Russian Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

SinoSoldier said:

Ukraine claims two missiles were used.
The interesting part is where they also claim that drones were used to "distract" the ship's AA systems, implying that at least some of the vessel's search radars and AA weaponry were not only operational, but active during the time of the missile strike.

Click to expand...

enroger said:

Problem is your plot only consider F4 factor, it does not take into account the fact that return signal gets stronger as target gets closer (the 1/R^4 factor).

Roughly speaking

Radar Return Power = Emitted Power * (Effective RCS / R^4) * (a bunch of constants)

So while F4 factor can reduce effective RCS, shorter distance leads to greater (1/R^4) can compensate the reduction of RCS and give a return signal strong enough to be detected.

Therefore, the question is at what distance will 1/R^4 factor trump F4 factor? From your post we can assume the 0.048m^2 target is detectable at 75km

Let P75 be the return radar power received by the antenna of target 0.048m^2 RCS at 75km in free space

at 38km, F4 = 0.0548 (antenna h = 20m, target h = 7m, wavelength = 0.1m)

Let P36_eff be the F4 factor corrected received power of same target at 38km:

P36_eff = 0.0548 * (75/36)^4 * P75 = 1.03 * P75

Therefore target is detectable at 36km even when its effective RCS is reduced to about 1/18 of its original value by F4

Click to expand...

Zichan said:

I did a simulation in Command Modern Operations. I set the weather conditions to sea state 6 and heavy rain. This halved the detection range from 18 nm in clear weather to 9nm against the SS-N-25 Switchblade.

I fired a salvo of 8 such missiles at the cruiser. Despite the shorter detection range, a combination of SA-N-6 Grumble and SA-N-4b Gecko shot down all 8 of them for an expenditure of slightly over 20 S-300s and 8 Osas.

I think the S-300 fire control radar was guiding up to 6 missiles against 3 targets at any instant during the engagement.

Click to expand...

enroger said:

Also what do they mean by distract? No TB-2 weapon can out range S-300, if TB-2 come within range the Russians just gonna shoot it won't they?

Click to expand...

Sardaukar20 said:

Even if Russia has the Leader-class cruiser planned, it is still decades, and billions of rubles away from commissioning one. So for the next 10 years at least. It doesn't look like Russia has a domestic replacement for the Moskva.

Click to expand...

enroger said:

The drone maybe able to distract the top dome, so S-300 is out of the equation. But OSA and all AK630(or Kashtan?) has their own FCR and should be able to engage

Also what do they mean by distract? No TB-2 weapon can out range S-300, if TB-2 come within range the Russians just gonna shoot it won't they?

Click to expand...

ougoah said:

Each Kashtan CIWS gun has its own fire control radar right?

IFF this is indeed done by a couple of Neptune/Kh-35 subsonic AShM, while they're capable of sea skimming, are really far from resembling capable and modern AShM, this would be a simultaneous failure of Fort system, Osa, and 4x Kashtan CIWS systems. Five sets of fire control radars that could be used to engage. Of course this doesn't account for how many missiles were intercepted if any and many other assumptions made.

The available information on this event is really lacking. How many missiles? was it even missile/s? was it mines? was it sabotage? was it NATO jamming or EW? if missiles were interceptions unable to be carried out and why? If they were carried out was it a failure of the interceptors themselves and million questions.

The speculation around are good reading but most just make far too many assumptions on event.

But yes the electronic and defensive weapons onboard were very antiquated.

Click to expand...

ougoah said:

Top Dome is not fire control for S-300 though?

Click to expand...

Zichan said:

…

If the Ukrainians did fire the missiles, I think there is a strong case to be made that the targeting data came from NATO assets in the theater.

Click to expand...

ACuriousPLAFan said:

Leader-class destroyer/cruiser? By this point, I think Russia can just shelve the plans up in the naval archive and forget about it.

They have neither the money nor the material to even gather enough materials needed to start their construction, let alone see through their completion and entering service. At the very least, not in this decade.

The more logical choice would be to build more Admiral Gorshkov-class frigates (22350) and Super Admiral Gorshkov-class frigates (read: destroyers) (22350M). They can build more of them with more economic feasibility, and can distribute them across the North Sea, Baltic, Black Sea and Pacific Fleets with more flexibility.

It's no longer useful for the Russian Navy to have few-in-numbers yet large boats like the Leader-class. They are literal cost-gutters, and losing any one of them would be more painful than losing a frigate or corvette.

Click to expand...

Stealthflanker said:

Yes. I might have to go back on some fundamentals. I was kinda think that the interference from the multipath will cancel the target entirely (Destructive interference). regardless signal strength and also application of STC (Sensitivity Time Control) Which will cancel target at certain RCS in some distance. It's a feature of typical early warning radar to reject birds nearby.

Click to expand...