The Gang That Couldn’t …

by Bryan

14 comments

1 Badtux { 10.09.15 at 1:53 am }

I suspect they would talk about it in order to reassure the Iranians that it wasn’t *them* that was dumping cruise missiles onto northern Iran, LOL.

Someone on Jim Wright’s Facebook page pointed out that 15% failure rate, and I commented, “doesn’t sound unreasonable, considering that Russian jets are always falling out of the sky.” He then noted that the missiles are unpiloted and thus the usual reason for Russian jets falling out of the sky, involving potatoes and fermentation, do not apply. I replied that they do indeed, because who does he think maintained the engines and guidance systems on these things? Heh. It’s a wonder they didn’t blow up the ships they were launched from, given all the alcohol fumes aboard.

Of course, the other question is what are Russian Navy ships doing in a landlocked sea? Well, that’s a different tale, and it’s all about oil…

2 Bryan { 10.09.15 at 11:13 am }

There are US aircraft at the bottom of that sea, and the caviar from the sturgeon who swim in that sea is worth more than the oil. Actually Persian pirates raiding up the Volga and the British Empire are the main reasons the Tsar established a Caspian Sea Fleet before oil was considered valuable. In addition to Syria, the Fleet provides mobile ‘artillery’ in an area of mountainous terrain with such garden spots as Chechnya.

The warheads on the rockets coming out of the Gaza Strip are filled with the HE from the unexploded ordnance that the IAF drops on the area. There are tons of it. A 15% failure isn’t good, but it isn’t outrageous for weapons that have been stored a long time.

3 Badtux { 10.10.15 at 12:11 am }

Actually, the caviar industry in the Caspian is pretty much done for due to pollution and overfishing, and the Caspian Sea Fleet regularly enforces Russian notions of which oil in which parts of the Caspian oil fields belongs to whom via force of arms. One reason for the delay in the completion of Iran’s nuclear reactor was that the Russian “advisors” left during one particularly “warm” period where Iran and Russia were squabbling over who had rights to what in the Caspian and Iranian gunboats and Russian gunboats had actually taken potshots at each other. They have since made up, a bit, but of course Iran and Russia have never been, historically, friends. At best the Iranians have used Russia as needed to maintain their sovereignty, knowing all the while that, historically, the Russians really, really would like to gobble them up and finally have that long-desired warm water port.

What’s really surprising is that the Russians armed these relatively small shallow water vessels with cruise missiles. What’s also amazing is that the U.S. did not contradict the Russians that the cruise missiles came from these relatively small ships. Interesting, indeed.

4 Bryan { 10.10.15 at 5:10 pm }

The caviar is black market because the sturgeon is officially protected as an endangered species due to the pollution in the sea and over-fishing. This means that officials are the ones making money off of the trade.

Actually, Russia has not been a BBF of Persia/Iran since John IV captured Astrakhan in the 15th century. Persia unfriended Britain in the 18th century for getting pushy in the Persian Gulf. The US didn’t make the (s)hit list until WWII when they helped the UK ‘protect’ Persia from the Third Reich. Russia has a certain status as one of Iran’s oldest enemies, but they will cooperate when it is in both their interests. A big tell is that Putin talks to the Supreme Leader, not the President of Iran.

The Russian ship could be a tug herding a few barges to launch missiles, but it is more likely they used the frigates and destroyers assigned to the Caspian Sea Fleet which can carry the Klub cruise missile.

5 Badtux { 10.10.15 at 11:01 pm }

Thing is, they don’t have any destroyers left in the Caspian Sea Fleet. The biggest ships are two Gepard-class frigates at 1500 tons displacement, but the missiles were apparently fired from 900 ton displacement Buyan M-class corvettes, barely bigger than gunboats. The M-class was designed as an anti-ship missile platform, but nobody knew it could carry cruise missiles too. This is… interesting.

Of course, the Soviets were big advocate of missile-carrying ships for a long time before the US grudgingly outfitted a new generation of heavy destroyers as “Aegis cruisers” and outfitted them with the ability to fire cruise missiles. But Ticonderoga-class cruisers are literally ten times the size of Buyan M-class corvettes…

6 Bryan { 10.10.15 at 11:28 pm }

The Klub is an anti-ship cruise missile [SSN-47] that has the range to reach Syria.

Technically the Caspian Flotilla is Russia’s oldest naval unit, as John IV founded it after taking Astrakhan. It has apparently shifted to frigates, corvettes, and patrol boats. The corvettes are new from my time when it was destroyers, frigates, and patrol boats.

