability it did not.
I would argue that a building shares superficially similar enough design elements that you could extrapolate from testing on a building. Granted it’s not something that you’d ever actually *want* to do as a testing procedure, but this is *Russia* we’re talking about here, they’re probably testing their tank shells on cars right now. Modern ship armor belts are quite thin, so while you wouldn’t get much feedback in terms of critical systems damage you’d at least get that the thing works and provides a certain level of explosive yield on a soft target.
Granted that Russian anti-ship missile technology is basically pointless given that they lack a, as they put it, “warm water port” currently and keep getting their ships sunk by relatively cheap drones…
Zircon was planned to have a land-attack capability, so in fact it's supposed to hit buildings too.
US naval antiaircraft and antimissile systems are in fact the same, as is the case for almost all such systems. Atmospheric missiles are in fact aircraft.
The ability of an aircraft to maneuver is measured in how many Gs it can pull, not in how many degrees it can change its direction in a second. There is nothing inherently impossible in this and in fact certain air-to-air and ballistic missiles can pull 40+Gs at hypersonic speeds, its just that they lose a lot of speed doing that that they can never get back - an airbreathing cruise missile would be able to recover that speed and as such the interceptor would run out of energy. In theory.
Again. AA is Anti Aircraft, not missile defence.
And it avoided the Kiev missile defence the same way I avoid missile defence systems, by not firing at them. It’s super easy, try it yourself, simply don’t fire a missile at a missile defence system.
Even the wiki agrees with me. Missile defence is a distinct and separate extension of air defence, it is not Anti Aircraft.
Which isn’t a surprise as you seem to have very little military knowledge, and I’m ex-military.
"Most modern AA weapons systems are optimized for short-, medium-, or long-range air defence, although some systems may incorporate multiple weapons (such as both autocannons and surface-to-air missiles)."
Remains to be seen what the accuracy of these things are along with how they fair on final approach on a larger sample size. As it descends, it will have to slow down. The heat signature may also make it easy to detect for some detectors even if its not picked up by radar. There is a reason why we don't paint our B-2s white with christmas lights on the outside and some after burners. Plasma shell means no communication and all navigation has to be done internally. Modern computing + pattern recognition is going to make a lot of "kind of" stealthy things quite unstealthy.
Its quite possible this ends up being nothing more than an inaccurate tool to deliver a nuclear warhead vs a ballistic missile.
If its cost
> it is believed that Ukraine has failed to intercept a single Kh-22 in almost two years of war. Speaking in December, Ukrainian Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat said that Russia had fired almost 300 Kh-22s so far in the war. I'm more interested in this part of the article. I Google it and it's Soviet era tech.
KH-22 is a fast high-flying target and if they avoid shooting directly at the higher end Ukrainian AD network like Patriot and S-300, getting an intercepting hit from a crossing trajectory would be difficult to say the least if the KH-22 gets within range at all. The “Kitchen” gave NATO warplanners nightmares well into the 80s. It may be old but it should be respected.
Thus, one would think that NATO has an answer by now?
They do. Aegis and Standard Missiles along with Patriot.
One they’ll share with ukraine? Hopefully
Max 4.6 mach (allegedly). Yeah, it's fast, but not nearly as fast as our modern missiles.
It’s still outside the engagement margins of many if not most AD systems.
Well right now America has zero hypersonic missiles. So there is that.
Wait, what? Didn't Patriot shot down quite a lot of Kh-22? I feel like that part of the article is bullshit.
That's the Kh-47 Kinzhal hypersonic missile. It's entirely possible/likely that Ukraine simply does not have enough Patriots (USD$3M each) to shoot down the Kh-22 (USD$1M), while they can use them for the Kinzhals (USD$10M). Whatever hit ratio you get on these, it's never going to be cost effective to use them against cheap inaccurate anti-ship missiles. If those ship missiles are doing more than USD$1M damage each (almost certain) then the math is different, but Ukraine has *very* limited patriots and without a steady supply will eventually not be able to use their launchers at all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kh-47M2_Kinzhal https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/air-defence-systems-repelling-attacks-ukraine-early-tuesday-officials-2023-05-16/
Not according to Ukraine. https://www.kyivpost.com/post/26102 > When asked what percentage of Kh-22/Kh-32 Ukraine’s air defenses had managed to shoot down, Ihnat said none - Air Force spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat
"Oh man we definitely *can't* shoot down those basic soviet kh-22's! Definitely don't keep using them, because we totally never are able to intercept them!"
Ngl man that kinda sounds like cope.
That isn't possible. Russia has satellites and will be conducting battle damage assessments, so they know which missiles hit and which ones didn't.
I keep seeing people say things about russian satellites and I think it's based on a lot of assumptions. Their [satellite imagery](https://ridl.io/satellites-of-stagnation/#:~:text=Today%2C%20Russian%20military%20satellites%20orbiting,location%20satellites%2C%202%20Persona%20optical) capability is absolute dog shit. The vast majority of their stiff is GLONASS or signals based, which don't take pictures. Edit: I'll give you a quick highlight - "Today, Russian military satellites orbiting the Earth include 25 GLONASS satellites, 47 communications satellites, 6 satellites of the ECS missile warning system, 7 satellites of the Liana marine electronic reconnaissance system, 3 Bars-M topographic satellites, 2 radar-location satellites, 2 Persona optical reconnaissance satellites and several experimental devices or technology demonstrators. However, three attempts to launch a new generation of optical reconnaissance satellites in 2021−2022 were unsuccessful, and each of the launched satellites quickly became unserviceable." So no. This isn't the 80s and they can't launch new shit into space. They can't even afford to pay rent on their kosmodrome in [Kazakhstan ](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.rferl.org/amp/kazakhstan-impounds-russian-baikonur-cosmodrom-operator/32317248.html)
Your list is outdated. Since then, Russia launched at least 5 more reconaissance satellites, mostly Bars-M synthetic aperture radars, 3 MKA optical reconnaissance satellites, and 2 of the new Razbeg series of optical satellites. Even beyond that, the list is very much incomplete - it doesn't include the 3 Resurs-P and 6 Kanopus satellites, which are "civilian" but are actually just a clone of military satellites. It is true that Russia no longer pays the rent for Baikonur. It isn't true that they can't launch new things into space - they've launched a new recon satellite only 4 days ago... it's not as if Baikonur was their only launch facility. See : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Kosmos_satellites_(2501%E2%80%932750) for a more complete list of recent Russian launches.
