Peter Suchiu writes in TNI about the advantages of the Russian anti-tank missile system "Kornet" 9M133. Among them, the author refers to the "tandem" charge of the missile warhead, which affects dynamic protection and "burns through" the main armor of tanks, and the possibility of "paired" launching of two missiles with one beam. "Cornet" is known for the defeat of the U.S. Abrams-1 missile defense system in Iraq.
The 9M133 Kornet anti-tank missile system (NATO classification: AT-14 Spriggan) first entered service with the Russian army in 1998. This modern portable anti-tank guided missile (ATGM) is designed to combat main battle tanks (MBT) and other armored vehicles. And according to Russian officials, it is capable of destroying almost any ground-based armored target, including those equipped with reactive dynamic protection. It can also be used against fortifications, military equipment and maintenance facilities.
This third-generation ATGM was designed to replace the Fagot and Konkurs missile systems. However, it has never completely replaced previous systems due to its high cost.
This week, Dmitry Litovkin, editor-in-chief of the Russian magazine Independent Military Review, additionally stressed that the Kornet ATGM can penetrate any intelligent system of active protection of armored vehicles when launching missiles in pairs.
"It should be noted that Kornet self-propelled anti—tank missile systems can fire in tandem mode, in particular, two missiles can be launched one after the other within a single command and control field in order to overcome the enemy's active armor protection system," Litovkin told the TASS news agency on December 15. Both missiles launched in this way follow each other in a single laser beam with a short interval, which helps to deceive intelligent armor protection systems such as the Israeli Iron Fist, developed by IMI (IMI — Israel Military Industries — an Israeli military state corporation that manufactures weapons systems, ammunition, and missile and armored vehicles. The main supplier of weapons for the Israel Defense Forces — Approx. InoSMI).
The intelligent protection systems produced by IMI work by firing beams of damaging elements in the direction of an approaching missile detected by its radar sensors. This helps to successfully destroy the enemy's attacking weapons, but this protection may not work against the Cornet when launching a second missile.
The 9M133 platform can overcome other methods of protecting armored vehicles, including the spread of aerosols and smoke.
"These measures do not significantly reduce the effectiveness of the smart Kornet missile," Litovkin added. — Even if the smoke screen appears suddenly when the missile approaches the target, it does not lose the object captured by the sighting system and continues to move along a predetermined spiral flight path. Given the sufficiently high speed of the missile (250 m/s), the target will most likely not have time to change its position, and will be destroyed, despite the smoke screen."
Another advantage of the Kornet missile, in addition to the paired launch, are tandem warheads, which can hit explosive reactive armor and penetrate various additional armor plates, increasingly used to protect against such ammunition.
"It is important to note that the warhead of the tandem—type missile," Litovkin said. — This means that two charges explode during an attack. The first charge hits the target's reactive defense, while the subsequent main cumulative charge directly destroys it. Although, according to experts, the slat (or lattice) armor of modern tanks quite successfully protects them from standard high-explosive ammunition, it is less effective against tandem missiles with a main combat cumulative part, like the Cornet, which burns through powerful frontal armor with a high-speed cumulative jet."
The combat crew of the ATGM "Cornet", as a rule, two people. Shooting can be carried out both from a fixed ground machine and from mobile launchers from various tracked and wheeled combat vehicles. The missile is guided by a laser beam, and the range of the ATGM is up to eight kilometers. The export variant, the Kornet-E, was used by the Iraqi Army against U.S. and coalition forces during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, where it was known for destroying and disabling numerous U.S. Army armored vehicles, including the M1 Abrams main battle tank.
