The 9M117 Bastion is a Soviet

laser A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word ''laser'' originated as an acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radi ...

beam-riding Beam-riding, also known as Line-Of-Sight Beam Riding (LOSBR), beam guidance or radar beam riding is a technique of directing a missile to its target by means of radar or a laser beam. The name refers to the way the missile flies down the guidanc ...

anti-tank missile An anti-tank guided missile (ATGM), anti-tank missile, anti-tank guided weapon (ATGW) or anti-armor guided weapon is a missile guidance, guided missile primarily designed to hit and destroy armoured fighting vehicle, heavily armored military v ...

. It is used in a number of separate weapon systems, including the 9K116-1 Bastion missile system (AT-10 Stabber), 9K118 Sheksna (AT-12 Swinger), T-12

anti-tank gun An anti-tank gun is a form of artillery designed to destroy tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles, normally from a static defensive position. The development of specialized anti-tank munitions and anti-tank guns was prompted by the appearance ...

and the 3UBK12 fired from the

BMP-3 The BMP-3 is a Soviet and Russian infantry fighting vehicle, successor to the BMP-1 and BMP-2. The abbreviation BMP stands for ''Boevaya Mashina Pekhoty'' (, literally "infantry combat vehicle"). Production history The design of the BMP-3 ('' ...

. The 100 mm

projectile A projectile is an object that is propelled by the application of an external force and then moves freely under the influence of gravity and air resistance. Although any objects in motion through space are projectiles, they are commonly found ...

entered service in 1981.

Development

The

9K112 Kobra The 9K112 Kobra (NATO reporting name: AT-8 Songster) is a SACLOS anti-tank missile system of the Soviet Union. It is fired from the 125 mm main guns of the T-64 and T-80 series of tanks. A newer design based on the same concept is the 9M119 ( ...

(AT-8 Songster) was the first Soviet tube-fired

to enter service; however, it was only deployed in limited numbers to front line units. Development work began in the late 1970s on a third generation of guided projectiles that would use

laser guidance Laser guidance directs a robotics system to a target position by means of a laser beam. The laser guidance of a robot is accomplished by projecting a laser light, image processing and communication to improve the accuracy of guidance. The key ide ...

rather than radio command links. The

guidance system A guidance system is a virtual or physical device, or a group of devices implementing a controlling the movement of a ship, aircraft, missile, rocket, satellite, or any other moving object. Guidance is the process of calculating the changes in pos ...

was developed by Igor Aristarkhov, and the missile was developed by Pyotr Komonov. The Bastion was developed firstly as a relatively cheap missile fired from towed

MT-12 MT-12 or 2A29 is a Soviet Union, Soviet smoothbore 100 mm anti-tank gun, which served as the primary towed anti-tank artillery in the Soviet army from the early 1970s to the late 1980s. It has seen significant use in the Russo-Ukrainian War. ...

100 mm

smoothbore A smoothbore weapon is one that has a barrel without rifling. Smoothbores range from handheld firearms to powerful tank guns and large artillery mortars. Some examples of smoothbore weapons are muskets, blunderbusses, and flintlock pistols. ...

anti-tank guns. The 9M117 missile was part of the 3UBK10 round and the whole weapon system was designated 9K116 Kastet. A laser guidance device was seated on a tripod next to the

gun A gun is a device that Propulsion, propels a projectile using pressure or explosive force. The projectiles are typically solid, but can also be pressurized liquid (e.g. in water guns or water cannon, cannons), or gas (e.g. light-gas gun). So ...

. The system was commissioned in 1981. During development of the 9K116 system, it was recognized that it could enhance the long-range firepower of the older

T-55 The T-54 and T-55 tanks are a series of Soviet medium tanks introduced in the years following the Second World War. The first T-54 prototype was completed at Nizhny Tagil by the end of 1945.Steven Zaloga, T-54 and T-55 Main Battle Tanks 1944–2 ...

and

T-62 The T-62 is a Soviet main battle tank that was first introduced in 1961. As a further development of the T-55 series, the T-62 retained many similar design elements of its predecessor including low profile and thick turret armour. In contra ...

tanks. The system for the T-55's

D-10T The D-10 is a Soviet 100 mm tank gun developed in late World War II. It originally equipped the SU-100 tank destroyers and was later selected for the T-55 tank, equipping these as late as 1979. On the T-55 the D-10 continues to be in active ...

100 mm

rifled Rifling is the term for helical grooves machined into the internal surface of a firearms's barrel for imparting a spin to a projectile to improve its aerodynamic stability and accuracy. It is also the term (as a verb) for creating such groove ...

gun was designated 9K116-1 Bastion (3UBK10-1 round); and for the T-62's

U-5TS The U-5TS (production designation 2A20) tank gun is a 115 mm-calibre weapon that was fitted almost exclusively to the Soviet Union's T-62 main battle tank. It was the first smoothbore weapon designed for tanks, and heralded the change in main ...

