Buratino TOS-1 Thermobaric Rocket System aka Flame Thrower

Daredevil

On Vacation!
Super Mod
Joined
Apr 5, 2009
Messages
11,615
Likes
5,772
Buratino heavy flame thrower destroys 'enemy' targets for the first time in exercises

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7ZtZSyAfk

Info on Buratnio

Russia tests new thermobaric rocket system

10/04/2012 RIA Novosti

The tests took place at the Prudboi site in the Southern Military District.

The new missile can effectively engage targets at a range of up to six kilometers.

It has a 90-kg warhead, uses a new thermobaric mixture and has a new motor.

The new rocket will be mounted on a T-72 and T-90 tank chassis.

The TOS-1 Buratino multiple rocket launching system carries 30 rockets and TOS-1A Soltsepek has 24.
Solntsepek translates as "blazing sun."

Russia tests new thermobaric rocket system | Russia & India Report
 

Akim

Professional
Joined
Jun 14, 2012
Messages
9,952
Likes
8,470
Country flag
Buratino - is the character of fairy tales. For a basis we take Pinocchio
 

aliyah

Regular Member
Joined
May 30, 2015
Messages
698
Likes
843
sorry not ammunition expert.....can u tell in simple language wat is thermobaric bomb??
 

indiandefencefan

Regular Member
Joined
Mar 26, 2015
Messages
437
Likes
345
Country flag
sorry not ammunition expert.....can u tell in simple language wat is thermobaric bomb??
A thermobaric weapon is a type of explosive that utilizes oxygen from the surrounding air to generate an intense, high-temperature explosion, and in practice the blast wave of such a weapon produces a typically significantly longer duration than a conventional condensed explosive. The fuel-air bomb is one of the most well-known types of thermobaric weapons.

-wikipedia
 

aliyah

Regular Member
Joined
May 30, 2015
Messages
698
Likes
843
thanks, do india have it?? or making it ??
 

Cadian

Regular Member
Joined
May 5, 2014
Messages
824
Likes
795
sorry not ammunition expert.....can u tell in simple language wat is thermobaric bomb??
The most deadly effect by thermobaric weapons is caused not by the explosion itself, but by the rapid change of pressure in wider area. You can probably survive such blast only if you will hide in a hermetic room or something.



Also, Russia produces thermobaric rounds for grenade launchers, that do not contain shrapnel and are fit for use in close quarters.

 

Cadian

Regular Member
Joined
May 5, 2014
Messages
824
Likes
795
The Russian Military Loves Its Thermobaric Rocket Tanks

Four new TOS-1A units in a year
by ROBERT BECKHUSEN

In December, Russia created a new heavy weapons regiment based in Nizhniy Novgorod. The regiment has both “TOS-1A Solntsepek flamethrowers and the Shmel-M infantry flamethrowers,” according the Interfax news agency.

The Russian media often refers to the TOS-1A and Shmel-M as flamethrowers, but the term is a bit of a misnomer in English. This hardware has little in common with those rare, flame-spewing weapons.

Instead, these are thermobaric launchers which propel a fuel-air round.

The round disperses a flammable cloud, which then ignites. The main targets are bunkers, caves and buildings—pretty much any enclosed space. These mixtures can burn, but they mainly kill through blast pressure and sucking out the oxygen from confined areas.
In 2014, the Kremlin announced three other new thermobaric units—one based in Volgograd Oblast and another in Ingushetia, according to themilitary news site VPK. The third unit formed in Sevastopol after the Russian invasion of Crimea.
In total, that makes four new “flamethrower” units created in a year.

The Shmel-M is a shoulder-launched thermobaric weapon. The TOS-1A is a multiple-rocket launcher mounted on a T-72 tank chassis. It can fire 24 220-millimeter rockets each packing a 100-kilogram warhead. The rockets’ range is about six kilometers.

It’s a ludicrously destructive—although comparatively short-range—piece of artillery … and it just looks mean.
But here’s another unusual fact. The regiments in Nizhniy Novgorod, Volgograd, Crimea and Ingushetia are nuclear, chemical and biological defense units. Besides rocket launchers, they have mobile laboratories and specialized vehicles for sniffing out and sanitizing contaminated areas.



Above—Russian TOS-1A in 2010. Wikimedia photo. At top—TOS-1As launch rockets in 2010. Vitaly Kuzkmin/Wikimedia photo
This makes sense, if you think about it. The TOS-1A first appeared in 1988 and saw action in Afghanistan. In the event of a major war with NATO, the TOS-1s would smash prepared defenses, allowing Soviet tank columns to blitz into the enemy’s rear.

The Soviets anticipated operating in a radiation-contaminated environment, hence pairing thermobaric weapons with NBC units.

