A Russian Navy ship strike group successfully engaged ISIS targets in Syria using Kalibr NK cruise missiles from the Caspian Sea. The ...
A Russian Navy ship strike group successfully engaged ISIS targets in Syria using Kalibr NK cruise missiles from the Caspian Sea.
The cruise missiles flew a terrain hugging flight path, traversing over Iraqi and Iranian territories to engage ISIS plants producing ammunition and explosives, command centres, munition storages, POL and training camp in Raqqah, Idlib and Aleppo with a superior precision of 3 meters.
Twenty six missiles were launched against 11 targets in Syria, flying more than 1500 km. The subsonic missile, which flies at 0.8 Mach, took almost two hours to strike it targets.
The Kalibr NK with a range of 2600 km, is the Russian analogue to the U.S. Navy's Raytheon Tomhawk land attack cruise missiles. The 300 km range export variant designated Klub is operational with China, India and Algeria.
Russian Navy strike fleet consisted the 200 meter long , 2000 ton weight Dagestan (project 11661), which was the flag ship of the ship strike group, along with smaller 70 meter long ships Grad Sviyazhsk, Uglich, Veliky Ustyug (project 21631) wieighing 1 000 tons. All the ships are armed with Kalibr NK cruise missile.
Unlike the short range Indian BrahMos and Russian Granit supersonic cruise missiles which are powered by ramjet engines, long range cruise missiles are powered by turbofan engines reducing speed, making them ideal for only attacking static targets.
