Talk:Kh-47M2 Kinzhal/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Range

The range reference makes no sense

Article states Range 2,000 km (1,200 mi) (Including range of launching aircraft)

Range according to Wikipedia of Tu-160: 12,300 km (7,600 mi, 6,600 nmi) practical range without in-flight refuelling 2A01:CB1D:8BE9:1200:E4CD:7AAC:B117:7AF (talk) 10:28, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

• • • yep the range is wrong. the iskander missile (the ground luanch version the kh-47 is based on) has ~500km range. this missile is fired by supersonic fighters or bombers at 36,000 feet high after the aircraft has already broken the sound barrier for it. that is an enormous amount of kinetic energy that this missile doesn't need to provide for it self in the ground launched version. the range for this is missile is certainly closer to 1,500-2,000km and has nothing to do with the launching aircraft's range. I'm not going to bother looking this up and edit it only to get in a flamewar with someone who made this topic their property but thought I'd take 90 seconds to write this nonetheless. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:E940:1230:3857:9D92:62F6:652D (talk) 04:18, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

I believe this claim originates from [1]. The issue is the author makes a number of very poor assumptions in deriving the conclusion that the range includes the launching aircraft.

To start out with the author doesn't understand that with a head-on engagement geometry a slower missile (PATRIOT PAC-3) can hit a faster inbound. It becomes an issue of detection and cuing, not of speed. Even if this assumption were true the author doesn't consider terminal manuevers that may reduce terminal velocity like how the Pershing II "pitch up" manuever it performed to slow down enough for its radar to function. As a result, they start out with the assumption that the maximum velocity the Kinzhal ever achieves is Mach 6. This is probably the root of most of their bad calculations but they make a number of other errors.

They then use the maximum ceiling values for the MiG-31 and Tu-22M. This ignores the matter of the additional weight lowering their ceilings. However, on the opposite side a zoom climb performed by either of these may result in a higher maximum altitude so the issue evens out somewhat.

More aggregiously they use a projectile motion calculation for what is probably a 2-stage missile. Furthermore, they discount air resistance, which, seeing how Iskander is launched from deep within the thickest parts of the atmosphere versus the thinner air at 30,000-60,000 feet that is likely the initial launch point for Kinzhal, this is another very poor assumption.

Finally, because of the operating assumption of Mach 6 being the maximum velocity, they fail to account for the initial velocity imparted by the aircraft which is another opportunity for divergence in range figures. ARandomGuy984 (talk) 16:40, 24 April 2024 (UTC)