SCALP / Storm Shadow / MdCN

Forest Green

Forest Green

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According to Rybar:

In the next few days, a Su-24M bomber will fly to Poland from the airfield of the 7th tactical aviation brigade of the Ukrainian Air Force in Starokonstantinov (Khmelnitsky region).
Western experts intend to determine the possibility of integrating the Storm Shadow (British version) or SCALP (French) cruise missile into the Su-24M weapon system.

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jeffb said:
More on efforts to adapt StormShadow to Ukrainian SU-24s:
bulgarianmilitary.com

Storm Shadow deep strike missile on Ukrainian supersonic Fencer

Poland is the integrator country that has undertaken the mission to field the Storm Shadow long-range, conventionally armed, deep-strike missile, known as SCALP
bulgarianmilitary.com bulgarianmilitary.com

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This website also has the headline, “

Ukraine gets 13in laser-guided Hellfire missiles from Norway”​

While I like the idea of a 13 inch diameter Hellfire missile derivative, I think we can all recognize this as total nonsense.
 
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I disagree with the "they shouldn't have said anything yet" takes. For one, the Fencer rumors came from Russian social channels so they were at some level aware of or expecting this development. And for two, it's not hard to see evidence of borderline panic among Russia's leaders in occupied territory. I imagine there's a fair number who are going to see this news and spend the next several weeks terrified they're next on the hit list.
 
Moose said:
I disagree with the "they shouldn't have said anything yet" takes. For one, the Fencer rumors came from Russian social channels so they were at some level aware of or expecting this development. And for two, it's not hard to see evidence of borderline panic among Russia's leaders in occupied territory. I imagine there's a fair number who are going to see this news and spend the next several weeks terrified they're next on the hit list.
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And maybe doing things like moving headquarters facilities further away from the front lines, shifting air defenses to cover sites previously considered unreachable, dispersing rear-echelon facilities, etc. All of which causes disruption and gives opportunities to see what equipment moves where.
 
I wonder how hard it would be to give them a booster like the Missile de Croisière Naval (MdCN) variant so as to allow the option of surface launch rather than airborne?
 
GTX said:
I wonder how hard it would be to give them a booster like the Missile de Croisière Naval (MdCN) variant so as to allow the option of surface launch rather than airborne?
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Gotta be more work than developing a pylon adapter for the Su-24 or whatever aircraft they're using.
 
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TomS said:
Moose said:
I disagree with the "they shouldn't have said anything yet" takes. For one, the Fencer rumors came from Russian social channels so they were at some level aware of or expecting this development. And for two, it's not hard to see evidence of borderline panic among Russia's leaders in occupied territory. I imagine there's a fair number who are going to see this news and spend the next several weeks terrified they're next on the hit list.
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And maybe doing things like moving headquarters facilities further away from the front lines, shifting air defenses to cover sites previously considered unreachable, dispersing rear-echelon facilities, etc. All of which causes disruption and gives opportunities to see what equipment moves where.
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All those large fuel storage sites lately? The ones that were already inconvenienced (or burned down!) by drones? Those drones carried a few kilograms of HE at most.
If you hit a storage farm like that with a 1000 pound warhead, those tanks won't get a hole in them that leaks burning fuel, the one tank you hit will desintegrate. There's not going to be any saving that tank farm if you hit it right with one or two Storm Shadows.

And unlike ammo or headquarters, you can't move large fuel storage like that, and they're pretty much at the base for the whole fuel distribution for the region. If I was the Russians, those sites would be the first things I'd worry about.
Because they were already seriously threatened by civilian drones with a few pounds of HE. And now the Ukranians have high subsonic, low observable, terminallly guided cruise missiles with 1000 pound warheads...
 
The question is - are these stock ex-MoD Storm Shadows or new export-standard 300km Storm Shadows or ex-MoD stock modded with a smaller fuel tank?
The assumption seems to be these are 'surplus' stock but there is some ambiguity, a lot of talk of 300km (which is the limit of Missile Technology Control Regime) but the standard Storm Shadow has a range of at least 560km.
I'm not sure that any non-NATO export user has received the full-range version.
 
Hood said:
The question is - are these stock ex-MoD Storm Shadows or new export-standard 300km Storm Shadows or ex-MoD stock modded with a smaller fuel tank?
The assumption seems to be these are 'surplus' stock but there is some ambiguity, a lot of talk of 300km (which is the limit of Missile Technology Control Regime) but the standard Storm Shadow has a range of at least 560km.
I'm not sure that any non-NATO export user has received the full-range version.
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https://twitter.com/x/status/1656943291164774400
View: https://twitter.com/FTusa284/status/1656943291164774400?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet

And an interesting experiment....

Compare Tomahawks specification to Storm Shadow's....

They're rather close in pretty much everything...and in terms of the missiles range they're mainly in Storm Shadow's favour...(wings, lift, engine...).

