Wednesday’s Roll-up of Missile/Space News

 

 

1. Airborne Laser Successfully Completes Low-Power Flight Testing: Using all three of the aircraft’s laser systems to detect, track, and then engage a "non-cooperative" target aircraft with a low-power laser that is serving as a surrogate for the high-power laser that will be installed aboard the modified Boeing 747-400 aircraft later this year. This is a critically important milestone, as the program has now successfully completed the low-power phase of testing and demonstrated ABL’s integrated battle management and beam control/fire control systems in flight by detecting, tracking, targeting and engaging an airborne target. This is the first time in history an airborne directed-energy platform has successfully engaged a non-cooperative airborne target at significant ranges. The prototype ABL aircraft completed 48 flight test missions, firing its on-board lasers more than 200 times. Efforts will now focus on the installation of the megawatt-class Chemical Oxygen-Iodine Laser (COIL) at Edwards Air Force Base in preparation for high-power testing scheduled to begin in late 2008. The high-power laser will have the ability to destroy a ballistic missile in its "boost phase" — the first few minutes of flight — when it is highly vulnerable to the directed energy beam ABL will deliver. The ABL will be the first combat aircraft relying entirely upon a directed energy device as a weapon. (Source: MDA Press Release)

 

2. Russia Seeks to Return to Moon by 2025: At a news conference held in Moscow on 31 August, the head of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roskosmos), Anatoliy Perminov, provided details of efforts to revive and expand Russia’s space flight capabilities, through 2040.   Included in those plans are a manned mission to the Moon in 2025 followed by a permanent base there – a manned mission to Mars was said to be possible after 2035. Planned in 3 stages, the program begins with a short-term segment that runs from the present to 2015, a mid-range segment from 2015 to 2025 and thence to the long-range segment which covers out to 2040. Short-term objectives focus on near-Earth space with special emphasis on completion of the Russian segment of the International Space Station, helping extend the service life of the space station beyond 2015, possibly to 2020, according to Perminov. Mid-range milestones include the creation of a new manned space transport system by 2015 and, after 2020, a new space station in near-Earth orbit on the basis of a new-generation space platform, Perminov went on to say.

 

One outcome of that plan is that a new type of manned platform would be built between 2016 and 2025, enabling spacecraft to be assembled in near-Earth orbit, forming the basis for a Moon- and/or Mars-oriented mission. That project is being treated as a Russian project in which the European Space Agency could be involved.  Another feature of the long-range program would be the construction of a system to protect Planet Earth from asteroids, after 2026. (Source:  ROSCOSMOS ) (ed. In the meantime, the US continues it’s Back To The Future meme with the Orion Project)

 

3. Bulava Not Ready for Production?: A fairly critical article showed up in Ria Novosti last week taking the government to task over the Bulava program. Recall that the Bulava is the navalized version of the Topol (SS-27) and has been notable for a rather spectacular series of failures in attempted launches (4 out of 6 in the latest round). Some parts of the article follow:

The decision of the Bulava designers to begin trials with submarine launches, bypassing ground tests and launches from a sea-based stand appears opportunistic. This has never been done in naval missile designing before. Anatoly Perminov, head of the Russian Space Agency, which is responsible for designing and supplying strategic missiles to the armed forces, said the Bulava could be delivered to the navy after at least 12-15 tests. 

Yury Solomonov, director and chief designer of the Moscow-based Heat Technology Institute, which had developed the ground-based Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), said after the second successful launch of the Bulava that the trial had confirmed the design characteristics of the missile’s interaction with the submarine. However, he said it needed at least 10 more trial launches. 

Trials are held to improve onboard systems, notably microchips, astrocorrection systems, the warhead, the engine, and the like. Flight tests show what degree of the product’s exploitation stability can be expected, and also its modernization potential, notably the ability to adjust to a grazing trajectory and increase resistance to external destructive factors. No mathematical models can replace live trials. 

The RSD-10 Pioneer mobile ICBM (NATO SS-20 Saber) is a relevant example. It was put on combat duty after all the bugs were cleaned out in 21 successful trials. It was a very good missile. Unfortunately, it was liquidated in keeping with the Soviet-American INF treaty on intermediate- and shorter-range missiles. 

Other examples are the RS-12M Topol (SS-25 Sickle) and the RS-12M2 Topol-M (SS-27) missiles, which suffered only one failure in a series of 13 trials. 

In the early 1980s, it took 16 missiles to hold the submerged and surface trials of the RSM-52 (SS-N-20 Sturgeon), a solid-fuel ballistic missile designed to carry 10 nuclear warheads, including nine launches from a naval stand and seven from a submarine. The missile was later supplied to six Akula-class (Typhoon) submarines. The missile’s warhead comprises ten charges, command systems, and a liquid-fuel multiple warhead dispensing mechanism, as well as air defense evasion systems. 

The missile was later overhauled to produce the R-39M Grom (SS-N-28 Bark) missile, which was to be supplied to the Borei-class submarines – the Yury Dolgoruky, the Alexander Nevsky and the Vladimir Monomakh. These strategic submarines were to become the core of Russia’s sea-based nuclear forces after the removal of Typhoon-class submarines from combat duty beginning in 2016. But the Bark project was terminated after the first three unsuccessful launches. The fourth missile was not even launched, although the reasons for the failure of the first three had been removed. Judging by the logic of Soviet-era trials, the Bulava project should be suspended, if not terminated. Instead, it has been proclaimed ready for mass production. Why? 

The author goes on to point out that the Bulava is a flawed approach, especially in light of the SS-N-23’s current capabilities and future adaptability (as a liquid-fueled SLBM). The full text of the article (in English) may be found here.  See also “Bulava blues — Part 2”

 

 

 

  

Why will it take more than eight years for Russia to equip another 23 battalions with its new state-of-the-art S-400 Triumf air defense system when the first battalion is already operational?

 

The first point is that although the Russian government, flush with enormous annual surpluses from being the world’s largest combined oil and gas exporter at a time when world demand and prices are higher than ever, has gone on a binge of ordering new ICBMs and fighter planes and many other kinds of defense equipment. The Russian military-industrial sector, therefore, is booming. But its capacity is also stretched to the limit. The huge resources of plants in the Ukraine, especially in the Donbass industrial region of eastern Ukraine, were lost with the collapse of communism at the end of 1991.

Close cooperation with Moscow continued for many years. But with pro-Western Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko in power in Kiev and Ukraine even looking to buy Canadian CANDU nuclear reactors to break its ancient energy dependence on Russia, those resources are no longer available.

Also, as United Press International’s Martin Walker reported this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ambitious rearmament and modernization program is putting major strains on the Russian military-industrial complex. 

 

5. Second Topol-M ICBM Battalion To Go On Combat Duty By Year-End: And speaking of the SS-27 Topol, the second battalion is slated for operation by the end of 2007. Strategic Missile Forces commander, Col. Gen. Nikolai Solovtsov, is on record as saying that the deployment of silo-based Topol-M systems in the Saratov and road-mobile systems in the Ivanovo Regions (central Russia) would be completed in 2010. He also noted that the Topol-M system will be equipped with multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRVs) in the next two or three years, adding the new system would help penetrate missile defenses more effectively. (Source: Ria Novosti)  (ed. – More Russian chest-thumping about the US’ BMDS, which, again, is not geared to counter Russian ICBMs…but that would be stating the obvious, again. Also, regarding the MIRV’d version, apparently it is identified as the RS-24  which, as Pavel Podvig points out, raises questions about START compatibility.)