[John IV, The Awesome, is usually called Ivan the Terrible in the West. He received the appellation, ‘The Awesome’, for capturing Astrakhan. His grandfather, John III, had already won ‘The Great’ for telling Mongol Horde to piss off.]

7 Badtux { 10.11.15 at 12:51 am }

I assume you mean the SS-N-27 Klub: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3M-54_Klub . It appears to be a modular cruise missile. The long range land attack version has an extra “range stage” compared to the short range anti-ship version. Thing is, while the Pentagon knew about this long range version, everybody thought about it in the context of the Russian submarine fleet and the fact that the Russians have outfitted submarines as cruise missile carriers in much the same way as the USS Florida (a Trident missile submarine remodeled to instead carry 154 cruise missiles). Nobody outside the Pentagon ever thought that a sub-1000 ton corvette could be outfitted with the thing. I mean, a Kilo-class is the smallest Russian sub to carry these things and it’s three times the size of one of those corvettes!

There are fishing trawlers that are larger than a Buyan-class corvette. I think Russia just announced that they now have the ability to reach out and touch someone from things that are barely bigger than a rowboat.

8 Bryan { 10.11.15 at 2:33 pm }

The NATO designator is SSN for Ship-to-Ship as opposed to SS for Surface-to-Surface. When you send things by Teletype it’s all caps and minimum punctuation. The US uses AG for Air-to-Ground but NATO uses AS, Air-to-Surface. ‘Klub’ is the Russian name for the export version, NATO calls it a Sizzler. Actually increasing the range is a matter of adding an extra block of solid fuel. In the missiles that landed short in Iran, the extra fuel block probably failed to ignite.

I wouldn’t imagine that the corvettes had more than 4 missiles on board.

9 Badtux { 10.12.15 at 7:24 pm }

The photo of the M-class corvette that I saw has four missile launchers, two on each side, facing astern. Whether they carry reloads for the missile launchers, I doubt it. But the Russians have already demonstrated a cargo container version of the missile launcher that can be carried on a barge or anything else capable of hauling a standard cargo container. I think basically they’re telling us, “okay, you have overwhelming force compared to us, but if you try attacking us we will make your life unending misery by having missiles show up from unlikely vessels that you would never imagine are carrying missiles.”

10 Bryan { 10.12.15 at 8:49 pm }

They can’t have the room for reloads on a corvette, given the space required for the radar package that the Klub/Sizzler requires. A lot of things we can put on a moped they require at least a pick-up to carry. The Indians have done a lot of work on the Klub.

11 Badtux { 10.13.15 at 12:05 am }

The M-class corvettes are all new, built within the past 15 years with the best technology that Russia could buy or in some cases steal. I would suspect that things that were pickup-sized when you were in are much smaller now. That said, that’s not a very big boat, and if there were reloads aboard there wouldn’t be room for anything else given the size of those missiles…

12 Bryan { 10.13.15 at 9:24 pm }

If my Russian hasn’t failed me the missile corvettes carry two Klub launchers with 4 missiles each, and two Igla (anti-aircraft) launchers with 4 missiles each [probably the SA-24 Grinch models] each. I doubt they could reload the launchers at sea if they had extra missiles. It probably requires a crane for the Klub, as they may be stored as 4 missile units. The Igla is the Russian counterpart of the Stinger and most are used as MANPADs.

13 Badtux { 10.14.15 at 2:14 am }

Interesting details. The advantage of reading Russian I suspect, I’m dependent upon English language sources (sigh). I suspect the Iglas can be reloaded at sea. I don’t know about the Klubs though. I would think they’d come up with *some* way of doing so, because otherwise it’s useless carrying reloads. One thing to remember is that the Russians are not averse to substituting human labor in places where we Americans would use machines because it is too frickin’ dangerous…

14 Bryan { 10.14.15 at 2:17 pm }

Yes, they can certainly reload the Igla launcher, but the Klub launcher apparently involves a four missile ‘cartridge’ that is a unit. Eight missiles is a large capability for corvette, so I doubt reloading them at sea was ever considered. Their container system obviously isn’t intended to be reloaded on site, but at a depot.

A major problem for the Soviet military was the lack of technicians. They had extremely competent scientists and engineers, but their service technicians and mechanics are not of the quality of the West. The lack of contact with things like motor vehicles or electronics while growing up leaves them well behind the curve in the development of practical skills.