Russia invading Ukraine (NEWS/UPDATES) - Please put sensitive content behind a spoiler



martinlumley said:
Someone needs to think about putting a large missile through a prominent Moscow landmark, just to remind Putin that he can't just strike whatever he wants with impunity.
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Why Moscow? What about his house in St Petersberg? Or that massive gaff down near Sochi? Hit him rather than Russian historical sites that are bound to have loads of civilians nearby.
Brezh said:
I am not a military or weapons expert but anti-ship missiles used to target land seems disproportionate given the amount of explosives needed to blow up a ship. I am curious when the MoD talks about them being less accurate on land but surely striking a ship would require accuracy. Do they operate in a different way to land target missiles, for example, would the be expected to travel through an open and uncongested area but detect the profile of a vessel standing out above the waterline?
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KH 32 initially uses inertial guidance followed by active radar homing in its terminal phase.

They fly to an approximate area then switch on their active radar and pick out the ship that is the biggest radar reflector (they were designed to hit US carriers) and home in on that. Nice clear metal, radar reflecting targets against a dark sea.

When aimed at a land target there are no discreet radar reflectors to pick out, lots of shopping centres, factories, hospitals, industrial buildings, etc have highly reflective roofing, water tanks and / or aircon plant on them so the missiles have to rely entirely on inertial navigation.

It is the lack of terminal active radar guidance that makes the missiles less accurate when fired at land targets.

Inertial navigation accuracy for self-driving cars is about 0.1% of distance traveled. So a car traveling 100km will know its position with an accuracy of 100 m at the end of the run. These cars generally cross-reference with GPS and waypoints like traffic lights. This is similar to the way US cruise missiles work, they used inertial guidance but are programmed with geographical waypoints to match visually.

I'm guessing these old clunkers would have inertial guidance accuracy of something like 0.01% of distance travelled (at best). They didn’t need to be super accurate - fired from 250 to 300 miles out they would arc upwards anywhere between 30,000 to 75,000ft radar scan from above and home in on the huge radar reflecting flight deck of a US Super Carrier.

Fired from 50 miles they might get within +/- 8 metres. Fire from 150 miles that rises to +/- 24 metres, which looked like the difference between hitting the factory site and the shopping centre.

What puzzles me is that the video shows these missiles coming in on a low trajectory, rather than the 70⁰ to 90⁰ I would expect for a KH 32 terminal approach, so I can only presume their flight profile was reprogrammed and that could have made the inertial navigation error even worse.
 
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NodsNeph said:
Dunno if it's the angle of the sun, but the colour of the dust cloud is reminiscent of the explosion in Beirut a while back
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Wouldn't be surprised, lots of explosives have high energy Nitrogen bonds so will give off brownish coloured NOx gasses and Beirut's explosion was Ammonium Nitrate which would also have given off brownish coloured NOx gasses.
 
The BEEB reporting that Lysychansk has been taken. Claims only but photos up of Chechen fighters flying the Russian flag over the administration centre. :(

Hopes of Russia being finished and the likes of the HIMARS turning the tide appear a tad premature.
 
Feed the Monster said:
The BEEB reporting that Lysychansk has been taken. Claims only but photos up of Chechen fighters flying the Russian flag over the administration centre. :(

Hopes of Russia being finished and the likes of the HIMARS turning the tide appear a tad premature.
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The Ukrainians were reportedly withdrawing a few days ago.

Wouldn’t read too much into it.

We’ve only had a few days of Ukraine being able to properly strike at Russia’s supply lines. That’ll take a bit to produce real effects I’d have thought.
 

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