Defense Intelligence of Ukraine, a service under the Ministry of Defense, has published the results of their study into the russian Kh-59M2/M2A guided air-to-ground missile. The researchers outlined 116 companies that are involved in producing this missile.
Among them, up to 50 enterprises — making up about 40% of the missile's mass — remain completely out of all the sanctions blacklists by any country. Still, it doesn't save russia from serious problems when it comes to fulfilling state defense orders.
Read more: Producer of Kh-101, Kh-32 Long-Range Missiles in Arzamas Struck By Ukraine
"A constant shortage of domestic and foreign components, limited production capacity, and repeated schedule disruptions force russian manufacturers to report delays in missile production regularly," reads the DIU statement.
It forces russian arms makers to "cannibalize" old systems. For example, russia has been dismantling outdated TRDD R95T turbojet engines from older missile versions to install on newer Kh-59M2 and Kh-59M2A, although the standard engine choice would be the TRDD 50AT.
Defense Express adds that this swap should negatively affect the missile's performance, especially in speed, range and/or visibility in the thermal spectrum.
Likewise, they've been adapting guidance system components for reuse. The standard homing head options include an autonomous active radar seeker or a TV guidance kit, which sends the image back to the operator and allows him to control the missile in real time.
That said, there are problems with the production of the active seeker as the most expensive and sensitive parts of the missile. Therefore, russians began to equip Kh-59 with a dummy of the same weight so the missile body doesn't lose balance. At first, this might seem like a strange solution to the problem since Kh-59 loses its primary guidance tool.
But it has backup systems including satellite navigation and inertial guidance — less effective on terminal stage yet allow for an acceptable level of precision. Ordinarily, the homing head's role is only to ensure maximum accuracy upon approaching the target.
Additionally, this variant uses a penetrating high-explosive-fragmentation warhead that has a small damage area within tens of meters, so it relies on the strike landing precisely. Conversely, the modified variant with a dummy comes with a cluster bomb cassette with a much larger radius of attack, making a small deviation less detrimental.
Ultimately, replacing the homing head with a dummy cheapens the missile, slightly improving its mass production prospects. At least as much as other pricey components allow to.
Interestingly, even before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, russian was developing a seekerless variant of the Kh-59, named the Kh-59MKM. Then, instead of the active radar homing head or its dummy, the primary guidance compartment was loaded with four extra shaped-charge explosives in order to increase its penetration ability.
Besides the "cannibalism" and failure to meet production expectations, an interesting detail transpires from DIU's study. Almost all the foreign components they identified were from companies from the USA and Switzerland, though, of course, these are civilian components made in China as well.
In the context of Kh-59 missiles, just a few days ago, Ukrainian forces struck an instrument-making plant in Arzamas, an enterprise responsible for the supply of important elements to the Kh-59, Kh-101 and other long-range missiles produced in russia.
Read more: Ukraine Maps the Anatomy of the Kh-101 Missile, Exposes Firms Powering russian Missile Strikes
