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AreYouOKAni t1_iteum2s wrote

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

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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