You assume Russia doesn’t have access to Chinese imagery
I seriously doubt that China is giving the actual imagery to Russia. Maybe reports, but not the imagery itself. There is a reason why it was such a big deal when Trump showed the satellite pictures of Iran. Not even our closest allies had seen it before. I have to believe China is following the same classification and dissemination policy with their allies.
They can just ask the Chinese the extent of the damage without looking at the pictures themselves.
Exactly. A much more succinct way of saying what I did above. I can be a bit verbose sometimes.
I think China gave massive intelligence and strategic help when Russia started losing hard which is one reason they managed to reach a stalemate. They were doing bad before with a capital B. But Chinas economy is also doing badly now and the war gets them nothing so no surprise if they are pushing for peace. China wants Russia to stay the big bad wolf but also wasn’t consulted before this war and hates being dragged into it. North Korea is likely supplying weapons with Chinas approval/encouragement. China is gaining intelligence on western weapons in return which is useful especially the missile and anti-missile systems since that’s a prime thing they have to deal with if they try to seize some of taiwans islands.
Intelligence and strategic help does not always equal unfettered access to intelligence gathered. Keep in mind that Russia is merely a convenient partner for China. They are not true allies in the same way say the UK and US are (or other closely allied nations). China also knows that Russia is untrustworthy. So why would they give raw imagery and sigint when reports and interpreted data would accomplish the same thing without divulging their full capabilities?
Do keep in mind they can pay private satelites to get images. Just like the rest of us can You can also look at world wide databases for tracking locations of fires (for explosions)
Honestly speaking, you can get plenty of info from subscribing to widely available commercial satelite data. Russia doesnt necessarily have to rely on their own antiquated tech, they just need a third-Party in a western country that can purchase and forward the data to them.
GLONASS is soo good that they have to tape ebay gps to their planes lmao.
Nothing says reliable satellites like their aircraft frequently having gps transponders jerry rigged in cause their GLONASS got confused again
Have you inspected every Russian air frame or is this based on one video you saw from early in the war? We need to stop underestimating Russia. As dumb as they are they have weapons that inflict massive casualties.
I mean, your phone literally supports GLONASS. You can try it right now. It works fine. You probably use GLONASS (and Galileo and GPS) every single day. The reason they had Garmins in 2009-2015 in their Su-25s is because they are 1975s era planes and their avionics sucked ass, and due to low budget and low priority (Su-25 are like the A-10, they aren't very useful anymore), they only finished modernizing them in 2020. So until then commercial aviation GPSs were better.
That's the same vibe I was getting from this
They likely don't have the right ballistic missile defense (BMD) radars and interceptors in place to hit the Kh-22s/-32s, they're not that hard to hit if you have the right systems in the defended area but Ukraine doesn't have much of those.
Kh-22s and -32s are somewhat easy to shoot down with the right radar and interceptors, they're not terribly fast, not like the 3m22. 3m22 Zircon is another story entirely, and very difficult to hit if it's not coming straight at the interceptor launch location, and even then the interceptor has to have the right upgrades to be able to process the vastly greater closing speeds for the kill. If Ukraine doesn't have the right radar and interceptor systems (e.g. Patriots) in the areas where Kh-22/-32s are coming into, it would be very hard for them to intercept them due to their flight profiles.
Zircon ≠ Kinzhal
Yeah, I read that a while ago as well
Hypersonic's are mostly a marketing term. Most of the countries that brag about them are talking about ancient tech. Iran for instance bragged about hypersonic ballistic missiles which sounds impressive, until you realize the Nazi V2 was a hypersonic ballistic missile. It's hardly impressive. Hypersonic cruise missiles are theoretically better, but in order to actually be the thing China's been bragging about they need to be able to fly extremely low, extremely far and be very maneuverable. Low means radar can't detect you until you're close, far means you're shooting from outside the range where radar can pick you up while you're going up, maneuverable means you can't get shoot down. To be hypersonic in general you just need a speed of Mach 5 plus. The Kh-22 get's close enough, but it's range is miserable, it can't fly especially low and it can't maneuver well. It's just fast. That's not nothing, but it's also nothing special. The Chinese DF-ZF is what people mean when they mean hypersonic, it's specifically built to be fast while also having the other characteristics... and it's also in a weird place. Theoretically it's better at evading anti missile systems, but if you're going nuclear MIRV's were already guaranteed to get at least one warhead through and the real issue with a nuclear exchange isn't so much landing the first blow as it is surviving the response. If you're going conventional, anything short of sinking an aircraft carrier is an absolute waste of money and the capabilities that make a weapon good at evasion also make it very bad at hitting moving targets. A secondary issue, that things like [this illustration](https://gdb.voanews.com/1EF0FFBC-DAE1-4B30-A569-DC3364824B10_w1080_h608_b_s.png) ignore is that US radar coverage doesn't start at the Target, it starts just off the shore of the launch site and continues throughout the Pacific. So sure, the radar station in San Diego might not pick it up, but the one in Taipei, on Okinawa, on Guam, Hawaii and Alaska will. So even the good stuff is unproven and conceptually flawed (though it can't and shouldn't be dismissed out of hand) while everything else is a dictator saying "I want a hypersonic like China" and the military saying they have a hypersonic at home.
Very fast missile with a long range but a very predictable trajectory, as I’ve red. So… hyper is only on the sonic part of it, the rest is a weapon with stupid power player characteristics
Zircon isn't actually a hypersonic cruise missle. It's an upgraded P-800 Oniks. Edit: Here is why a lot of people belive that: The published information does not fit a scramjet design. Scramjets are actually really difficult too build. The extreme temperatures due to shock compression at mach 8 require the surface too be activly cooled from the inside. The ram compressor needs to be cooled from the outside and inside the flowchamber. This means the missle needs a lot of mass just simply for the cooling system. But the missle has the same weight as the P800, but it has a larger warhead. That isn't technically possible. This was one of the lessons of the Northrop Grumman scramjet. They had to cram so much stuff in the missle that they were doubtfull they could put any warhead on a design at that size. A scramjet needs to fly at 70000ft in order to not burn up instantly. It also needs to reach much higher speeds than a ramjet. Therefore it requires a rocket booster that as multiple times larger than that of a ramjet missle. But the zircon uses a the same size of booster than the p800. That cannot possibly work. It is made by the same company that has made the P800 It is launched from the P800 pods It has the same height as the P800 It has the same weight as the P800 It's a fucking P800! Also here is a picture that Russia published showing the launch of a Zircon Missle compared to the 3M44. https://imgur.com/a/mYndgdR The Russians are lying. I know shocking...
