Turkey has ordered 9M133 Kornet systems, 80 lanuchers and 800 missiles. In the competition participated, except for Rosoboronexport, Raytheon (what did they offer, Javelin or TOW-FF?), Denel. On this point I would like to congratulate Russian designers, as Turkey is NATO country, and winning competitions there might be a little bit difficult for Russia.
And the question: *would* Kornet penetrate front turret newest Leo-2HEL (just hypothetic, such confrontation will never happen).
If a front attack system (Kornet) was chosen over top attack system (Spike), that should mean it certainly can attack tanks from front, even those regarded as modern. And speed and range are also advantages of Kornet.
Sorry that I didn't find info in English
http://www.altair.com.pl/start-1734 Polish
http://lenta.ru/news/2008/09/16/kornet/ Russian
Regards,
m4a1

Turkey is a bit strange in this regard. This is iirc not the only example of Turkey being interested in Russian military hardware.
They took a lot of ex-East German weapons and vehicles as well.

Their whole military seems to be quite separated from old NATO technology trends in many regards. It's a quite large military with often rather low-tech equipment (like modernized M60 tanks, for example).

Greece also regularly buys Russian military equipment. They ordered the BMP-3 and acquired other weapon systems like the Kornet-E ATGM and the Tor-M1 SAM. It's a bit funny that Russia risks loosing Greece as a good customer by supplying weapon systems to their arch enemy Turkey as well (if the deal really took place).

Actually, IIRC those ex-NVA BTR-60s for example were given to the Jandarma (gendarmerie) for the operations against the Kurdish PKK, which raised quite a stink here in Germany.

Spike isn't a top-attack ATGM - it could be called dive-attack due to selectable elevated trajectories, like the Javelin, but it has a conventional tandem hollow-charge warhead The only true top-attack ATGMs I remember at the moment are BILL/BILL 2 (plus NLAW, if you count that as an "ATGM") and TOW-2B.

Some NATO countries have interests beyond NATO boundaries and they need hardware they can use without the risk of a single seller shutting down the supply line. Greece buys Russian for this reason (and for that reason it bought French in the past), same with Spain.

Answer from Kornet manufacturer: Certainly.
Answer from Leo2 manufacturer: Certainly not.
Answer from me: God only knows

But modern ATGM's might be useful even if they cannot get through the front turret.

Lastdingo, AFAIK Turkey's strategy does retain a conventional confrontation and that's why they sustain large number of conventional weapons, and there are problems with Kurds. They are NATO boundary country, and they have border with Syria, Iraq, Iran, and even if those don't pose threat to Turkey's existence, it forces Turks to be prepared to conventional warfare, not only to expeditionar operations. They've got 298 Leo-2A4, 100+ Sabras and 100+ modernized Leo-1A1 and many older tanks, other NATO countries simply withdraw old stuff. It seems that Germany had about 4000 tanks 11 yrs ago, now it decided that conventional conflict is rather unprobable and has (plans to have, some old 2A4s in stock) 400 tanks.
That's the difference.

I thought TOW-FF was cancelled several years ago?

A surprising choice but it is a good missile. A good cross between the heavier TOW and lighter but shorter ranged Javelin. I don't know how the Spike compares however.

They irritatingly insist on living.

Probably money has a lot to do with the choice

Probably not.

Being a contract with Turkey, it will have to do with money and technology transfer more then anything else.

That seems a bit high. Last I heard they only had 8 active PzBat left.

IIRC the Herr 2010 envisages 6 bataillons and 125 A5s, 155 A6s and 70 A6Ms. Add to that 50 A4s for training, testing, etc.

400 tanks altogether.

BILL/BILL2 is not Top Attack missile when considering flight profiles. That type of missiles were called OTA (Overfly Top Attack). Ditto with TOW-2B.

Israeli Spike/Gill is TA missile, based on flight profile, which used to be the deciding factor if missile was Top Attack or not.

It should be noted that no Leo2 were really scrapped and few were exported to non-European countries.
These MBTs soldier on in other NATO nations, so the real material loss wasn't a so much a loss of Leo2, but a loss of M60's and Leo1's.

I believe it's rather wise to retain the competence with a small inventory and to order new material in times of need than to retain a large inventory of tanks of an old design (now about 30 years already!).

Remember the 1930's situation; Germany had to rebuild from scratch in 1933-1939 and used late 20's to mid-30's designs while the French had a huge inventory of old equipment and retained many of their outdated pre-WWI designs (like the 3" rapid fire gun).
I'd rather criticize that we don't have new designs ready (at least no MBT design) and would need too long (5+ years) to rebuild the army with new material than that I'd criticize the active strength.