“From a Russian military perspective, flamethrowers are seen not as weapons simply to be handed out to the rank-and-file for any ad-hoc use, but instead as a mature weapon system that filled specific capability gaps in the Russian Armed Forces force structure,” noted OE Watch, the U.S. Army Foreign Military Studies Office’s monthly newsletter.

OE Watch interpreted Russia’s expansion of thermobaric units as a sign the Kremlin is preparing for urban warfare in the future.
“As Russia experiments with new forms and methods of war, or ‘hybrid war’ as defined in the West, in Eastern Ukraine, urban warfare will likely continue to be a high priority for development, and so will Russia’s flame-wielding NBC defense troops.”

The TOS-1A is also cleared for export. To help push back against Islamic State, Russia flew several TOS-1A to Iraq last July. Videos later circulated online showing Iraqi troops firing the Solntsepeks.

But it’s unclear if these were just exercises or involved shelling Islamic State. But the Iraqis certainly could, and there’s little the jihadi group could do about it.

https://medium.com/war-is-boring/th...ves-its-thermobaric-rocket-tanks-1892d5fb05a8
 

sorcerer

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 13, 2013
Messages
26,920
Likes
98,472
Country flag
Russia's TOS-1: Moscow's Most Powerful Weapon of War (That Isn't Nuclear)

The TOS-1 Buratino is a unique Russian self-propelled multiple rocket launcher system (MRLS) that has seen action in global hotspots like Afghanistan, Chechnya, Iraq and Syria. Like the enormous 240-millimeter 2S4 self-propelled mortar, the TOS-1’s specialty is obliterating heavily fortified positions. Although some of these may be found in rural rebel strongholds and fortified caves, they have often been employed in heavily urbanized environments. It’s gained a uniquely nasty reputation because of the horrifying effects of its fuel-air explosive warheads.

To put it concisely, these are amongst the most devastating explosive weapons short of tactical nuclear weapons.


Fuel-Air Explosives
TOS stands for “heavy flame thrower,” which is only accurate in a literal sense: instead of projecting a stream of jellied gasoline, the TOS-1 launches a rocket carrying a fuel-air explosive (FAE).

These were first employed by the United States in the Vietnam War because napalm wasn’t destructive enough. Napalm munitions disperse a sticky, flaming liquid over a wide area. By contrast, a fuel-air explosive detonates the very air itself: a small explosive inside the FAE munition spreads a chemical cloud in the air through an aerosol effect. The gaseous cloud seeps effortlessly into buildings and caves, and down into slit trenches. A secondary explosive then ignites the cloud, causing a massive and long-lasting explosion.

While the heat generated by FAEs causes lethal burns in a wide radius (roughly two hundred by three hundred meters) the overpressure created by the sudden combustion of the air is even deadlier. The fiery blasts create a partial oxygen vacuum that kills and maims in a variety of grotesque ways and cannot be mitigated with body armor or hard cover.

The pressure generated by a TOS-1 blast amounts to 427 pounds per square-inch—for comparison, most conventional bomb blasts create roughly half that amount, and regular air pressure is fourteen pounds per square inch. Victims near the center of a TOS-1 blast radius are crushed to death. Further out, the overpressure can break bones, dislocate eyes, cause internal hemorrhaging, and rupture eardrums, bowels and other internal organs. It also sucks the air out of victims’ lungs, possibly causing them to collapse, leading to death by suffocation.

The United States was the first to use fuel-air explosives in the Vietnam War, dropping them by air to clear helicopter landing zones and minefields, and later deploying them as offensive weapons. In 2002, attempting to hunt down Osama bin Laden in the rugged mountains of Tora Bora, U.S. aircraft deployed thermobaric warheads on precision-guided missiles. The warheads would suck the oxygen out of the caves that Taliban fighters were hiding in.

The Soviet Union adopted the weapons shortly after the United States did, using them in a border skirmish against the Chinese in 1969, and employing both air-dropped and ground-launched FAEs on a large scale in the war in Chechnya. The proliferation of TOS-1 systems through global conflict zones (detailed below) ensures they will continue to see use in combat.

Rocket-Launching Tanks
Most of Russia’s artillery weapons use a light armored vehicle chassis like that of the MTLB armored carrier. The forty-six-ton TOS-1, on the other hand, uses the much heavier hull of a T-72 tank. There’s a good reason: the original TOS-1 model only had a range of around three kilometers, meaning it would have to withstand hostile fire from all kinds of enemy weapon systems.

The TOS-1 mounts a launch unit with thirty 230-millimeter diameter rocket tubes. The prominence of the launch unit is what earned it the name Buratino, a long-nosed Pinocchio-like character in a children’s story. The rockets can be fired individually or ripple-fired en masse in the space of six to twelve seconds. The vehicle also mounts a targeting computer and a laser-range finder.
Two types of rockets are equipped: ones with conventional incendiary warheads, and the fuel-air explosives discussed above. The sheer size of the rockets means that the TOS-1 requires not one but two TZM-T reloading vehicles—all-terrain trucks equipped with cranes—each carrying a full additional load of rockets.


