How Russian P-270 Moskit and P-800 Oniks stopped by US Navy’s Phalanx and Railguns

“It could be a fundamentally new missile, possibly hypersonic. One should not forget that NPO Mashinostroyenia has been actively working in this area, and it was not too long that ago mockups of the joint Russian-Indian hypersonic Rocket BrahMos-II appeared at exhibitions”

Chief editor of the MilitaryRussia.ru, Dmitry Kornev, in an interview with the RBTH

For those persons wondering why the US Navy and the US Army seems to be still spending money on exotic Directed Energy weapons such as Lasers and high speed projectiles, then this article is for you.

The Russians have hypersonic weapons that can travel at up to Mach 3 (3675.1 Km/h) that they build back in the 70’s, namely the Radar-guided, anti-ship Missiles, the P-270 Moskit and P-800 as stated in the article “Why America's Navy Is So Concerned About These Russian Missiles”, published 10/09/14 11:44am by Andrew Tarantola, Gizmodo.

The P-270 Moskit was developed back in the 1970’s by the Raduga Design Bureau as a sea-launched anti-ship weapon, it is 9.1 m (30 ft) long. It has an impressive range of 120.7 km (75 miles). 

During high-altitude flight, it can hit Mach 3 (3675.1 Km/h) while carrying a 317.5 Kg (700lb) Warhead which can either be 120 KT of TNT or a Nuclear bomb with the equivalent explosive yield. Even more troubling on this weapons resume is that subsequent modification to the weapons allows it to be Ground, Air, Sea and even Submarine launched.

But if you thing that's bad, you haven't met its upgrade cousin, the P-800 Oniks. Slightly shorter in length at 8.54 m (28 ft), the Oniks, designed by NPO Mashinostroyeniya is a child of the 1980’s, the period of time I grew up in. Its payload is much smaller, only 249.48 kg (550lb) yet it can deliver that payload as a Nuclear Bomb!

This can be a Nuclear bomb carried at high-altitude over a distance of 241.4 km (150 miles) while flying at a speed of Mach 2.6 (3,210.48 Km/h). Apparently the smaller size meant a smaller Rocket engine but an incredibly expanded range.

Neither is good, as a Nuclear weapon that can be Ground, Air, Sea and even Submarine launched from a distance of 241.4 km (150 miles), the distance between the Irish Capital of Dublin and London, the British Capital of England as the crow flies, is troubling indeed!

P-270 Moskit and P-800 Oniks - US Navy’s Raytheon's Phalanx Laser, Railguns and Kinetic weapons

Both of these guided missiles use a Ramjet to achieve these incredible speeds but are not as fast as DARPA's HTV-2 which was capable of flying at Mach 20 (24,696 km/h) albeit in the upper atmosphere as described in my blog article entitled “DARPA HTV-2 and 100-Year Interstellar Travel Research – Diamonds are Forever in the Stars”.

Regardless of the speed, anything above Mach 1 (1225 Km/h) is hard to guide to the target and score a hit. The troubling thing  is that no one is sure if the Russians are still developing these weapons or not. Granted, the computational power to guide weapons remotely using Radar while travelling at that speed never really existed.

But designing weapons to guide themselves out of the sight of radar was possible using the Radar systems and computational power of the 1980’s, once you had the coordinates right. All you had to do was design missile with its own on-board radar and tell it what to look for and once it established the target based on its re-launch programming, it would fly and hit the target.

This is especially true of the P-800 Oniks, whose inertial, active-passive radar seeker head over the P-270 Moskit active seeker Radar guided weapon mad it essentially a fully-autonomous guided missile. To add to the scare factor, the P-800 Oniks could skim at just 9.14 m (30ft) above the ocean’s surface, making it nearly invisible until it hit the ship that it was targeting.

The Russians could, in essence, launch a Nuclear attack sneak attack via submarine from a distance no greater than Moscow to the city of Smolensk, as the crow fillies.  

Americans have offensive weapons – Defensive countermeasures needed against Mach 3 Flying Bombs

Despite the apparent peace between East and West, all is not well in Russia of late, if we are to believe all the news about this former Nuclear superpower and its military actions in Ukraine.

They could be still working on more advanced versions of both the P-270 Moskit and P-800 Oniks, a fact of which the US Intelligence Agencies such as the NSA (National Security Agency) hasn’t heard any chatter about or the CIA’s agents haven’t discovered.

Especially as their possible involvement in the shooting down of the Malaysian aircraft MH17 over Ukraine is suspect, as this international incident appears to really be a case of airplane hacking to “set up” the Russians as noted in my blog article entitled “Cybersecurity Researcher Ruben Santamarta says In-Flight Wi-Fi can hack Airplanes - How Malaysian MH17 shot down over Ukraine may be Secret Service Related”.

Americans Development of Raytheon's Phalanx Laser, Railguns and Kinetic weapons are good ship-based counterstrike options, but what about defensive options against such an attack? More in another blog article on this interesting topic!