Russian Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

Vlad Plasmius

Junior Member
Russian reveals unmanned stealth bomber:

Russia has unveiled a mock-up of a pilotless bomber jet that Russian engineers say will evade enemy radars even better than U.S. Stealth bombers and fighters.

Russian television Thursday showed a full-size model of the bat-like jet at an ongoing international air show outside Moscow. The report said the so-called "Skat" aircraft is equipped to carry cruise missiles and can hit targets both at land and at sea.

Source:
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This page has a few pictures of the bomber.

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Russia Tests Powerful 'Dad of All Bombs'
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV – 5 hours ago

MOSCOW (AP) — The Russian military has successfully tested what it described as the world's most powerful non-nuclear air-delivered bomb, Russia's state television reported Tuesday.

It was the latest show of Russia's military muscle amid chilly relations with the United States.

Channel One television said the new weapon, nicknamed the "dad of all bombs" is four times more powerful than the U.S. "mother of all bombs."

"The tests have shown that the new air-delivered ordnance is comparable to a nuclear weapon in its efficiency and capability," said Col.-Gen. Alexander Rukshin, a deputy chief of the Russian military's General Staff, said in televised remarks.

Unlike a nuclear weapon, the bomb doesn't hurt the environment, he added.

The statement reflected the Kremlin's efforts to restore Russia's global clout and rebuild the nation's military might while the ties with Washington have been strained over U.S. criticism of Russia's backsliding on democracy, Moscow's vociferous protests of U.S. missile defense plans, and rifts over global crises.

The U.S. Massive Ordnance Air Blast, nicknamed the Mother Of All Bombs, is a large-yield satellite-guided, air-delivered bomb described as the most powerful non-nuclear weapon in history.

Channel One said that while the Russian bomb contains 7.8 tons of high explosives compared to more than 8 tons of explosives in the U.S. bomb, it's four times more powerful because it uses a new, highly efficient type of explosives that the report didn't identify.

While the U.S. bomb is equivalent to 11 tons of TNT, the Russian one is equivalent to 44 tons of regular explosives. The Russian weapon's blast radius is 990 feet, twice as big as that of the U.S. design, the report said.

Like its U.S. predecessor, first tested in 2003, the Russian bomb is a "thermobaric" weapon that explodes in an intense fireball combined with a devastating blast. It explodes in a terrifying nuclear bomb-like mushroom cloud and wreaks destruction through a massive shock wave created by the air burst and high temperature.

Thermobaric weapons work on the same principle that causes blasts in grain elevators and other dusty places — clouds of fine particles are highly explosive. Such explosions produce shock waves that can be directed and amplified in enclosed spaces such as buildings, caves or tunnels.

Channel One said that the temperature in the epicenter of the Russian bomb's explosion is twice as high as that of the U.S. bomb.

The report showed the bomb dropped by parachute from a Tu-160 strategic bomber and exploding in a massive fireball. It featured the debris of apartment buildings and armored vehicles at a test range, as well as the scorched ground from a massive blast.

It didn't give the bomb's military name or say when it was tested.

Rukshin said the new bomb would allow the military to "protect the nation's security and confront international terrorism in any situation and any region."

"We have got a relatively cheap ordnance with a high strike power," Yuri Balyko, head of the Defense Ministry's institute in charge of weapons design, told Channel One.

Booming oil prices have allowed Russia to steadily increase military spending in recent years, and the Kremlin has taken a more assertive posture in global affairs.

Last month, President Vladimir Putin said he ordered the resumption of regular patrols of strategic bombers, which were suspended after the 1991 Soviet breakup.

How useful do you guys think such a weapon will be? Would it be a tactical weapon for use on enemy troops, or used on enemy airfields, command structure, industry, or resources? What kind of utility does big bombs have today?

Personally, my gut feeling is that this bad boy will do some serious damage to anyone unfortunate enough to face it.
 

Pointblank

Senior Member
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How useful do you guys think such a weapon will be? Would it be a tactical weapon for use on enemy troops, or used on enemy airfields, command structure, industry, or resources? What kind of utility does big bombs have today?

Personally, my gut feeling is that this bad boy will do some serious damage to anyone unfortunate enough to face it.

It is a limited use weapon. The only platform that can carry the MOAB in USAF service isn't a bomber: it's a cargo plane, the C-130 Herc. It is useful for clearing swaths of land for landing zones or for use as a psychological weapon. 2000lb and smaller bombers are more useful, accurate, and when used in large groups, can be more effective than just 1 big bomb.
 
Ah I kind of suspected that; so this is more of a propaganda weapon used to boost the image of the Russian military than a weapon of any practable use. Using cargo planes to drop on enemy group armies does not seem like an operation with a high rate of sucess.
 

Violet Oboe

Junior Member
Guys please...! :mad:
A Tu-160 ´Blackjack´is a strategic supersonic bomber quite similar to USAF's B-1B and certainly no cargo plane...:confused: (...so dismissing this ´russian baby´ as an unwieldy or even undeliverable weapon would be premature.:D).

Nevertheless the most astonishing fact is the extremely high power of the explosive employed in this new russian bomb. MOAB uses a fairly conventional explosive but if the data given in the article is correct this would imply that the new russian ordnance is 5 times (expl.power/volume) more powerful than TNT!

Publicly known are only explosives (ostensibly in R&D stage) with ratios of 2.6-2.8 ´TNT powers´ and these substances have yet to be produced on an industrial scale (...obviously they have been produced albeit covertly!:D). Although the russian feat does not necessarily indicate that a ratio of 5 was actually reached (other means of ´boosting the bang´may also have been used), Russia may have indeed made a major breakthrough in explosives technology. :coffee:

(...just wondering what that stuff would be?:D)
 
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Neutral Zone

Junior Member
What's perhaps more significant here is that the Blackjack is being used in a role other than as an ALCM launch platform, which has been it's primary use up to now. It's an awesome aircraft and is theoretically capable of carrying up to 88,000 pounds of conventional bombs. Which is bad news if you're on the receiving end of it!
 

coolieno99

Junior Member
the Russian MOAB weighs about 8 tons. About the same size and weight as the American MOAB. But the explosion core temperature of the Russian MOAB is about twice as high as the American MOAB, thus generating about 4 times the explosive power (Law of Thermodynamic).
The max. payload of Tu-160 is 40 tons. So it can carried about 5 of these MOABs.
 

DarkEminence

New Member
They both use different ways to destroy.

The MOAB is a conventional explosive, while the Father of All Bombs is a Fuel Air explosive (in the video, there is a nice picture of the expanding exploding fuel exploding within the shock wave here
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).

Likewise, for comparison the MOAB
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I still agree it is an astounding weapon and frankly I think it is the start of a new trend of weapons. But, we cannot compare explosives used because they are different weapons.
 
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TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
the TU 160 is not similar to the B1b it's what the B1b should have been it packs a bigger load then the B52. It's more like the B1b looks like the Tu 160

this raises the question... When will The US pull out the grandmother of all bombs? and who is going to make the uncle bob of all bombs?
 

IDonT

Senior Member
VIP Professional
The trend for the US bombs is towards penetration capability and precision. Some US bombs don't even have explosives, they rely on pure kinetic energy to destroy their target, such a bridge.

I highly doubt the Tu 140 can carry 5 of these bombs. Its not a question of weight but a question of size. I think that bomb was huge.
 
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