50 tanks per Battalion (+Reserve)? Sounds like "pure" Battalions. Didn't the German Army switch to Pz Bats with 2 companies each of Pz/PzGren a few years ago?

Nope. Pz and PzGren battalions will be "pure" formations with 44 Leopards resp. Pumas each. The standardization is in the latter going to 14 instead of 11 vehicle companies and losing the mortar company, so now identical to the Pz battalion in structure.

IIRC they are "pure" bataillons with 44 tanks each nowadays. 4 companies with 3 companies à 14 tanks (3 4-tank platoons plus a 2-tank company command) and a 2-tank bataillon HQ. The unit I served with during my military service in 2000/2001 still had 5 companies with 4 tank companies.

The rest of the tanks is for maintenance, testing, training, etc.

Why losing the mortars? Would it not be more logical to introduce mortars to Pz units as well if the standardisation was so highly valued? After all there must be abundance of them with the downscaling of Bundeswehr, no?

I'm assuming for the same reason that we are phasing them out. After 30-40 years they are falling apart and there's no money for a replacement.

The Panzermörser M113 120mm armoured mortars have been removed from service, just like the Jagdpanzer Jaguar 1A3 ATGM tank destroyers. The new army structure simply no longer includes them.

Is there any source for that in english? Specialy if there is explanation why they were removed.

A little off topic, but I'm wondering about the intelligence value of these kinds of purchases.

Are they recieving the 'real' system or some kind of inferior export model?

If they are actually recieving the real Kornet, Tor-M1, etc, then wouldn't it be a golden opportunity for NATO contries to to pick them apart and develop proper countermeasures, armor packages, etc?




-K

Sorry, I don't know if there is a source for that in English.

The concept of the Jaguar dedicated ATGM tank destroyer became obsolete after the Cold War, and there is not enough money available for a proper replacement of the M113 armoured mortars. The German QRF in AFG for example is equipped with Wolf-transported 120mm Tampella mortars.

Well, one would hope that that the Turks would make sure they got their money's worth. The Kornet isn't exactly a new system. It capabilities are quite well known, both from Russian disclosure and actual battlefield results (Israel vs. Lebanon).

Mortars and Bundeswehr is a sad story of neglect since the 70's. It's difficult to understand. Mortars were extremely important according to rhetoric, but there's never money even for a set of new barrels even years after a minor scandal over it. The little interest that existed seemed to be focused on the Wiesel2 mortar carrier for airborne and a GTK/Boxer version on paper/in CAD.

Maybe there's no internal lobby or they trust the PzH2000 and their radio comm between PzH2000 and the battalions in direct combat so much.

Special-K, it is not the Cold War and I think Russians are selling "normal" versions of their equipment, especially if their defense industry is in need of money. Obviously, there will be very few really-top-secret systems, I'd bet on Iskander and S-400 that won't be sold to NATO countries, or their inferior versions will be sold.

Kornet being shown at AAD08 in Cape Town last week.
They seem to be actively marketing it everywhere, to I am sure it would have been picked apart by Nato already.

Israel got several Kornets and missiles during the 2006 war.. I am quite sure that NATO got some of those.

And Greece got them even before that..

Whats that black "ball" in exT70:s last pic btw? Never saw anything like it on TOW..

I am not ATGM specialists...but a gas bottle? Nitrogen maybe for sights?

Probably to cool the thermal camera, MILAN cameras have the same setup.

Source in English on the Turkish Kornet order:

http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/Turkey...Missiles-05083/

The competitors apparently were the Denel Ingwe, Rafael Spike, Raytheon TOW and the Kornet. A total of 80 launchers and up to 800 missiles are going to be acquired in a $70 million contract.

Sounds like a fairly small deal, though, considering the size of the Turkish armed forces.

Ahh... that makes sence. Thanx!

Kornet won over Spike at this price?

Yes, Polish soruces quote the same price. But IMO Spike could be even 2x more expensive (*over* 100 thsd $ for missile and *over* 300 thsd $ for CLU, that means *even* 1,3 mln $ per lanucher) under such conditions (80 lauchers, 10 missiles per lanucher - good old rule), that would be *over* 100 mln $ at least... and Kornet has got some advantages (speed, range), it is capable of penetrating all existing tanks except for the newest versions (Leo-2A6, Merk 4 etc), might have been enough for Turks.

They didn't mention a specific Spike family member. However, considering the other heavyweight competitors, it's probably the Spike-ER.

I don't want to degrade the qualities of the Kornet, but I'm curious why they chose a conventional SACLOS laser-beamrider over a technically superior solution with an electro-optic seeker (CCD or dual CCD/IIR) and a fiber-optic data link with fire-and-forget and fire-and-update modes of operation.