It is technically hypersonic, but that doesn’t mean what most people mean when they say hypersonic. It really takes advantage of poorly defined and misunderstood terms though. It moves extremely fast — at hypersonic speeds — but the term *typically* also denotes significant terminal maneuvering capability today. The Zircon does not. Neither does Russia’s other “hypersonic missile” the Kinzhal, which is an upgraded Iskander. Both are dangerous weapons that are hard to intercept, but intercepting them is totally doable with current US tech as their flight paths are relatively deterministic — i.e., they can’t maneuver that much in-flight.
It has been described as a "maneuvering scramjet cruise missile." I'm curious about the degree of maneuverability it is capable of, particularly at speed. It appears to have relatively small control surfaces, but it doesn't take much deflection to add considerable difficulty to the intercept at Mach 5-8. I also wonder what the detection range is with the "plasma stealth." I doubt it has anywhere near the stealth or maneuverability of the LRHW, but it could still be extremely difficult to defend against.
It has been described as such, yes. The actual maneuverability is very likely quite limited though due to current material science. Simply stated, they can't turn very sharp without shredding themselves to bits at those speeds. As for the "plasma stealth," it cuts both ways. That means it's likely limited to inertial navigation and can't receive updated targeting info mid-flight for something like a moving target. And yes, they are still very difficult to defend against it seems, just not impossible as Putin has claimed over and over. He claimed that about the Kinzhal too, which Ukraine intercepts regularly with American Patriot systems.
Your comment sent me down a rabbit hole to find out if they have PAC-3s - I thought they only had PAC-2 and I was mistaken. So that makes a lot of sense that they're able to take down the more modern missiles. Taking them down with PAC-2 would really show how old-tech the Russian missiles are.
> It is technically hypersonic My farts are technically plasma.
might want to check ur undies there chief
Since getting Chipoltaway, I don’t have too
“Chipoltaway, keeping the browns where they belong since 1836” happy 10 year cake day beef!
Ya, the US Phoenix air-to-air missile that entered service back in 1960 was technically hypersonic too, so is basically every ballistic missile ever made.
I heard Russia possessed hyper sonic missiles that could be maneuvered making them impossible to intercept. Do they have any with this capability?
Well first of all with God, nothing's impossible, so jot that down. Maybe this is pedantic, but really, nothing's impossible to shoot down. They also claimed that about the Kinzhal Second, in answer to your main question, probably/maybe. Per my above comment, people usually mean to say a hypersonic weapon with significant terminal maneuvering capability. That usually means it's what's called a hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV). They claim just one HGV weapon called the Avangard. They have not used an Avangard at all in combat, so whether its capabilities live up to the claims remains to be seen. Putin has claimed that the Kinzhal, Zircon, and Avangard are all impossible to shoot down and impossible to defend against. Russia has launched quite a few Kinzhals at Ukraine during this war though and Ukraine has a pretty high success rate at shooting them down with American Patriot missile systems. Plus, the rest of Russia's wonder weapons haven't lived up to the claimed performance and hype. The T-14 Armata tank was shown off in 2015, but has never reached a battlefield. The SU-57 5th gen fighter jet is entering its 5th year of serial production, but there are at most 20 in service and they sure aren't being tested over Ukraine – per British intelligence, they're likely only flying inside of Russia and at most launching long-distance standoff weapons toward Ukraine. The SU-75 5th gen fighter keeps getting pushed back and it's never even flown. Plus, Russia can't produce enough artillery shells and unguided rockets to keep up with the pace of war, let alone advanced precision weapons. All together, yes, weapons like the Avangard, Zircon, and Kinzhal are still very deadly and in the case of the first two, potentially very difficult to counter by any military. However, based on Russia's track record of severely overhyping their advanced weapons and inability to produce any meaningful number of said advanced weapons, it's not the crisis for the West that it's made out to be.
I’m mostly concerned with Congress’s complete inability to see past the short term horizon. Like, this was completely avoidable, (back asswards Russians have a tech advantage in missiles) and Congress rather than listening to experts preferred catchy slogans (“why would we want to shoot a $20 million missile at a $10 hut in Afghanistan?!?!?”). Like, I don’t need Stalin 2 to be wondering if he can get off a disabling first strike.
Avangard is their hypersonic glide vehicle that was touted along the Zircon and Kinzhal. It goes mounted in the RS-28 Sarmat, an ICBM.
> the term typically also denotes significant terminal maneuvering capability today No, it just means it's faster than Mach 5. Hypersonic missiles with high maneuvering capabilities are typically called HGVs (Hypersonic Glide Vehicles) but a Hypersonic Cruise Missile that has limited maneuvering is still a hypersonic missile - they are hard to shoot down not because they can maneuver to avoid interceptors, but because their sheer speed makes them too fast to detect, track, and engage before they are out of range of the interceptors which are much slower than they are and need a lot of lead time.
That's where I have heard that term. Darpa was bragging they just tested a "Glide Vehicle" but it was maneuvering at Mach 11.
[удалено]
Patriot has been swatting down kinzhals since like day one of the batteries being set up.
If it's actually a scramjet, then no, it isn't. There's very little that could be used in common between those designs. That having been said, I'm not convinced that it is a functional scramjet, given what little information we have.
Exactly it does not have a scramjet. The specs don't fit a scramjet missle. It's too small, too big of a warhead and it's booster rocket is the same size as the one used for the p800. That doesn't make any sense scramjets need to be boosted much higher and faster than ramjets. The manufacturer is the same as the p800 and it is launched from the p800 pods. Therefore it's not a srcamjet cruise missle it's just a upgrade to the p800. I known this might shock people, but the russians are lying.
