The head of the Russian Ministry of Defense checked how state defense orders are fulfilled at military enterprises. During a visit to the Tactical Missiles Corporation, a super-powerful Russian FAB-1500-M54 aerial bomb equipped with a planning module was noticed for the first time. As can be seen in the photo, the bomb received a streamlined cap that improves aerodynamic characteristics, which in turn increases the range and speed of the bomb’s flight to the target. An aircraft bomb with FAB-1500-M54 has a gliding range of up to 60 km; it is believed that it can be equipped with a pulse-jet engine, which increases the gliding range of the bomb to 150 km. The FAB-155-M54 aircraft bomb has a mass of 1550 kg, the mass of the warhead is 675.6 kg. When used, an aerial bomb leaves behind a crater up to 15 meters in diameter, and its radius of destruction by fragments and shock wave is about 500 meters. The maximum altitude for dropping an aerial bomb is 12 km; the initial gliding speed of the bomb depends on the carrier and usually reaches 1900 km/h. The UMPC module makes it one of Russia's longest-range bombs. Bombs can be carried by Su-34M and Su-35C aircraft. During a visit to the plant, the minister also instructed to transfer the line of conventional ammunition, the production of which has been established in sufficient quantities, to the category of precision-guided ammunition.
Russian Military News, Reports, Data, etc.
- Thread starter tphuang
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''increased area of anti-fragmentation protection of more than 135 dm² - 70% of the body area''
I think that will be quite an important feat.
If the Russians expected to encounter significant difficulty in Ukraine, and wanted to better prepare, what changes do you think they would have made to their ground equipment [other than communications, obviously]?
Do you think that they would have started doing after 2014 what they are now doing in terms of ground vehicle modernization, such as fielding the Manul? Is it possible that long-term projects such as Armata and Kurganets/Bumerang would have been downplayed in favour of iterations of existing types? Their artillery modernization certainly took its time.
Footage of the construction of defensive structures by the Russian army in the Krasnolimansky direction. When creating dugouts, trenches, communication passages and weapons magazines, the engineering troops use the military mobile sawmill complex VMLK-1, more about it in the link to the video in the comments to the video. Since the war in Ukraine in some places turned into positional battles, quite serious defensive structures are being created. In the video you can see a system of trenches, the walls and floor of which are covered with boards, for protection from drones, and the upper part of the trenches is also closed. Along the entire length of the defensive structures, an electrical lighting system was created, drainage systems were installed, dugouts and firing points were created.
The Russian lightly armored tractor MT-LB has undergone another home-made modernization. This time, the RBU-6000 jet naval bomb launcher was installed on the MT-LB chassis. The RBU-6000 or “Smerch-2” shipborne rocket launcher is installed on most Russian ships; the installation was developed in 1961. The installation can launch twelve 213 mm RGB-60 or 90R bombs, weighing 113 kilograms, at a range of up to 5500 meters. The weight of the RBU-6000 is 3500 kg, so the maneuverability of the MT-LB armored personnel carrier will be significantly reduced.
The Russian military truck sawmill is clearly awesome. Engineering vehicules are always looked down in procurement but damn they are one of the best asset in a long warfare scenario.
Like you said communications. Lack of digital encrypted radios, lack of training on how to operate them, lack of proper high bandwidth data transmission methods over long distances, etc. To a large degree the lagging capabilities that Russia has in space based assets also play a role. Like lack of enough modern recon, global positioning, and data transmission satellite assets.
They spent a huge amount of time penny pinching. There were and have always been programs to update existing vehicle types but they seldom get funded or get funded in nerfed versions. One example is the T-72B2 Rogatka. They could have just started using that but instead they made several different somewhat cheaper T-72 upgrades. Another thing they lack is commander's panoramic sight in the T-72B and older T-90A tanks. The T-90M has it. And it's not like you can't put something like on a T-72 when the White Eagle export tank upgrade has it.
As for the Manul, I suppose it looks like an interesting upgrade, but they lack even enough basic BMP-3 or BMD-4M vehicles as it is. There are way too many people on BMP-2, BMP-1, or BMD-1/2 vehicles which worst of all have been poorly upgraded.
They need a better upgrade for the BMP-1 and BMP-2 vehicles since clearly they can't produce the BMP-3 quickly enough.
They used to have two factories which made IFVs, one in Volgograd, and another in Kurgan. The one in Volgograd is basically dead. I think they need another factory for IFVs. Production is clearly insufficient.
I also think they need more Terminator heavy AFVs. They clearly seem to have an outside effect on the field when they get used despite only being available in pathetic numbers. This would help with attacking hardened defensive positions.
The lack of enough modern artillery is of course a huge issue. They didn't fund it for a huge amount of time. And like with other hardware you had the penny pinching. The Msta-SM2 was supposed to have an L/60 long barrel for example but it doesn't to save cost. I guess one advantage of the shorter barrels is that barrel replacement is a lot cheaper even if the range suffers because of it.
Anyway it could have been worse I guess. The Russians have been improving their army since the 08.08.08 conflict. This sped up a lot since 2014. And they did do some things right.
There was a huge growth in the size of the active duty army, both before and after 02.02.22, and getting equipment for all those people was probably pretty hard.
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Upgrading ground equipment alone is useless when the ISR sucks.
ISR is clearly one of the system lacking... situation awareness for a good part of the defence line in Ukraine is relying on some foot soldiers with a radio in a hole at the front calling reinforcement. It's not pretty at all.
Another weapon system for Ukraine would be one that got rid of small UAV. Some kind of mini c-ram/laser with optical/IR search system against the background. Would have been one of the nicest thing to field but without the knowleges that evolved during the conflict, it would have been quite hard to design it.