Almost as if the published ranges for Storm Shadow are comically low....(the RAF website actually changed its details on Storm Shadow a few years ago and made the published range figure substantially lower...).
 
Engine in StormShadow's favour?! I think not... and I doubt there is much if anything in the wing design (in fact, what differences there are probably exist to control the "damage" from higher cruise speed in StormShadow). It's not going to be anywhere near Tomahawk quadruple-digit kilometer range, export or domestic - the naval version had to halve its explosive payload to get into the general ballpark.

EDIT: the 560km figure mentioned earlier strikes me as a plausible upper limit for the unrestricted air-launched variant.
 
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The 560km I quoted comes from Wiki which references a 2015 RAF website page and a 2017 RAF PDF document (an overview of aircraft and weapons) and both say 300+ nm (nautical miles). 300nm = 555km.
300nm or 300km? I wonder if someone in the MOD mixed up their distance measurements back in the day and had to do some re-editing?

For what its worth https://missilethreat.csis.org/missile/apache-ap/ quotes Apache AP's range as 140km, Storm Shadow as 400km, quoting a 2016 MBDA 2016 website description. The latest 2019 datasheet now only says 250+km. MBDA are definitely being coy on the real figures.

Black Shaheen's range was supposedly limited to 300km (and at least Egypt's Storm Shadows too) specifically due to the Missile Technology Control Regime. But even Misslethreat adds the caveat "allegedly".

So take your pick - 560, 400, 300, 250.... but even so Storm Shadows come pre-fueled and canister-sealed for a 12-year shelf life. Are we supposing a technician cracked open the canisters and drained out some of the fuel before they were shipped to deny them full range? Doesn't seem likely to me.
 
Yeah, anything below 300km is based on either a miles/km SNAFU or deliberate restriction of the fuel load or probably both. I have no problem believing anything in the 400 to 600km bracket (depending on flight profile) for the full-range version, but 1000km or more is just not credible for anything other than the small-warhead MdCN. Never mind Black Shaheen (where's the outraged crowd who are so quick to hold other countries to the smallest technicalities of arms control agreements when it is suggested that France/UK violated one by a factor of 300%?).

I was just trying to pour cold water on that notion.
 
Trident said:
Yeah, anything below 300km is based on either a miles/km SNAFU or deliberate restriction of the fuel load or probably both. I have no problem believing anything in the 400 to 600km bracket (depending on flight profile) for the full-range version, but 1000km or more is just not credible for anything other than the small-warhead MdCN. Never mind Black Shaheen (where's the outraged crowd who are so quick to hold other countries to the smallest technicalities of arms control agreements when it is suggested that France/UK violated one by a factor of 300%?).

I was just trying to pour cold water on that notion.
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Disagree, the Taurus is stated to be 1.015m wide, now look at this image. Is the Storm Shadow less than half the width, or considerably more than half the width. I'd estimate ~ 0.65-0.7m wide, i.e. considerably more than a Tomahawk, and only 0.46m shorter than a Tomahawk sans booster, plus the advantage of high altitude air-launch before descending to low-level. The latest Tomahawk is rated at 1700km, so 1000km is definitely plausible.

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Hood said:
For what its worth https://missilethreat.csis.org/missile/apache-ap/ quotes Apache AP's range as 140km, Storm Shadow as 400km, quoting a 2016 MBDA 2016 website description. The latest 2019 datasheet now only says 250+km. MBDA are definitely being coy on the real figures.
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I don't know who made missilethreat the master of all missile knowledge lately.
 
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Trident said:
Engine in StormShadow's favour?! I think not... and I doubt there is much if anything in the wing design (in fact, what differences there are probably exist to control the "damage" from higher cruise speed in StormShadow). It's not going to be anywhere near Tomahawk quadruple-digit kilometer range, export or domestic - the naval version had to halve its explosive payload to get into the general ballpark.

EDIT: the 560km figure mentioned earlier strikes me as a plausible upper limit for the unrestricted air-launched variant.
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So lets get this straight...despite the fact that Storm Shadow is 20 years younger, is the same size as Tomahawk, with greater lift, similar fuselage volume, near exact warhead size...it somehow is totally unable to get 50% of the range of the Tomahawk....even though it gets a bit of a boost from air launch...?

Must be some sort of 'magic' in the Tomahawk I guess....

Trident said:
Never mind Black Shaheen (where's the outraged crowd who are so quick to hold other countries to the smallest technicalities of arms control agreements when it is suggested that France/UK violated one by a factor of 300%?).
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Black Shaheens payload is not within the MTCR critera, being less than 500kg....MTCR is also voluntary, its not an arms control agreement...

To quote the US State Dept...
"The Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) is an informal political understanding among states that seek to limit the proliferation of missiles and missile technology."

