X-90 "Koala" missile: specifications

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:54

The Kh-90 hypersonic missile is Russia's new superweapon in response to Washington's missile defense program. The appearance and technical data of the rocket, for obvious reasons, were a military secret. According to some sources, such missiles should have been put into service by 2010.

The President of Russia stated that the X-90 Koala hypersonic missile is capable of overcoming any of the known missile defense systems and accurately hitting targets both on its own continent and on other continents.

The history of the appearance of the rocket

The global rocket project was created in the Soviet Union back in the sixties. The idea was to launch the warhead out of the atmosphere into near-Earth orbit, so that it would turn into an artificial satellite there, and after turning on the brake engine, it would be directed to the target set for destruction.

In 1971, having a prepared project of small strategic cruise missiles in hand, Soviet developers turned to the government to implement this project. There was no response that year. But with the start of development of strategic cruise missiles in 1975The United States, forgotten since 1971, the designers were ordered to start the project in 1976 and complete it in 1982. By the end of 1983, it was planned to take the “newly made” missile into service. The requirements for the rocket were the highest. And one of the main ones was to achieve supersonic speed. In the eighties, the speed reached Mach four.

At the MAKS-1997 air show in the pavilion of NPO Raduga (it was this organization that developed the rocket), visitors could already see the GLA hypersonic aircraft, which later became the prototype of a new cruise missile.

For those who want to understand how the X-90 missile looks like, the photo is shown above.

Rocket characteristics

GLA must carry two warheads capable of hitting targets on their own at a distance of up to a hundred kilometers. Initially, the length of the rocket was equal to twelve meters. However, later it was reduced to a length of eight to nine meters. After separation from the carrier aircraft, triangular wings with a span of no more than seven meters, as well as the tail, open in the rocket. After that, the solid-fuel type booster is turned on, thanks to which the rocket reaches supersonic speed. Then the main engine begins to operate, developing a speed of four to five Machs. The range of such a missile reaches three thousand five hundred kilometers.

Launcher

The TU-160 bomber issupersonic, strategic missile carrier with variable sweep wing. It was developed in the 1980s at the Tupolev Design Bureau and has been in service since 1987.

Initially, they were going to put a hundred cars into service, but because of the insistence of the Americans, who insisted that the bombers be included in the Vietnam Treaty, they had to stop at thirty-three cars.

After the USSR collapsed, the bombers were divided between the republics.

By 2013, there were sixteen such aircraft in the Russian Armed Forces. All of them are based on the Volga in Engels.

White Swan

This is the largest supersonic and heaviest combat aircraft in the world, which has the largest takeoff weight among bombers. Pilots among themselves lovingly called it "the white swan" because of its graceful and slender shape.

But it also has other names: "sword with twelve blades", "deterrent", "weapon of the nation", "Russian flying miracle". And in NATO they called him Blackjack for some reason.

TU-160M is a modernized TU-160 equipped with new electronic equipment and armament with Kh-90 missiles. It can carry standard weapons, such as 90 OFAB-500U, but serves as a carrier for the Kh-90 hypervelocity maneuvering missile.

Each car has its own name, for example: "Ilya Muromets", "Alexander the Younger", "Mikhail Gromov" and others.

Rocket fuel and engine to achieve hypersonics

Hypersonic is a speed that is higher than 5 speeds of light orfive Machs. In a very short time, many rockets with their usual engines are capable of reaching such a speed. But flying at such a high speed for a long time is possible only if the rocket is equipped with a hypersonic ramjet engine. It is also called scrumjet.

The main feature and advantage of such an engine is that it does not need to carry an oxidizer with it. This engine uses atmospheric oxygen. The fuel for the scramjet is mainly hydrogen or kerosene.

The development of such an engine began in the fifties of the last century. And the first projects of aircraft with such engines appeared already in the sixties. The designers were developing a space system - the reusable "Spiral", which consisted of a hypersonic accelerating aircraft and an orbital military aircraft with a rocket booster. The hypersonic accelerating aircraft was supposed to accelerate to six Machs on hydrogen fuel and up to four and a half on kerosene. But in the end, it was decided to equip the device with turbojet engines.

Hypersonic straight-through systems began to be developed in the seventies, using them on anti-aircraft missiles.

NASP and TU-2000

In 1986, in response to the American program Appolo, the NASP project in the USSR decided to create a domestic equivalent of NASP, a reusable single-stage videoconferencing system. The project of the TU-2000 bomber was approved with a declared starting weight of three hundredsixty tons, a speed of Mach six, a range of ten thousand kilometers at an altitude of thirty kilometers.