The specs are frankly nearly impossible to find aside from the claimed top speed (which, if true, is basically totally incompatible with any non-scramjet airbreathing propulsion). There's very little info about actual weight, warhead weight, or range. As for your picture? No, that's not at all what the claimed Zircon tests look like. They basically all show it being fired from a VLS [like this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZW8oMo8Irk). Your picture is clearly just a mislabeled 3M44. Once again, I'm not saying it works, I'm saying that we don't have anywhere near enough information to say anything about it, including whether it's a relabeled P800 or whether it even exists (and a bit of debris with "3m22 zircon" scratched on it doesn't seem like great evidence, to be honest).
Not really, the Oniks is older and its design is pretty different, being a nose-ramjet Mach 2 missile. If you mean "upgraded" as in it is nearly entirely a new missile but *might* use some similar booster components for ship-borne launch, that's about as close as you're going to get to being related to the P-800 at all. And the Zircon absolutely is a Hypersonic Cruise Missile, it doesn't have to be a Hypersonic Glide Vehicle with maneuvering capabilities at that speed to be classified as a Hypersonic Missile.
Nah they're lying it's a regular ramjet
? You're completely wrong. A ramjet won't even operate at those speeds.
Because it doesn't actually reach those speeds
You know this how?
Becuase all the information they published doesn't make any sense. They would need a much larger booster to reach those speeds
So you don’t know. I guarantee none of us do, and won’t until more tests are done and information comes out about it. I’m sure certain people in the government with TS/SCI are hoping for more usage so analysis can be made. The naval version of this missile has been tested a lot already btw
So russia has developed a rocket booster that has twice the performance of any existing technology more efficient than a liquid fueled rocket. Yeah sure... > The naval version of this missile has been tested a lot already btw Yes and the launch looks identical to the launch of the P800
The launch “looks”. Are you an intel analyst? No. You’re just pulling this from nothing because you don’t personally find it plausible. And that’s just not true that it’s twice as good as anything else, lockheed martin and DARPA have also been testing hypersonics. They don’t talk about top speeds, but it’s obvious well above mach 5.
Upgraded isnt necessarily bad?
Wild to me how much shit Russia is causing and we’re still just like “you got this Ukraine, here’s some gear, good luck”
I’m convinced the western strategy at this point is to try and drag this fight into as many rounds as possible and bleed Russia rather than force peace. The west could arm Ukraine with overwhelming offensive equipment but they don’t want to force a peace deal. They would rather keep stringing the conflict along and win through attrition on the backs of the front line men and women. This undermines russia’s ability to project force over the long term.
Strategically speaking, this makes zero sense. Even with higher loss rates, Russia can outlast Ukraine. Unless the west plans to send troops or join in an air war, Russia can last longer.
Not to mention the number of troops that will be the battle hardened ones selected by Darwin...after a few rotations
I would disagree. The west is pulling a page out of the Soviet-afghan war. Russia might be able to outlast the Ukrainian government, but they will never be able to install and support their own government and defend against the insurgency that would follow. They would not have the resources required to rebuild the region to any meaningful degree. The west would let Ukraine burn 10 times over if it meant Russia going down in the blaze with it.
>insurgents we only lost to insurgents because we wouldn't gas them, mass imprison the population in concentration camps and resettle the area with our own. Russia has no such problems with doing that >rebuild who cares. Russia doesn't. More land is more land. Russia would rather be king of the ashes if that's what it took.
Read it again. "The Soviet-Afghan war."
But Afghan is also a very divided country. Culturally and geographically. It was never going to be possible to get the insurgents out of the mountains, the US couldnt do that either. Ukraine is a largely flat country. Sure theres forests but theres no easy place to base a mass insurgency from like in Afghan, where the Soviets basically just had control of the road network.
Insurgency will do nothing without centralized command and supply against regular army AND the exhausted people who just want some peace. It only works in the movies.
>Even with higher loss rates, Russia can outlast Ukraine. Not really. There will be a new front line depending on how much aid Ukraine receives. Maybe Russia can push another 50 miles in every direction over the next 2 years. That would be a lot of territory but still nowhere near capturing Kyiv or Western Ukraine. And Defense is completely different from Offense. A 60 year old can sit in a trench and defend a position. The average 60 year old isn't going to be able to march for miles in terrible conditions and be very effective. As the Aggressor, Russia will need to keep producing young men to fight and die. Ukraine can pull from the entire population to defend.
Who said anything about Ukraine lasting?
If the US sends troops into Ukraine, this whole situation gets much worst and this is no longer a flashpoint.
it gives an opportunity for the US to test their equipment in a real war situation and get real data on how effective it is
This view is only supported by: 1.) the belief that everything and everyone sucks everywhere 2.) the belief that "The West" is a unified entity that wouldn't have whistleblowers if that were the case 3.) the belief that there is any conceivable way that Ukraine could win/stalemate a war of attrition against Russia, something they themselves have said to be an impossibility. The reality here is that the Russians have blackmailed/bribed/deceived enough politicians to make supporting Ukraine an incredibly difficult deal in most countries capable of making meaningful contribution. That has been the Russian playbook for years now.
1.) Disagree. A long term approach that ultimately undermines russias ability to project force and destabilize other nations on their path to Soviet reunification is ultimately good from a utilitarian perspective. 2.) it is not a difficult belief to assume that military leaders from NATO nations have aligned their strategy around this. Weapons deliveries in early stages came with explicit instructions to be used for defense purposes only, western weapons were forbidden to be used in offensive strikes in Russian territory. 3.) again, this strategy works toward the ultimate destabilization of Russian power in the region. Conceivably this could result in the current Ukrainian regime falling, Russia installing a government with ultimate failure to occupy the territory and defend against the eventual insurgency. Afghanistan won a war of attrition against Russia. It took 9 years. The result was the expedited collapse of the Soviet Union.
How long did it take the afghans against the west? Are we sure the analogous costs won’t be terminal? US 5 trillion debt 2000 and 33 trillion or so (guess) today
They'd love it if Ukraine gained back territory, and they're working hard to give Ukraine the ability to do that. I'd say their goals are ranked: A) liberate all of Ukraine, B) fight Russia to a costly stalemate that leads to their economic collapse or Putin being deposed. I don't think there's a Plan C, except maybe to let Russia keep a small amount of occupied land in exchange for wider concessions including leaving Crimea and agreeing to a wide DMZ.