115 mm smoothbore gun, 9K116-2 Sheksna (3UBK10-2 round). The 9M117 missiles were identical, as in the towed version; however, the 115 mm version had additional guiding rings. They were commissioned in 1983. Then, the 9K116-3 system was developed for the 100 mm rifled gun of the

infantry fighting vehicle, commissioned in 1987. Similar systems, with larger caliber

9M119 Svir The 9K120 ''Svir'', 9K119 ''Refleks'', 9K119M ''Refleks-M'' (NATO reporting name AT-11 ''Sniper'') are laser beam riding, guided anti-tank missile systems developed in the Soviet Union. Both are designed to be fired from smoothbore 125 mm tan ...

missiles, were developed for the 125 mm guns of the

T-72 The T-72 is a family of Soviet Union, Soviet main battle tanks that entered production in 1973. The T-72 was a development based on the T-64 using thought and design of the previous Object 167M. About 25,000 T-72 tanks have been built, and refu ...

and

T-80 The T-80 is a main battle tank (MBT) that was designed and manufactured in the former Soviet Union and manufactured in Russia. The T-80 is based on the T-64, while incorporating features from the later T-72 and changing the engine to a gas turbi ...

tanks.

Description

The 100 mm round resembles a normal 100 mm anti-tank round, and is loaded and fired in the same fashion. The round uses a reduced

propellant A propellant (or propellent) is a mass that is expelled or expanded in such a way as to create a thrust or another motive force in accordance with Newton's third law of motion, and "propel" a vehicle, projectile, or fluid payload. In vehicle ...

charge to launch the projectile out of the

barrel A barrel or cask is a hollow cylindrical container with a bulging center, longer than it is wide. They are traditionally made of wooden stave (wood), staves and bound by wooden or metal hoops. The word vat is often used for large containers ...

of the gun at around . After leaving the gun barrel, a small cover falls away from the window on the rear of the missile. The

rocket motor A rocket engine is a reaction engine, producing thrust in accordance with Newton's third law by ejecting reaction mass rearward, usually a high-speed jet of high-temperature gas produced by the combustion of rocket propellants stored inside t ...

ignites 1.5 seconds after firing the missile, and it burns for 6 seconds. The projectiles use

laser guidance. A cone of laser light divided into sectors is projected from the launching tank/vehicle/gun, each sector having a different frequency or

modulation Signal modulation is the process of varying one or more properties of a periodic waveform in electronics and telecommunication for the purpose of transmitting information. The process encodes information in form of the modulation or message ...

. The missile has a small window in the rear with a laser sensor to detect the modulation of the

light Light, visible light, or visible radiation is electromagnetic radiation that can be visual perception, perceived by the human eye. Visible light spans the visible spectrum and is usually defined as having wavelengths in the range of 400– ...

. Using this modulation, the missile steers itself, maintaining its position in the cone. The laser beam is zoomed during the missile flight so it has the same diameter (about ) throughout the missile flight path. The laser beam-riding guidance system is smaller than a radio command one, and cheaper and simpler than semi-active laser guidance. The missile is also not prone to

radio Radio is the technology of communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 3 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmitter connec ...

or optical jamming. On the other hand, the target has to be tracked by laser sight all the time, and the system can not be reliably used on the move. The missile's flight time to is approximately 12 seconds. After 26 to 41 seconds, the missile

self-destruct A self-destruct is a mechanism that can cause an object to destroy itself or render itself inoperable after a predefined set of circumstances has occurred. Self-destruct mechanisms are typically found on devices and systems where malfunction coul ...

Variants

Cartridges firing the 9M117 ''Bastion'' missile; average armour penetration rolled homogeneous armour equivalency (RHAe) after

explosive reactive armour Reactive armour is a type of vehicle armour used in protecting vehicles, especially modern tanks, against shaped charges and hardened kinetic energy penetrators. The most common type is ''explosive reactive armour'' (ERA), but variants include ...

(ERA) * 100 mm 3UBK10 (MT-12); firing range ; average armour penetration RHAe after ERA * 100 mm 3UBK10-1 (T-55) * 115 mm 3UBK10-2 (T-62) * 100 mm 3UBK10-3 (BMP-3 and BMD-4); firing range ; average armour penetration RHAe after ERA Cartridges firing the 9M117M ''Kan''

tandem-charge A tandem-charge or dual-charge weapon is an explosive device or projectile that has two or more stages of detonation, assisting it to penetrate either reactive armour on an armoured vehicle or strong structures. Anti-tank Tandem charges are ef ...

high-explosive anti-tank High-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) is the effect of a shaped charge explosive that uses the Munroe effect to penetrate heavy armor. The warhead functions by having an explosive charge collapse a metal liner inside the warhead into a high-velocity ...

(HEAT) missile; average armour penetration RHAe after ERA * 100 mm 3UBK10M (MT-12) * 100 mm 3UBK10M-1 (T-55) * 115 mm 3UBK10M-2 (T-62) * 100 mm 3UBK10M-3 (BMP-3 and BMD-4); firing range ; average armour penetration RHAe after ERA Cartridges firing the 9M117M1 ''Arkan'' tandem-charge HEAT missile with an extended range of ; average armour penetration RHAe after ERA * 100 mm 3UBK23 (MT-12) * 100 mm 3UBK23-1 (T-55) * 115 mm 3UBK23-2 (T-62); average armour penetration RHAe after ERA * 100 mm 3UBK23-3 (BMP-3 and BMD-4); firing range ; average armour penetration RHAe after ERA

Users

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Footnotes

Sources

External links

AT-10 Stabber
at

GlobalSecurity.org GlobalSecurity.org is an American independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that serves as a think tank, and research and consultancy group. Focus The site is focused on national and international security issues; military analysis, sys ...

AT-12 Swinger
at

{{DEFAULTSORT:9m117 Bastion Anti-tank guided missiles of the Soviet Union Military equipment introduced in the 1980s