Defense Express reported that russian Minister Shoigu Complained and Demanded a Significant Increase in the Range of the Kh-59MK Missile. This happened during the propaganda visit of the war criminal and the head of the Ministry of Defense of the russian federation to the MKB Raduga enterprise, the main manufacturer of cruise missiles for the russian armed forces.
At the same time, during this visit, one of the representatives of the enterprise told Shoigu that the warhead of the unnamed cruise missile" was able to be increased from 450 kg to 800 kg." Based on the context, it was clear that it was most likely the Kh-101 cruise missile. It should be recalled that this is one of the main types of long-range missiles that the russian federation uses for massive strikes on Ukraine.
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The way russian propagandists reacted to this message about the Kh-101 is indicative. At first, the authors of Russian specialized resources began to write that probably "increasing the warhead to 800 kg" was about the Kh-58 missile, which was complete nonsense, since its starting weight is only about 700 kilograms.
But then another version began to spread in the russian information space - they say that it was about the Kh-101, and that the increase in the mass of the warhead could be due to the reduction of the flight range of this cruise missile. russian propagandists justified this by the fact that, allegedly, in the conditions of the russian federation's war against Ukraine, the declared maximum range of the Kh-101 of 5,500 kilometers "is redundant."
If we consider as a working hypothesis that the russians are working on the Kh-101 missile, where the warhead has been increased to 800 kilograms due to the probable reduction of the flight range, then, given the previous actions of the russians, this may look quite logical.
In particular, earlier, in April 2023, there were reports of the russians' intention to manufacture Kh-50 air-launched cruise missiles, which were positioned as a reduced and simplified copy of the Kh-101 missile. This could help the russians stockpile more cruise missiles that they could use to strike Ukraine.
But it seems that the russians have finally realized that launching a new missile into production will be more resource-intensive than making changes to the design of a serial cruise missile. Therefore, the option of equipping the Kh-101 missile with a warhead of increased mass due to a reduced flight range looks quite likely.
It should be noted that this can hardly mean that the russians are ready to use such a missile to strike Ukraine right now. This can be confirmed by the example of the russians developing a variant of the Kh-32 missile with a cluster warhead. Work on such a missile began back in October 2023, and it became known about it in January 2024, however, so far, the use of the "claster" version of this cruise missile has not been recorded.
As Defense Express reported, russian Terrorists Used Kh-101 Cruise Missile, Which Launched Decoy Flares to Mislead Ukraine’s Air Defense.
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