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EclecticKant t1_itetc5t wrote

Reply to comment by AreYouOKAni in Russia's new space project will include more than 600 satellites by OkOrdinary5299

The iskander missle reaches hypersonic speeds, making it extremely difficult to intercept, and Russia already used a lot of them in Ukraine, they seem to have problems not known before the war but speed doesn't look like it's one of them. Just trying to state facts, correct me if I'm wrong.

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AreYouOKAni t1_iteum2s wrote

Nope. Iskander is Mach 7 at its absolute best, which is about 1000 mph less than what is generally considered "hypersonic".

The reason why our army is unable to shoot down every missile launched at Ukraine is that a) we are using semiantiqur S300 anti-air missile and b) we don't have enough. And even then AFU shoots down like 60-70% of Iskander launches. With IRIS-T finally arriving, we might be able to do better.

The bigger issue is Russian bombings using MLRS Uragan and the ground variant of S300. They are still supersonic but due to very short range (100-ish miles) they are much harder if not impossible to intercept. Also the Shahed drones have been an unpleasant surprise, but at least there's some progress on that direction already.

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EclecticKant t1_itexd4t wrote

Where are you taking your definition of hypersonic from? In aerospace subjects I've always used the threshold of mach 5, and a quick Google search confirms it, but maybe there are other standards that I'm not familiar with.

Russia launched 776 iskander missiles, according to Ukraine (idk if they would benefit from lying on this number, but it's probably in the same order of magnitude as the true number), but i can't find any reputable source stating that Ukraine can reliable intercept any significant number of those missiles (you are stating a 50/70% success rate, stopping some 400 missiles has to leave some indisputable proofs).

I'm not trying to give any opinion on Russia's use of missiles, i just think that underestimating the level of the Russian military technology is not something that will help us, in a war industrial might is a lot more important than the specification of a rocket (if you can't produce them, they won't have an impact anyway), and Russia proved to be extremely underwhelming in that aspect, but a nuclear warhead needs just one missile to do unimaginable damage...

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D1N0F7Y t1_ith6xfe wrote

Islander missiles are quite good honestly, third party commentators name it as one of the best short range ballistic missile. The others are shit, the x-101 in particular. The kalibr, is a family of missiles, with mixed performances.

The so well regarded HIMARS are getting intercepted too, lately like 90% of the salvoes.

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toodroot t1_itf086f wrote

I know it wasn't you who said it, but the discussion started with:

> quite a few hypersonic missiles with good track records.

... and it's not really interesting to discuss only the first half. Russia has a lot of weapons that supposedly have the right features, and they suck when you try to use them.

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EclecticKant t1_itgouf1 wrote

The iskander is an effective hypersonic missle, i focused on the hypersonic part because it's the technically harder one. They are precise enough to hit a specific part of a building, powerful enough to destroy it completely (I'm sure some military bunkers could withstand its impact, but surely not many of them), and since they are hypersonic they are extremely hard to intercept. As expected it's the precision guided missile that Russia used the most, and that it has the least left in stock (probably, infos about Russia armament are hard to confirm). As i said the missle is technically impressive, but not being able to produce them in sufficient quantity reduces its impact on the battlefield, but that is an industrial problem, the discussion was started on the technical capabilities of Russia.

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D1N0F7Y t1_ith7ztd wrote

They took out electric infrastructure in one of the most heavily air defended country in the world.

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