Maybe the Turks really liked the Kornet's alternative thermobaric explosive blast warhead, who knows?

Perhaps it was due to the relative cheapness of the rounds.

Not only Greece in 2002-04 (by the way, the funny situation can occur when the Greek Kornets will destroy the Turkish Leo 2 and the Turkish Kornets will destroy the Greek Leo 2), but also Morocco, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, South Korea, India and such countries as Algeria, Lybia, Syria, Erithrea, Ethiopia. Its the most expensive part is not launcher or missiles, but thermal imaging sight which can be expensive French, cheap (but less effective) Russian or lacking at all.


As the Lebanon war of 2006 demonstrated, the holding of target within 10-15 s isn't the excessive problem even for confrontation against Merkava Mk4. At the same time, Kornet has important merits:
1) cheap missiles (about 35 000 US$ against 100 000 US$ and more for missiles with thermal imaging homing) which is important when the enemies are numerous, but not sofisticated (or, on the contrary, use counter-measures requiring oversaturation of defence);
2) it is really multi-purpose with very effective thermobaric version;
3) it is extremely reliable (ATGMs Kornet, Metis and Ataka are among few Russian armaments which don't cause deficiency reports at all) and durable without maintenance;
4) it is unbound politically, i.e. can be used against NATO members or Kurds or anybody else without any obligations.

By the way, the new 7000-m version of Kornet-E has been announced lately. It can also have enhanced penetration. But even the current version can't penetrate only the most protected frontal zones of the most advanced tanks (M1A2SEP, Leopard 2A6, Challenger 2, Merkava Mk4, Leclerc) which are not wide-spread.

EuroSpike missiles aren't that expensive. About 50k €.
Source: EuroSpike representative at Eurosatory.

100% Utah. Cooling as already stated. Confirmed it with the attending Russion exhibitor.

When have you heard of this price?
Here I've got contract with Spain, 260 lanuchers, 2600 missiles, 400 millions USD, so 1,3 million per lanucher + 10 missiles at least.
www.defenseindustrydaily.com/files/PUB_2007-01-11_RAFAEL_Spike_to_Spain.DOC
LR version.
Is Eurospike equipped with dual warhead (both thermal and CCD)?
DIU, I think that if country doesn't "plan" confrontation with force with state-of-the-art tanks, Kornet is better choice. While still being on point that self-homing is better, more convenient and more reliable, Kornet is cheap, efficient enough (perhaps even against T-90S), has good parametres of speed and range, and if we add thermobaric warhead which might be more than useful in some situation, Kornet is good choice.

It's also not reliable against the front of T-80U/90:
http://russianarmor.info/Tanks/TRIALS/19991020.html

Against Merkava 4, I wouldn't bet on it penetrating the side armour with every hit either; the Hezbollah seemed the manage that with some of the hits, but the ratio of missile hits, penetrations and tank losses is from 2006 was such that it seems likely that side armour already was close to the limit of Kornet's penetration ability and behind-armour effect was thus rather limited.

I suppose you meant seeker, not warhead.

According to the EuroSpike GmbH website (the prime contractor for the Spike family of missiles in Europe, I doubt the missiles themselves differ much from the Israeli originals), Spike-MR and -LR have a VIS (CCD), IIR or Dual (CCD/IIR) Sensor. Spike-ER has a VIS (CCD) or Dual (CCD/IIR) Sensor.

Which sounds a bit strange to me. IIR makes sense for a fire-and-forget missile like the Spike-MR, but not the CCD sensor. CCD or dual CCD/IIR has to be used with the Spike-LR or -ER. The gunner is able to watch the video taken by the CCD sensor and transmitted by the bi-directional fiber-optic data link, steer the missile, lock on a target using the IIR sensor, and "forget" the missile.

Or did I miss something here?

The most relevant difference between Spike and Eurospike seems to be the increased ability to lock on and stay locked on (software) of the latter (besides production issues).

What do you mean? Does Eurospike have some improvements? As far as Poland is concerned, from 2006 there are deliveries of missiles improved in some way, before that I think about 10 % of contract was already performed.
Jussi Saari, I think there might have been some improvements in warhead of Kornet, as it was with our Spike for instance [the both warheads and delivered from 2006 on are improved a little), even without such a huge media rumour, it's 10 years gone, and the technology was improved a little bit, and T-80U wasn't.
And yes, I meant seeker, not warhead.

That's around 75,000 USD.

Taiwan buys Javelin

20 CLU's + 182 live rounds + 40 practice rounds for 47 Mio. USD

Just for comparison: 1 CLU+9 live rounds for 2.35 Mio. USD