Grid fin from a Russian Tochka-U ballistic missile shot down in Ukraine

5 responses to “Grid fin from a Russian Tochka-U ballistic missile shot down in Ukraine”

1. 

   jurvetson

   Sep 8, 2022 at 9:16 pm

   The Russians call the missile a "9M79 Tochka"; anyone know what the other part numbers might tell us?The OTR21 Tochka U Tactical ballistic missile has a length of 6.4m and a launch weight of 2,010 kg. Manufactured by KBM in Russia. Grid find are at the bottom, which becomes the top when it’s inbound: One of many that landed in Ukrainian civilian areas: This is the type of missile they used to decimate the train station of escaping civilian families, with the message “for children” written down the side in large letters in Russian… from The Guardian Just one of countless Russian war crimes.

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2. 

   vlad391

   Sep 12, 2022 at 12:35 am

   One single use of Tochka-U allegedly launched by Russian.
   Do you know how many times these tochkas hit Donetsk? First time was August 25, 2014. And about 40 times till last year. After Russian invasion there were more than 90 hits with 600 killed citizens. And i don’t say about artillery like M777 and others.
   But of course you don’t care because they are Russian. Only white and puffy Ukrainians matters, right? Try to peek out of your info bubble.

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3. 

   Surdos

   Sep 23, 2022 at 7:46 am

   @Steve Jurvetson wow didn’t know Steve was this evil spreading false information in support of genocide of Russians

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4. 

   jurvetson

   Oct 1, 2022 at 9:16 pm

   An interesting article in today’s WSJ on why Russia lacks precise "smart’ weapons… TLDR; ever since the U.S. made a bet on the integrated circuit for the Apollo Lunar Module Guidance Computer, the Russians have been copying U.S. chips. Well, Moore’s Law got the better of them. They can’t keep up with the latest.

   "Just like the Pentagon, the Kremlin realized that chips would transform weapons systems by improving guidance and communications. In the late 1950s, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s advisers promised him that semiconductor devices would soon be used in spacecraft and aircraft for industry and government—even for “a nuclear missile shield,” one scientist predicted. So the Soviets poured funds into defense electronics, building an entire new city outside of Moscow called Zelenograd, which was devoted to designing chips for the Soviet military. “Microelectronics,” Khrushchev declared, “is our future.” Soviet engineers fabricated their first chip only four years after the U.S.

   The Kremlin’s chip industry, much like its nuclear weapons program, benefited from spies…. Boris Malin returned from a year studying in Pennsylvania with a Texas Instruments integrated circuit in his luggage. In Moscow, he handed it to the bureaucrat in charge of Soviet microelectronics, who ordered him: “Copy it one-for-one, without any deviations.”

   The “copy it” mentality has pervaded Russia’s chip industry—and its defense sector—ever since. During the Cold War, Soviet military equipment was repeatedly discovered to have replicas of Intel or Texas Instruments chips inside. Despite using the metric system, the Soviets had chipmaking tools that measured in inches, to make it easier to copy American chips.

   A strategy of copying was fundamentally mismatched, however, to an industry that progressed with marked rapidity. Moore’s Law, which predicted that the processing power of chips would grow exponentially, meant that the Soviets’ best efforts at replication would still leave them far behind. One popular Soviet joke from the 1980s had an official declaring proudly, “Comrades, we have built the world’s biggest microprocessor!”

   Even today, Russian weapons systems are full of Western chips. Russia’s 9M549 satellite guided rocket, which is fired from a HIMARS-like system called the Tornado-S, relies on smuggled chips produced by U.S. firms like Altera and Cypress Semiconductor, according to new research from Britain’s Royal United Services Institute. These rockets are thought to hit within around 10 yards of their target, making them less accurate than HIMARS rockets but better than unguided artillery fire. Yet Russia doesn’t have enough of them, manufacturing perhaps only 100-200 each year, partly because many missiles require chips and other components that must be acquired, often illegally, from abroad."

   To supply its most advanced weapons systems with Silicon Valley chips or their facsimiles, despite severe U.S. sanctions, Russia has relied on contraband chips where it can and jury-rigging microelectronic components where it can’t. And while Moscow’s ability to evade U.S. controls in this fashion might seem impressive, knowledge that its most advanced systems depend on smuggled or improvised components of questionable reliability has discouraged the Russian military from counting on complex, computing-intensive solutions.

   The limited production capacity of Russia’s defense industry has left its military with dangerously low levels of precision munitions. Ukrainian intelligence believes that Russia has already fired 55% of its entire stockpile of guided missiles. Because missile supplies are limited, Russian forces have been using antiaircraft weapons against ground targets in Ukraine.

   Stealing U.S. technology for Russian weapons may once have seemed clever and efficient, but it has left Russia with a military industrial base whose production capacity is fatally reliant on access to Western innovation.”

   I have an Apollo LM Guidance Computer at work, a totem to how we won the space race… and hopefully the human race:

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5. 

   JohnManford

   Oct 2, 2022 at 8:04 am

   Ukraine/Russia may seem faraway for some and possible for myself, but this war has hit close to home for me now. When I learned of a personal friends father leaving home to join the army and not knowing his fate- is practically unbearable.

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