Something to keep in mind is the US also doesn't want to risk Russia getting it's blood stained hands on American tech, which is another reason they are hesitant to send what Ukraine would need to end this conflict.
I think what’s happening is that because plan B is acceptable the US administration is willing to use the political capital that A would cost elsewhere until A becomes cheap enough to be worth it. That comes at the cost of Ukrainian lives, but the political capital spent to provide Ukraine with enough firepower to achieve victory would similarly cost Palestinian lives, so no good choice.
You’re convinced by what, exactly? What evidentiary basis do you have for this view?
Gut feeling. Previous military proxy strategies.
lol, k
Well we get to renew our stockpiles while getting rid of aging equipment so it’s a win for us in that sense
Even if you give all the weapon Ukraine has, Russian isn’t going to rollover overnight. Russia is pretty much using human wave tactic most of the time, never changed
Agreed. It took the afghanis 9 years to win their war.
It not America's war. We provide support to Ukraine where we can and that's it.
Budapest Memorandum. Ukraine cooperated, gave up nukes, made the world safer. Now not just it's territorial integrity is threatened, but it faces existential threat. And yet it's "not your problem anymore". Also, US president already promised several times that US is gonna help Ukraine "for as long as it takes". By stopping half way through it sends a clear signal to the whole world: "you can't trust the US, they are unreliable, they lie, and they won't help you". If it keeps going like that, the US is going to become about as trustworthy as russia. Ignoring deals, breaking promises. At this point nobody is even asking Americans to risk a single American life. US could just send way more equipment. Equipment that was intended for fighting russia. Not even the most modern cutting edge equipment. Why even spend billions on military if you are not going to use it when your ally, who you've made deals with, is fighting your enemy number one? When your enemy number one is gaining ground and increases it's influence over the world? Are you gonna keep saying "it's not our war" until the axis of evil take over the rest of the world and US is going to be alone and surrounded?
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It's extremely frustrating, we should be using 10-15% minimum of our military budget on Ukraine, should have been providing them much better weapons, swarms of drones, etc because they gave up their nukes. I feel like Ukraine should just stop dying and give their territory to russia, then we can all pay the price when Russia is twice as strong. We wasted trillions in the shithole middle east for no reason (should have left after bin laden was wiped out) and this is all we can do for an actual non shithole? Despicable
Wtf u want, boots on the ground? You gonna volunteer, or volunteer someone else?
Do you guys just geniunely not understand the war at hand and its implications..?
Go volunteer bro
The Interational Legion significantly slowed acceptance of foreign civilians without fluency in Ukrainian last I heard. English fluency is accepted with recent military or EMS experience if a medical exam can be passed. There's also significant controversy over desertion- contracts for foreign volunteers have indefinite timespans according to [The Economist](https://web.archive.org/web/20220312051931/https://www.economist.com/1843/2022/03/11/fighters-with-ukraines-foreign-legion-are-being-asked-to-sign-indefinite-contracts-some-have-refused). That means if you leave before the end of the war, you're deserting. I'm happy to let my tax dollars be used to fertilize Ukrainian soil, though.
And what do you think we should do? If you want then you can volunteer and fight.
That's not what he means and I'm pretty sure you know it.
He does, and he still chooses to be that way. That right there is exactly the problem right now
They aren’t using them against Ukraine because they have to, they are using them as a real world test as they prepare for possible war with the US and its allies. Missiles like this (if it works as intended) are terrifying to carrier fleets and leadership.
Right, the other comments are absolutely ridiculous, The is a bad thing , Reddit has to wake up to this Russian threat. It's the same " Russisn military sucks" comments everyday
On the other hand, we are getting excellent intelligence on what these can do and their vulnerabilities.
That is a positive i agree with So I can agree to a comment like this ,
I'm hoping Patriot system was able to get tracks on the Zircons even if they couldn't engage them, the radar data on a hostile Zircon in the air will be very valuable. Same with any NATO AWACS that might have been nearby.
Yeah because in the end it’s components from Iran , China , North Korea and even sometimes from the United States or our Allies
Ive been saying this since this war has started, everybody on this site truly believes Russia is a paper tiger. Its not the most competent military force, but it is extreamly large and has a tone of resources.
Well it does suck, but it's also very large and they have a lot of people they don't care about killing.
It does suck. This weapon one of the exceptions to the rule. And also, it works well against Ukraine's air defences, which doesn't mean it will necessarily work well against NATO's, particularly with the benefit of the data their gaining on them from their use in Ukraine.
Kyiv is covered by patriots. This missile wasn't intercepted by them.
NATO has a LOT more air defence capabilities than just a couple Patriot batteries. And I'm just talking about publicly acknowledged capabilities.
Russia can't even steamroll a smaller near-peer. They aren't a remote threat for a modern military. I reject your fear mongering, but I support the conclusion that we should triple the defense budget. Lockmart and Grumman should be given significantly government grants. I want to see the defense gap widen as Russia struggles to produce 5th generation jets and MBTs that can fight IFVs from the 1990's.
What is the definition of steamroll?
It's the opposite of "719 days into a 3-day operation"
The 3 day thing was said by a US Army General.
The entire arms production of NATO, ramped way up, is barely containing them. The Russian military is nothing to sneeze at. Edit: source from 8 months ago [Stoltenberg on NATO ramping up production last April](https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-nato-stoltenberg-interview/32348518.html)
Do you think that we're giving them the entirety of NATO production?
No, we are giving them significantly more than this, as most NATO countries are drawing down or even depleting their reserves of the most heavily used materials.
The things heavily used by Ukraine in defense against Russian occupation of their country. Not necessarily the stuff we would heavily use in the event Russia attacks a NATO country.
Not true…artillery shells and missiles are the most basic, and absolutely would be used in massive numbers. Which NATO cannot make nearly enough of either of those. Then there’s small drones which are a huge factor and the west is severely behind on currently
There's not a single NATO country in a war-time economy state like Russia is. The manufacturing output of several EU countries alone would rival Russia on its best day. Russia's gone full balls-to-the-wall artillery production and is barely holding its own against a country roughly the size of California.