It's main aim is Dual Use technology transfers to nations with WMD programmes...the UAE didn't qualify in that regard...
 
timmymagic said:
So lets get this straight...despite the fact that Storm Shadow is 20 years younger,
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TACTOM is essentially a new missile, and the fact that it doesn't drastically outperform the legacy variants is a clue here. Just being younger doesn't automatically make a missile better. You'll have to argue explicitly where all the progress went to have a valid point. Where is the new tech?

timmymagic said:
is the same size as Tomahawk,
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Fair enough.

timmymagic said:
with greater lift,
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What's that supposed to even mean? Lift = weight, and since they're the same size (taking that as mass, which is what matters here), as you correctly point out, they are the same in this regard too?

timmymagic said:
similar fuselage volume,
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Duplicate of argument #1

timmymagic said:
near exact warhead size...
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Yeah, which is what makes argument #1 valid at all.

timmymagic said:
it somehow is totally unable to get 50% of the range of the Tomahawk...
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Yes. In these low pressure ratio, low-thermal efficiency engines the benefit of having a turbofan (Tomahawk) over a turbojet (StormShadow) is hard to overstate.

timmymagic said:
even though it gets a bit of a boost from air launch...?
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Tomahawk gets a bit of a boost from... a booster.

timmymagic said:
Must be some sort of 'magic' in the Tomahawk I guess....
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Nope, just a much more efficient engine and lower cruise speed (to get a sense of the impact of that, compare the range at high-speed cruise vs. economical cruise Mach in a business jet, and consider that the speed difference between StormShadow and Tomahawk is substantially greater).

Although I'd be interested in seeing a lower heating value for the T-H dimer fuel in Tomahawk (I did look, but no dice)... seems it was more about insensitive storage properties than increased energy density, but still.

timmymagic said:
Black Shaheens payload is not within the MTCR critera, being less than 500kg....MTCR is also voluntary, its not an arms control agreement...
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MCTR limits both range and payload. Which is why the export Iskander-E for example has a 480kg warhead AND sub-300km range. It's not either/or, but both.

timmymagic said:
To quote the US State Dept...
"The Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) is an informal political understanding among states that seek to limit the proliferation of missiles and missile technology."
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So are you going to take non-proliferation seriously or not? I'll remind you next time the outrage runs high when a regime in less favourable esteem tries to get away with giving the international community "informal assurances" that they won't do X or Y. Until all of a sudden they decide it is opportune to do just that after all...

timmymagic said:
It's main aim is Dual Use technology transfers to nations with WMD programmes...the UAE didn't qualify in that regard...
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It is supposed to tackle the delivery vehicle end of the WMD problem. Whether it applies or not does not depend on the recipient in question actually having an active WMD programme. Third-party transfer, etc.
 
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Forest Green said:
Disagree, the Taurus is stated to be 1.015m wide, now look at this image. Is the Storm Shadow less than half the width, or considerably more than half the width. I'd estimate ~ 0.65-0.7m wide, i.e. considerably more than a Tomahawk, and only 0.46m shorter than a Tomahawk sans booster, plus the advantage of high altitude air-launch before descending to low-level. The latest Tomahawk is rate at 1700km, so 1000km is definitely plausible.
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Well they're the same weight (or pretty close, anyway), so I don't need convincing that size-wise they are in the same class. If anything, StormShadow's external shape is a drawback BTW, the airframe cross section offering the lowest wetted area per volume is a circle...
 
Trident said:
Forest Green said:
Disagree, the Taurus is stated to be 1.015m wide, now look at this image. Is the Storm Shadow less than half the width, or considerably more than half the width. I'd estimate ~ 0.65-0.7m wide, i.e. considerably more than a Tomahawk, and only 0.46m shorter than a Tomahawk sans booster, plus the advantage of high altitude air-launch before descending to low-level. The latest Tomahawk is rate at 1700km, so 1000km is definitely plausible.
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Well they're the same weight (or pretty close, anyway), so I don't need convincing that size-wise they are in the same class. If anything, StormShadow's external shape is a drawback BTW, the airframe cross section offering the lowest wetted area per volume is a circle...
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Possibly but you don't get any body lift from a circle, which alters the amount of work the wings have to do. Plus the range claimed was 1.7x less than the TLAM-E and probably even more less than the Block Vb. So even with a lot less efficiency, the range is still plausible, especially with a air-launch.
 
Forest Green said:
Possibly but you don't get any body lift from a circle, which alters the amount of work the wings have to do.
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A lifting fuselage equates to a very low aspect ratio wing, hence extremely poor induced drag for the lift it contributes (Taurus KEPD-350, looking at you...). We are not talking about a regime where you are happy to take ANY lift you can get (e.g. low speed, high-AoA turn in a fighter: vortex lift). In cruise, it will always be preferable to fulfill all of the lift requirement from an efficient high-aspect ratio wing and minimize the drag contribution of the rest of the airframe by keeping wetted area down.
 
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