"All of Vlad's forces and all of Vlad's men, are out to put Humpty together again." (7 Viewers)

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This discussion of radar, accuracy, command guidance, and missile trajectory is very interesting to me as it regards missiles that are far more advanced than the ones I was intimately involved with in '60 to '63, the Corporal Type IIB. This was the first field artillery guided missile ever deployed by the US. Much of its early development was based on the German V2 but with significant improvements. This 44 ft 10 in missile was liquid-fueled with red fuming nitric acid and analine with a slug of furfuryl alcohol to aid starting. It could carry either a conventional or nuclear warhead.

There was a combination of internal and external guidance systems:

1. Internal guidance consisted of a gyro and accelerometers to keep it upright during its launch phase and a pre-programmed timer to pitch it over to its proper flight path.

2. External guidance was fairly complex; an MPM-38 (SCR-584) pulse radar provided tracking of the missile in-flight- azimuth, elevation, and slant range while a 5-ton van with an analog computer (26 op-amps!) calculated the proper time to shut off the rocket motor so it would hit the target. At the same time a Doppler radar also fed velocity data to the computer. After the missile shut off, it flew ballistically out of the atmosphere but upon its re-entry the steering fins would again become effective. At that time the Doppler radar would send a final range correction and warhead arming command.

At that point we would tear down the whole system and haul ass since something was probably back at us very soon!

I thought you might like to hear what it was like in the "olden days".

Note: This was once Classified but has long since been Declassified. The Corporal IIB published range was 75 miles.
 
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Good idea! The Mounties could drive the LAVs!

And yes, we jest…
 
Good idea! The Mounties could drive the LAVs!

And yes, we jest…
The RCMP is planning to deploy to or is already in Ukraine to assist with war crimes investigations. If our Mounties can help bring some of these Russians to Justice it will be a good Canadian contribution.



We Canadians have a long and strong relationship with Ukraine. I do wish we were sending more lethal aid to support the coming offensives. Such as LAVs.
 
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I found it disconcerting, discovering today that Canada is sending AFVs to Haiti but won't do the same for Ukraine. I'm not casting any aspersions, just wondering about the difference in urgency. Reports are that the vehicles were sold to the Haitians, but I haven't seen anything about manpower deployments. At any rate, why not do the same for Ukraine?
 
Haiti is a mess and would be better if it sank into the sea. France, not Canada should be leading any aid there.
 

I can't disagree with anything you're saying, indeed it seems we're pretty much agreeing with the technical limitations that drove the 45km range on the earliest S-300 missile variants. TVM or even just basic SARH could enable substantial improvements in range because the receiver on the missile is a lot closer to the target than the receiver on the SAM radar.

The idea of CG remains an option to improve accuracy in surface-to-surface mode...but the problems I outlined, not least precisely timing the signal to hit the target, are still challenging and increase with distance. Alas, we're still in "what if" and "maybe they" territory.

If Russia has integrated GPS then, presumably, it's GPS-aided INS which is exactly the approach used on JDAM kits. If you have GPS-aided INS, then CG doesn't provide any additional increase in precision or accuracy. That said, it all comes down to how well the GPS is integrated into the INS, the frequency of GPS update and the rate at which the INS drifts over time.

If they are using GPS-aided INS, then I'd still expect precision and accuracy to be better than some of the missile strikes we've seen in Ukraine...again, assuming the weapon employed was the S-300/S-400 employed in surface-to-surface mode. However, there's no need to switch from CG to GPS-aided. They could just launch ballistically and rely on the GPS-aided INS to get it to the target.
 
Has there been any confirmation of the 4 Ka-52's claimed shot down the other day?
Ukrainian sources claim to have video and photographic evidence that they downed four of those and may have hit more.

Haven't seen any of the evidence though.
 
how to convince 1970's radar system to work again???? this is not mechanical hardware, WD40 and hammer will not be enough....
 
The Russians advertised a new SP AAA vehicle in 2018 or 2019, using the S-60 and a BMP 3 chassis. I think a few have even made it into service. So, there might be a relatively modern radar being built that these old S-60 ground guns could be teamed with?

It's honestly not a bad concept for the medium range AD role. The S-60 is a hell of a gun - high velocity, accurate, relatively high rate of fire (~2 rounds per second) and able to put a hole in anything that's not an MBT. Plus, it has a multiplicity of ammunition types - there's proximity airburst, timed and graze fused ammunition for AAA roles, basic instantaneous fuses for ground roles and AP-T/API for engaging light armour.

The Ukrainians have also put some of their S-60s back into service. There was video back from July or August of them using it as mid-range artillery. Bang off a couple of clips of HE and then tractor the gun to a different position.

EDIT: Adding video link

It's an OLD tactic - the Bofors 40mm was used as an indirect fire gun by the Allies during WW2 (mostly because there weren't very many German aircraft to shoot at). Sometimes en masse.
 
What is Iran's motivation for providing drones to Russia? I know they like to be a global sh#t disturber, and maybe some Russian money is welcome, presumably not rubles. But with Russia becoming a pariah state with significantly declined prestige and global street cred, one that is increasingly embarrassing itself on the battlefield, this does nothing to strategically strengthen Iran.
 
"Tyrants of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your heads!"
 
Not a really great or somplete answer, but it appears, from a CTV news iitem, that the US and Canada sold these units to Haiti. "Today, Canadian and U.S. military aircraft arrived in Port-au-Prince, Haiti to transfer vital Haitian government-purchased security equipment, including tactical and armoured vehicles, and supplies to the Director General of the Haitian National Police (HNP)," the statement reads.
 
This article helps to explain why Iran is supporting Russia against Ukraine. In short, oppose the US everywhere.


Not to derail the thread but things are not going well for the Tehran regime right now:
True, but unless the praetorian-like Revolutionary Guard can be convinced to turn, which is to most considered impossible, the rebellion in Iran will almost certainly be crushed. Iran is more a military state than a theocratic one nowadays.

Iran's Loyal Security Forces Protect Ruling System That Protesters Want to Topple

The only hope is that the 420,000 members of the regular Iranian army rebel against the 200,000 strong Revolutionary Guard and the ayatollahs they protect. Perhaps Ukraine can find some way to return to favour and smack down Iran.
 
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