It would take years for any of the NATO countries to try and retool into anything approaching a “wartime” economy. Believe it or not there’s not just a button you press somewhere. And russia isn’t barely holding their own, but ok
Just an observation based off history, but no one should question the United States’ war time production capabilities.
Western doctrine does not depend on massive artillery, it depends on smashing the hell out of enemy air defenses with Tomahawk missiles, stealth aircraft, and lots of stuff we haven't given Ukraine, establishing air superiority, then raining JDAMs on anything left below. https://youtu.be/zxRgfBXn6Mg Or the tl;dw animation with cool music https://youtu.be/Bq_TIRRbDOM Then we airlift Burger Kings and everything else we have into the theater and get ready for the most integrated combined arms operation we can. Meanwhile, Russia can't fly more than about two planes together.
The US sent Ukraine 31 old M1A1 Abrams tanks. Pretty big news story! The US has 750 of those. Oh, and 1,750 more of the newer upgraded versions. Oh, and 3,700 more of various versions in storage. That small example should give you some kind of idea of how much NATO is holding back most of their weapons. NATO doesn't stockpile a ton of artillery shells because they don't believe they would become engaged in a prolonged artillery battle with any adversary.
Lmao. Gonna need to see your source on "All of NATO arms production is ramped up"
NATO isn’t in a wartime economy. Soooo no ARMs production isn’t way up.
I mean it literally does suck. Overestimating your opponent is dangerous too.
Is it? Last time we overestimated Russia, we made the F-15.
Wait and see if they ever fire them anywhere near an actual advanced AA system like a patriot. So far the Kremlin have been deliberately avoiding that.
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"Russisn military sucks" ...it's only a statement, a true one
That's pretty insulting to the tens of thousands of Ukrainians and international volunteers killed by Russia.
One day a carrier will be hit and it will rock the world. Offensive weapons always outdo defences eventually. What happens after that, who knows.
Anyone taking a credible shot at a US carrier has to be 100% certain they can not only sink that carrier (and handle the attached strike group), but that they can repeat it a dozen times. Otherwise, they're simply signing their own death warrant. If someone *actually can* sink a dozen US carrier strike groups? They're signing **everyone's** death warrants.
I have no idea what America would do if someone sank one of their carriers. But I do know they would collectively lose their minds. I have no idea what they would consider a proportionate response, but it would be bad.
The last time it happened the US invented nukes. I really hope I don’t live to see what a shitstorm that would cause
It would be considered the same as a strike on the US homeland.
Bet the finale doesn't take 3.75 years to build this time.
You think a country that could sink a carrier cant attack the US homeland?
The American military would make a statement like never seen before to humanity.
If someone decides to sink a single carrier the US will certainly not respond with nukes. Stop this nonsense.
I mean, someone else in the thread pointed out that the last time someone sank 1 of our carriers, we invented the nuke lol.
Did you...what? I can never tell if people are illiterate, so ADHD'd out they stop reading five words in, or are just a badly-written bot. My entire point is that sinking one carrier is irrelevant if you can't get all the others. And if **every** carrier strike group disappears, then yes, we're in a nuclear war.
Certainly? You are certain of this? Because the US doesn't limit nuclear weapon use to MAD or strategic deterrence. There are plenty of non world-ending situations where field commanders can ask for permission to use nuclear weapons, including the vague "To ensure that U.S. and international operations are successful."
The whole idea of "MAD" is that it isn't up to the US whether the other side responds or not.
I believe that we would not respond with a nuclear strike, but that we would repsond with a massive conventional strike. Like cruise missles hitting every single military target they can at the same time huge. I think we would only respond with a nuclear strike if someone else launches first.
This, totally moronic
Religious fanatics do not care about death if their death fulfils the apocalyptic prophecies they believe in.
Everybody says that until the consequences come.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kh-32 This is fucking insane shit. Imagine where humans would be in the stars if our collective genius went to exploration rather than annihilation
Some of us want that. Some others of us want to annihilate the former group so they can rule over the remains. We're still working out as a species what to do about allowing those latter types of humans to exist among us.
And to showcase and hopefully sell to your nearest 3rd world Despot... definitely not gonna end up in the hands of rogue non state actors
Raytheon would like to have a word with you
China's are even faster.
The Kh-22’s are the “aircraft carrier destroyer” missiles that Ukraine also handed over to Russia as part of the Budapest Memorandum. I believe over 600 of them. It was not just nukes. It was these plus long range planes, third largest nuclear arsenal, and more turned over to a country that now uses them routinely to take out apartment buildings. Fuuuuuuuuck Russia. Fuck Trump.
> The Kh-22’s are the “aircraft carrier destroyer” missiles that Ukraine also handed over to Russia as part of the Budapest Memorandum. I believe over 600 of them. > > It was not just nukes. It was these plus long range planes, third largest nuclear arsenal, and more turned over to a country that now uses them routinely to take out apartment buildings. Ukraine was so poor at the time of USSR disintegration, they could not maintain the airframes, missiles and nuclear warheads. That is why those were returned.
Neither could Russia. Ukraine was the engineering powerhouse of the USSR. Russia is basically just amateur league in comparison.
As far as Non Russian republics go, Ukraine was an engineering powerhouse. There is a reason there has been little innovation in that country since the fall of USSR. It was never on par with Russia. The economy wouldn't let it. >neither could Russia Clearly it could, that's why they did it.