Works were carried out, but due to the collapse of the Soviet Union, they began to be sluggish. The project participants went international and began to cooperate with French developers. However, the joint work, as shown by unsuccessful experiments, was unsuccessful.

At the same time, the NASP project was also not very successful and closed in the nineties.

However, in fact, neither Russia nor the United States were going to completely abandon hypersonics.

Security 2004

In 2004, "Safety-2004" exercises were held. They were attended by TU-160 bombers with weapons called the Kh-90 Koala missile.

In the same year, Russian President V. V. Putin stated that the Russian Armed Forces will soon receive such combat systems that will be capable of high-precision with hypersonic speed and great maneuver when moving towards the target to operate at distances of more than one continent.

Experts suggest that the President had this rocket in mind in his speech.

The missile is called X-90

Russia decided to demonstrate its new capabilities to America. This was the response to the Washington missile defense program with the Kh-90 missile (which is the Koala).

It is launched through TU-160M strategic bombers - pride and militarythe power of Russia today.

After separation from this launch vehicle, the X-90 rocket at an altitude of seven thousand to twenty thousand meters opens its triangular wings and tail. Acceleration to supersonic speed occurs through a solid-propellant booster that has been turned on by this time. Then comes the time for the main engine to work, thanks to which the Kh-90 cruise missile reaches a speed of five Machs. The range of the missile is three and a half thousand kilometers.

X-90 missile tests

The leadership of our country is sure that no state is the owner of hypersonic missiles except Russia. In the United States, they once abandoned their development, limiting themselves to subsonic missiles. But in Russia, such work continued, although there were various temporary breaks. In 2001, the launch of the Topol rocket was reported. Experts noted that her warhead was distinguished by unusual behavior. During the commemorative exercises in 2004, two ballistic missiles were launched: Topol-M and RS-18. Then they said that an experimental apparatus was launched from the rocket system, which, after launch, went into space, and then returned to the atmosphere again. It seemed impossible, because when entering the atmosphere, the speed of the rocket was five thousand meters per second, or about eighteen thousand kilometers per hour, and the warhead had to have special protection against overheating and overloads. This device had such a speed, in addition, it could easily change the direction of flight and did not collapse. Specialistsagreed that it was the X-90 - a strategic cruise missile, the appearance of which remains a mystery.

The uniqueness of the device was that the RS-18 had a device that changed the altitude and direction of flight. Thus, any missile defense, including the American one, could be overcome by it.

Strategic Missile Forces

Russian Strategic Missile Forces include three missile armies and sixteen missile divisions. Their weapons include 735 ballistic missiles with 3,159 nuclear warheads, including the silo-based Voyevoda, Molodets with 360 warheads, mobile Topoli, Topoli-M and others.

According to experts, even if a small part is equipped with cruise missiles, the missile forces will be unsurpassed and unattainable for any missile defense for a long time to come. Moreover, according to Russian experts, there are other programs, such as Kholod and Igla, in addition to developing a hypersonic warhead.

Attacks are pointless and dangerous

Due to its performance, the Kh-90 Koala missile and other modern military developments have rendered US missile defense pointless. Therefore, the United States began to deploy radar systems near the borders of Russia to detect and destroy such missiles as soon as the launch took place and the warhead did not have time to separate.

But in this direction, Russia has a number of countermeasures, known and classified. Ifthe X-90 Koala missile will detach the warhead, making it completely invulnerable.

Disarmament possible?

In the Soviet Union, when the arms race between the two superpowers was in full swing, attempts were made to go the other way. Treaties were signed and ratified, but the arms race went on and on, and during the aggravation of relations between the USSR and the USA, the whole world froze and prayed for their detente.

In the eighties, M. S. came to power in the USSR. Gorbachev, who actually stopped this, probably senseless arms race. It is sad that the price of this termination was the disintegration of the country at the head of which he stood. According to the treaties he signed, a huge amount of weapons was eliminated in the USSR. The United States also had obligations to eliminate its weapons, however, as a result of the implementation of the treaties, the USSR practically lost its superpower status and soon collapsed, and the United States became the only superpower in the world without losing its military potential.

Soviet development of weapons, including cruise missiles, was curtailed, innovations created were destroyed, and production was reduced or even stopped completely.

Nevertheless, all the chaos that the United States and its allies perpetrated in the world, having already done away with the Soviet Union, leads to the belief that if mutual disarmament is to happen in the future, then it should be truly mutual and adequate.

In the meantime, society has not reached such a stage of its development, and the state has an external threat, it must always be readyto repel any attack.