The KSR-5, also designated as the Kh-26 (

NATO reporting name NATO uses a system of code names, called reporting names, to denote military aircraft and other equipment used by post-Soviet states, former Warsaw Pact countries, China, and other countries. The system assists military communications by providi ...

AS-6 Kingfish) was a long-range,

air-launched cruise missile An air-launched cruise missile (ALCM) is a cruise missile that is launched from a military aircraft. Current versions are typically standoff weapons which are used to attack predetermined land and naval targets with conventional weapon, conventio ...

and

anti-ship missile An anti-ship missile (AShM or ASM) is a guided missile that is designed for use against ships and large boats. Most anti-ship missiles are of the sea-skimming variety, and many use a combination of inertial guidance and active radar homing. ...

developed by the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

. It was essentially a scaled down version of the

Kh-22 The Kh-22 "Storm" (, NATO reporting name AS-4 'Kitchen') is a large, long-range anti-ship cruise missile developed by MKB Raduga in the Soviet Union. It was designed for use against aircraft carriers and carrier battle groups, with either a con ...

'Kitchen', primarily carried by the

Tupolev Tu-16 The Tupolev Tu-16 (USAF/DOD reporting name Type 39; NATO reporting name: Badger) is a twin-engined jet strategic heavy bomber used by the Soviet Union. It has been flown for almost 70 years. While many aircraft in Soviet service were retired af ...

bomber.

Background

In the early 1960s the development of new nuclear-capable

strategic bomber A strategic bomber is a medium- to long-range Penetrator (aircraft), penetration bomber aircraft designed to drop large amounts of air-to-ground weaponry onto a distant target for the purposes of debilitating the enemy's capacity to wage war. Unl ...

s came into a virtual halt in the Soviet Union, with the focus being shifted on nuclear

ballistic missiles A ballistic missile is a type of missile that uses projectile motion to deliver warheads on a target. These weapons are powered only during relatively brief periods—most of the flight is unpowered. Short-range ballistic missiles (SRBM) typica ...

and developing cruise missiles for existing aircraft. Developments in jet fighters and

surface-to-air missile A surface-to-air missile (SAM), also known as a ground-to-air missile (GTAM) or surface-to-air guided weapon (SAGW), is a missile designed to be launched from the ground or the sea to destroy aircraft or other missiles. It is one type of anti-ai ...

s during the 1950s made the use of nuclear

free-fall bomb An unguided bomb, also known as a free-fall bomb, gravity bomb, dumb bomb, or iron bomb, is an aircraft-dropped bomb (conventional or nuclear) that does not contain a guidance system and hence simply follows a ballistic trajectory. It includes ...

s impractical against densely protected targets while missiles gave bombers the possibility of striking targets beyond the range of enemy anti-aircraft weapons.

Description

Developed in the late 1960s, the KRS-5 (also designated as the Kh-26) is an improved version of the Kh-22 missile, designed to be smaller, lighter and with a smaller radar signature. According to ''

Janes Janes is an English patronymic family name. Its root is believed to be from the possessive of the given name '' Jan'' (see '' Jayne''), ''John'' or '' Ian''. In England, the name appears to have its densest roots in Bedfordshire and Gloucestersh ...

'', it was designed jointly by the Tupolev and Mikoyan Design Bureaus. It was developed as a conventional anti-ship missile and a nuclear cruise missile capable of striking ground targets. Originally designed to be carried on the

Tu-22 The Tupolev Tu-22 ( Air Standardization Coordinating Committee name: Blinder) was the first supersonic bomber to enter production in the Soviet Union. Manufactured by Tupolev, the Tu-22 entered service with Long-Range Aviation and Soviet Nava ...

"Blinder", it was primarily mounted on the Tu-16 "Badger", but it could also be mounted on Tu-22M "Backfire" and Tu-95M "Bear" aircraft as well. The missile had a maximum range of and cruise speed of

Mach The Mach number (M or Ma), often only Mach, (; ) is a dimensionless quantity in fluid dynamics representing the ratio of flow velocity past a Boundary (thermodynamic), boundary to the local speed of sound. It is named after the Austrian physi ...

3 when released from high altitude and range and cruise speed of Mach 2 when launched at low altitude.

Variants

*Kh-26 − Nuclear variant with

inertial guidance An inertial navigation system (INS; also inertial guidance system, inertial instrument) is a navigation device that uses motion sensors (accelerometers), rotation sensors ( gyroscopes) and a computer to continuously calculate by dead reckoning ...

. Armed with a 350

kiloton TNT equivalent is a convention for expressing energy, typically used to describe the energy released in an explosion. A ton of TNT equivalent is a unit of energy defined by convention to be (). It is the approximate energy released in the det ...

warhead weighing about . *Kh-26N −

Active radar homing Active radar homing (ARH) is a missile guidance method in which a missile contains a radar transceiver (in contrast to semi-active radar homing, which uses only a passive radar, receiver) and the electronics necessary for it to find and track it ...

anti-ship variant, it could carry either a nuclear warhead or a conventional HE SAP warhead. The seeker had a lock-on range of . *Kh-26MP − Anti-radiation variant with a passive radar seeker and a HE blast/fragmentation warhead for use against land-based or ship-mounted radars. *KSR-5NM and KSR-5MV − Russian air-launched target variants designed by

MKB Raduga MKB Raduga (, meaning Raduga Design Bureau (), where ''raduga'' literally means "rainbow") is a Russian aerospace company, concerned with the production of various missile-systems and related technologies. It is headquartered in Dubna, Moscow ...

. They were offered for export in 1993.

Operational history

The KSR-5 entered service in 1969, with later versions designed to be carried in the Tu-95 and Tu-95M being introduced in 1973 and 1976 respectively. In June 1991, it was estimated that the Soviet Union had 300 missiles carried on Badger-G bombers. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the remaining missiles were used by Russia and possibly Ukraine until 1994. With the retirement of the Tu-16, the nuclear versions of the

KSR-2 The Raduga KSR-2 (NATO reporting name: AS-5 " Kelt") was a Soviet cruise missile developed to replace the KS-1 Komet (NATO: AS-1 "Kennel"). It was developed in 1958 and entered service in 1962. The missile was normally armed with a conventiona ...

and KSR-5 missiles were retired by 1993. In 1991, it was estimated Russia had about 100 missiles in its inventory, but most were converted into supersonic targets.

Operators

* − Most were converted for missile target practice * − Passed on to successor states *

References

Bibliography

* * * *

External links

Federation of American Scientists page on the KSR-5 missile

{{Russian and Soviet Aircraft Ordnance Cold War anti-ship missiles of the Soviet Union Nuclear air-to-surface missiles Nuclear cruise missiles of the Soviet Union KSR-005 KSR-005 Target drones MKB Raduga products