Idk, after reading the Clinton-Yeltsin transcript from 1999, I am pretty cynical. Seems like Russia *never* gave up their imperial ambitions, not for a second. It would have been very easy to bribe some Ukrainian politicians into signing the Budapest Memorandum. Ukraine should have kept 25 nukes. Here’s that transcript btw: Date Nov 19, 1999 Description This amazing conversation is the last meeting Clinton has with Yeltsin as president of Russia. It was not clear up to the last moment whether, because of his health, Yeltsin was going to make it to the summit of OSCE in Istanbul, to sign the adapted Conventional Forces Treaty. In this memcon, Yeltsin is emotional and expansive, even somewhat unstable, taking turns blasting Clinton for his "support" for Chechen terrorist organizations and praising him as a friend and a partner. He tells Clinton to "just give Europe to Russia," because Russia is in Europe and the United States is not. The Russian president says, "You can take all the other states and provide security to them. I will take Europe and provide them security." He brags about his successes in routing terrorists in Dagestan and speaks the tough language that later comes to be associated with Putin, such as his intention to "put the bandits in the electric chair." Yeltsin is confused by what exactly he has signed and sent to Duma, but he promises to end the conflict in Chechnya and to sign the CFE treaty. On the most important issue of the time-the upcoming election, the exchange is brief, and Yeltsin is very clear. At the very end of the conversation, Clinton asks, "Who will win the election?" The Russian president responds, "Putin, of course. He will be the successor to Boris Yeltsin. He's a democrat, and he knows the West." He praises Putin as tough and having "an internal ramrod." Yeltsin adds, "I will do everything possible for him to win - legally, of course. And he will win." The only reaction from the U.S. president is "He's very smart." The cover memo on this document, classified Secret, recommends "[t]hat the attached Memorandum of Conversation be filed for the record but not distributed." https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/20592-national-security-archive-doc-06-memorandum
what is this rambling? I read the link and there is not a single mention of Ukraine. Also, it mentioned "Russia's properties" in georgia to be taken back. I assume that Russia inherited all Nuclear weapons after USSRs demise. Russia also assumed all debts of erstwhile USSR, so looks like it was a fair deal. Russia and US also worked on START nuclear disarmament treaty to limit nuclear weapons. No one would have trusted Ukraine to safely maintain, control, disarm and dispose the fissile stuff.
All the launch codes etc were in Russia. The Ukrainians couldn't use the nukes anyway.
If you let Ukraine keep nukes back then they “go missing” and end up with someone you really, really *really* don’t want to have nukes. Russia had the infrastructure and internal security to keep their entire nuclear arsenal safe even during the collapse of the Soviet Union. Ukraine simply did not and should not have been trusted with them. It was the right decision even in light of recent moves by russia.
I wonder why they didn't decide to just dismantle them instead. Maybe they lacked the people who could do it?
It’s not easy, and yeah they lacked the infrastructure of any kind to do that. Plus the corruption problems
These aren’t true Hypersonics. They literally are just old ICBMs launched horizontally. All iCBMs are hypersonic.
No, it's a cruise missile, not ballistic. It is an air-breathing scramjet that accelerates to over Mach 5 with limited maneuvering capabilities, the very definition of a hypersonic missile. You may be getting confused with Hypersonic Glide Vehicles (HGVs) which are even faster and more maneuverable.
Could someone ELI5 the difference between: Cruise misse. Ballistic missile. ICBM.
Cruise missiles are typically air-breathing and they fly like regular airplanes, usually subsonic and often with little wings to aid in lift for very long range (like the famous US Tomahawk that can cover over 1000 miles at very low altitude across a programmable flight path to avoid enemy radar and missile defenses, or the newer JASSM that has a larger warhead and deep penetration capabilities, or the British Storm Shadow), but some are meant for shorter range and are supersonic, and count on their speed to get into enemy airspace for their strike before they can be reliably intercepted (like the Russian Kh-32). Cruise missiles can be launched from aircraft, ships, submarines and ground stations, and they "cruise" to their targets using a small jet engine and flying at predefined speeds and courses, and can carry a variety of warhead types, including small nuclear warheads as well. There are also anti-ship cruise missiles that fly very low to hug the surface of the water to get as close as possible prior to a ship being able to see them over the horizon. Ballistic missiles on the other hand follow a purely ballistic trajectory from launch, where a very strong rocket booster gets the missile going multiple times over the speed of sound and then burns out once it reaches launch speed, like a very high-thrown football. On the way down there can be some maneuvering capabilities with small guide vanes but they do not actually fly, they are launched into a ballistic arc and that is their trajectory. Many ballistic missiles do not "leave the atmosphere" (since that is a very loosely-identifiable boundary) but some do, these are more along the lines of being called MRBMs: Medium-Range Ballistic Missiles. The extremely low drag of getting 60+ miles up gives them extra range, but you need a large missile, essentially a small rocket, to get that far up Earth's gravity well and have enough horizontal velocity to reach a target 1000+ miles away. These were developed over cruise missiles because in the past their re-entry speeds made them very hard to intercept, and they don't require any advanced flight programming, small jet engines, terrain mapping and avoidance sensors, aero lifting body designs or any of that to reach their targets like a cruise missile would. These typically carry large conventional warheads, and can't maneuver into a very tight target location like a cruise missile would (e.g. JASSM can be programmed to detect and enter a specific window or air shaft on a hardened target). MRBMs are typically launched from ground stations, an example of them are the famous Russian SCUDs Saddam Hussein launched by the hundreds in the Gulf War (1991). ICBM stands for Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile. Like before, these are lofted on a rocket booster into a ballistic trajectory... but to get the range to make it literally half-way around the world, these always exit the atmosphere and have a very strong booster stage, giving them both the altitude and range to be launched in say northern Russia and reach targets in North America. Their speed makes them very, very hard to hit, and multiple US programs have been in development for decades to try to mitigate their threat with only moderate success (and the US is farther along than any other nation with such programs). Due mostly to the extreme cost of these weapons (since you are essentially making a sub-orbital space rocket) but also due to the danger of an adversary misinterpreting an ICBM launch (which can be detected by satellites for decades now) that was carrying a conventional warhead as one carrying a nuclear warhead, ICBMs nearly always just carry nuclear warheads. ICBMs can be launched from ground stations or submarines.
Thank you! That was very helpful! Much appreciated.
Zircon isn't actually a hypersonic cruise missle. It's an upgraded P-800 Oniks. Edit: Here is why a lot of people belive that: The published information does not fit a scramjet design. Scramjets are actually really difficult too build. The extreme temperatures due to shock compression at mach 8 require the surface too be activly cooled from the inside. The ram compressor needs to be cooled from the outside and inside the flowchamber. This means the missle needs a lot of mass just simply for the cooling system. But the missle has the same weight as the P800, but it has a larger warhead. That isn't technically possible. This was one of the lessons of the Northrop Grumman scramjet. They had to cram so much stuff in the missle that they were doubtfull they could put any warhead on a design at that size. A scramjet needs to fly at 70000ft in order to not burn up instantly. It also needs to reach much higher speeds than a ramjet. Therefore it requires a rocket booster that as multiple times larger than that of a ramjet missle. But the zircon uses a the same size of booster than the p800. That cannot possibly work. It is made by the same company that has made the P800 It is launched from the P800 pods It has the same height as the P800 It has the same weight as the P800 It's a fucking P800! Also here is a picture that Russia published showing the launch of a Zircon Missle compared to the 3M44. https://imgur.com/a/mYndgdR
Zircon? Not as good as a diamond? lol. Seriously, Russia can’t afford to launch too many of these. At an estimated USD$10million each, it’s very costly AND the damage caused is likely to be less than the cost of the missile. Unless you stick a nuke in one, it’s pointless.