The TOS-1 vehicle has no real counterpart in use by Western militaries.
While there are all kinds of multiple-rocket launch systems in use, such as the M142 HIMARS in use by the U.S. Army to bombard ISIS in Iraq, they are all lightly armored weapons intended for long-range indirect fire.
Furthermore, such rocket artillery typically relies on cluster munitions or conventional high-explosive warheads, not incendiary ammunition. The Russian Army, however, fields long-range Multiple Launch Rocket Systems like the Smerch and Uragan, capable of using incendiary warheads. The United States uses thermobaric warheads in smaller man-portable systems as well as larger air-launched munitions.

Starting in 2001, new TOS-1A Solntsepek (Burning Sun) vehicles began entering service, with a range of six kilometers. This is sufficiently long range to allow it to fire beyond retaliatory fire from the majority of antitank weapons. The new vehicle comes with an improved ballistics computer as well. Because it fires heavier ninety-kilogram rockets, the number of launch tubes was reduced to twenty-four.

The TOS-1 and -1A are integrated into Russian Nuclear Biological Chemical (NBC) battalions. These units also field the RPO-A Shmel’ (Bumblebee) man-portable portable rocket launchers that fire smaller ninety-millimeter thermobaric charges up to a range of 1,000 meters, or 1,700 meters using the latest types. These are intended as bunker-buster weapons, as thermobaric warheads are particularly effective against structures and their occupants.

The Trail of Devastation
The first combat use of the TOS-1 Buratino is recorded between 1988 and 1989 against Afghan rebels in the rugged terrain of the Panjshir Valley. However, it was in the 1999, the same year that the TOS-1 was first revealed to the public, that the TOS-1 first made a name for itself in the siege of the Chechen capital of Grozny.

After sustaining terrible losses attempting to assault Grozny’s center during the first Chechen War, for the second war the Russian Army surrounded the city with heavy artillery and tanks. It then dispatched small infantry teams to probe the Chechen defender. Once the Chechens opened fire, the artillery surrounding the city would pulverize the city blocks from which the fire originated. TOS-1s played a major role in these bombardments, and were also appreciated for creating explosions liable to detonate mines and booby-traps left behind by the Chechen fighters.
The use of the TOS-1 to eradicate city blocks in Grozny caused a number of complaints about collateral damage. In one incident, a strike killed thirty-seven locals and wounded over two hundred. By the time the battle was over, the city had been reduced to a wasteland.

At least four TOS-1s were sold to Iraq in 2014, and they were first seen entering action against ISIS in the battle for Jurf al-Sakhar in 2014. The battle was a victory for an Iraqi Shia militia, although how much the TOS-1s contributed to that is unclear. Later video footage shows TOS-1s ripple-firing rockets on targets near Baiji, Iraq.

The TOS-1As were also given to the Syrian Arab Army, which deployed them against various Syrian rebels. Most of the footage released appears to depict bombardment of rural areas such as the mountains around Latakia, rather than inner-city locations.

However, a TOS-1 unit was recorded being used in preparation for an offensive against the city of Hama, and this June, opposition fighters posted a video apparently showing the destruction of TOS-1 near Hama by long-range antitank missiles. This highlights how the need to deploy the short-range TOS-1 closer the front line makes it vulnerable to such weapons.

A TOS-1 was also spotted by the OSCE operating in a rebel training area in Luhansk in eastern Ukraine in 2015. Ukraine does not operate any TOS-1s, so the vehicle must be of Russian origin. There is no footage of the TOS-1 actually firing rockets in Ukraine, but the Ukrainian government claims they were used in the artillery bombardment that leveled Donetsk International Airport, forcing Ukrainian forces to withdraw in January 2015. However, other powerful artillery systems, including 2S4 mortars, are known to have been used in that siege.

One of the lesser-known war zones involving the TOS-1 is the long-running conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh. Russia has sold TOS-1As to both sides in the conflict: Azerbaijan has eighteen and Armenia was sold an unspecified number. Armenian media reported this year that an Azerbaijani TOS-1A was destroyed in fighting in April after firing rockets on the position of Karabakh separatists. Both sides claim the other initiated the skirmish.

Are weapons deploying fuel-air explosives munitions inherently inhumane? While there is a debate to be had whether one manner of killing and harming human beings in war is inherently more unacceptable than another and should be banned, the more proximate concern with heavier FAE weapons that create very large blasts is that they are inherently indiscriminate. A TOS-1 rocket barrage will wipe out everything within the two-hundred-by-three-hundred-meter blast zone. This is problematic when the weapon is employed against targets amid an urban civilian population—typical of much of the fighting in Iraq, Syria and Ukraine.

Source>>
 

Global Defence

Articles

Top