China IRBM/SRBM (and non-ICBM/SLBM) thread

ENTED64

Junior Member
Registered Member
By default, the Zircon will never be able to hug the ground when flying at hypersonic speeds. It must fly high enough to avoid melting its body due to frictional heat and consuming too much fuel - Such that detection systems that are situated at higher altitudes (i.e. AEW&C aircrafts and AEW UAVs, high-altitude ground radar and sensor facilities, let alone satellites) will still be able to detect the Zircon quite far out.
Is it really heat caused by friction? I would think at those speeds it would be mostly adiabatic heating like spacecraft reentry. I wonder at what speed does it go from being mostly adiabatic heating to mostly frictional heating.
 

charles18

Junior Member
Registered Member
One more thing that I missed - Like, seriously, Granit? A Cold War-era relic that wasn't even deployed by the Soviet/Russian Navy beyond the Kirov CGNs and the Oscar SSGNs, and is already getting replaced by the Zircon since the 2010s? Why would China need an equivalent to the Granit at all, when YJ-12 and YJ-18 is already better?
I agree the Granit missile belongs in a museum not on the battlefield.
Their limited range is a severe liability.
In a WW3 "Battle of Midway 2.0" scenario an anti-ship missile launched from the VLC of a surface combatant with a range of less than 1,000 km is going to be insufficient.
The zircon has a range of 1,000 km and the YJ-21 has a range of 1,500 km

When the first warship gets sunk by an anti-ship missile fired from 1000 km away, it will be a Loud wake up call.
It will go down in the military history books, similar to how the first aircraft carrier sank a battleship or the first ironclad ship sank a wooden sailing warship. Every nation on this planet with a navy will make a mad scramble to upgrade the range of their missiles.
In a peer to peer fight, an anti-ship missile launched from a surface combatant with a range of less than 1000km is a Liability not an asset.
 

BasilicaLew

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4 patriots that are at least modernized pac-2 missiles all missing a iskander. And this iskander was moving quite slowly. Now I can see how worthless even THAAD would be against DF-26's with alot more energy in it. 95% of interceptions would be exo-thermic, yet almost 85% of Iranian ballistic missiles made it past isreali exo-thermic systems. And with much less advanced systems, ballistic missile systems being proven it's worth compared to cruise missiles again massively.
 

ougoah

Brigadier
Registered Member
Iran is supposed to have 30k missiles. How many does plarf have?
If we count SRBM, MRBM, IRBM then Iran would have a few hundred to maybe 1 or 2 thousand missiles. They are mostly launched in facilities tunneled into mountains and TELs. TELs are extremely exposed and the Israelis allege a great number of TELs have been destroyed.

China's industrial capacity for manufacturing ballistic missiles would be many hundred times Iran's. China's energy resources, raw materials, wealth to purchase necessary materials is a thousand time Iran's thanks to the imposed isolation of Iran. Unfortunately they could only rely on themselves and mustering the ability to produce as many if not more ballistic missiles than India is an impressive feat. However, ballistic missiles alone are not going to do much damage. You need an airforce and navy if you dont border the land you are at war with. Iran's army isn't able to cross into Israel and it has no airforce or navy that could present as a threat to the US plus Israel.

Ballistic missiles would assist in widespread military action. There wasn't any. Iran was just bumping through their missile reserves to hit one city. That was their trump card... they've played it and it just pissed off the Israelis.
 

gelgoog

Lieutenant General
Registered Member
Iran has already fired several hundred ballistic missiles in True Promise 1/2/3.

I think Iran might have a couple thousand missiles. Most will be 500km range.

The Iranian TELs look just like a regular truck with a trailer when in the travel position. Unless Israel or the US want to blow up all trucks and trailers in Iran they won't get all the TELs either.
This is unlike Chinese or Russian TELs which use distinctive off-road capable military trucks.
 

zyklon

Junior Member
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Iran is supposed to have 30k missiles. How many does plarf have?

Are you sure it isn't closer to
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: :p

And that's where if Iran has, I've heard that Iran has upwards of 40,000 missiles that it's built up and stored over time. Now official U.S. government estimates have always said, oh, 3,000, 4,000. I think it's a lot more than that. And Iran has had years to prepare and they've put a lot of effort into building these underground facilities to protect it.

Lmao, Iran has—or rather, had—maybe 3,000 missiles tops if you count all the piddly small stuff.

I seem to recall there was a twitter meme about extrapolating annual production over decades to get 30,000?

Netanyahu
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Iranian missile inventories could reach 20,000 in six years:

“They were accelerating production, aiming to build a system capable of producing 300 ballistic missiles a month. That means 10,000 missiles in three years, 20,000 in six—each carrying a ton of explosives. A single missile is like dropping a bus full of explosives on Israeli cities. That, too, is an existential threat.”

Almost needless to say, a pre-conflict magazine depth of 30,000 is impossible, unless someone is counting oranges instead of apples.
 
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