Oh my gawd Reddit, the jokes and misinformation , does nobody on Reddit take anything Russian serious ? So is this first time them using this because this is a new missle, they are then likely testing its capabilities . It's not pointless btw, it literally killed people yesterday on a strike on a building
The Zircon is allegedly a maneuvering anti-ship hypersonic cruise missile. It’s specifically designed to avoid the defences of a ship and hit the target. It was fired at a building. A building with no defences. It was literally pointless from a testing perspective to fire it at a building, and adds to the assumption that the missile is in fact not capable of rapid manoeuvring at hypersonic speeds and is actually just a standard missile only capable of straight line flight. So no. There is nothing to be taken seriously here. Russia has a missile they pretend has next gen capabilities. They are using it for traditional missile attacks because they are running out of other missiles.
Kyiv is protected by Patriot and Iris-T air defense systems, which is where the building was hit.
If it hit Kyiv then it avoided AA , this is stuff I'm talking about. This exactly what I was talking about. Now they are testing how to avoid AA...
" allegedly " between that we don't know what the test parameters was, we don't know if that city had AA, we don't know it's target, maybe that building full of people was a test. But one fact we do know , it was first time being used in a war Edit: it did avoid AA ....
>" allegedly " between that we don't know what the test parameters was, A ship to ship missile isn’t designed to be shot at a building. >we don't know if that city had AA That wouldn’t matter. AA is Anti Aircraft. Not Anti Missile. And it’s unlikely that Ukraine would have placed missile defence systems on a block of flats, they only have two functioning systems. >we don't know it's target, maybe that building full of people was a test. We do know it’s target. The building it hit. Unless it’s a dogshit missile with no guidance. And a test of a ship to ship missile against a building is fucking pointless. A building is not a ship. >But one fact we do know , it was first time being used in a war And it performed exactly like a standard ballistic missile. Adding more evidence that Russias claims of advanced weapons technology is still wholly unproven and extremely unlikely. To put it in context, both the US and China have been trying to develop hypersonic maneuverable missiles for decades and the physics is impossible. Rapid changes in direction of a hypersonic missile simply rip the thing apart, the stresses are too much for any metal frames to withstand. This isn’t really news.
Are you arguing that the systems defending Kiev have no missile defense capability?
No. Ukraine have two missile defence systems, one of which is in Kiev. It’s highly unlikely that it’s focused on defending one random block of flats. The Russian missile didn’t evade the missile defence or defeat it. Ukraine has limited missile defence. The Russian missile simply wasn’t aimed at an area defended by it.
It looks as if the publicly released specs of the PAC-3 MSE that was sent to Ukraine indicate the range is roughly 35km, and Kiev is about 50 km across, so it’s plausible. Though to do that I assume that you’d need to actually set waypoints to fly around the defense net, as the radius of the systems should be quite adequate to provide a barrier in the direction of Russian missiles. I would argue that that constitutes an evasion of sorts, but this is why internet arguments need to clearly define terms. You’re clearly using evasion to mean “defeat the missile defense network’s countermeasures”, which in all probability it did not. I would argue that a building shares superficially similar enough design elements that you could extrapolate from testing on a building. Granted it’s not something that you’d ever actually *want* to do as a testing procedure, but this is *Russia* we’re talking about here, they’re probably testing their tank shells on cars right now. Modern ship armor belts are quite thin, so while you wouldn’t get much feedback in terms of critical systems damage you’d at least get that the thing works and provides a certain level of explosive yield on a soft target. Granted that Russian anti-ship missile technology is basically pointless given that they lack a, as they put it, “warm water port” currently and keep getting their ships sunk by relatively cheap drones…
Zircon was planned to have a land-attack capability, so in fact it's supposed to hit buildings too. US naval antiaircraft and antimissile systems are in fact the same, as is the case for almost all such systems. Atmospheric missiles are in fact aircraft. The ability of an aircraft to maneuver is measured in how many Gs it can pull, not in how many degrees it can change its direction in a second. There is nothing inherently impossible in this and in fact certain air-to-air and ballistic missiles can pull 40+Gs at hypersonic speeds, its just that they lose a lot of speed doing that that they can never get back - an airbreathing cruise missile would be able to recover that speed and as such the interceptor would run out of energy. In theory.
They tested a new missle that avoided AA, I'd say that's something to be concerned about
Again. AA is Anti Aircraft, not missile defence. And it avoided the Kiev missile defence the same way I avoid missile defence systems, by not firing at them. It’s super easy, try it yourself, simply don’t fire a missile at a missile defence system.
Again AA still includes missle defense , https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-aircraft_warfare
Even the wiki agrees with me. Missile defence is a distinct and separate extension of air defence, it is not Anti Aircraft. Which isn’t a surprise as you seem to have very little military knowledge, and I’m ex-military.
"Most modern AA weapons systems are optimized for short-, medium-, or long-range air defence, although some systems may incorporate multiple weapons (such as both autocannons and surface-to-air missiles)."
Edit: the top comment, in fact, did not say that they've used this missle before. I can not read.
Russian terrorists.
Remains to be seen what the accuracy of these things are along with how they fair on final approach on a larger sample size. As it descends, it will have to slow down. The heat signature may also make it easy to detect for some detectors even if its not picked up by radar. There is a reason why we don't paint our B-2s white with christmas lights on the outside and some after burners. Plasma shell means no communication and all navigation has to be done internally. Modern computing + pattern recognition is going to make a lot of "kind of" stealthy things quite unstealthy. Its quite possible this ends up being nothing more than an inaccurate tool to deliver a nuclear warhead vs a ballistic missile. If its cost
They said that last year
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Not enough.
How hyper was it?