The Ministry of National Defense R&D department unveiled an intercontinental ballistic missile with a range of 6000 km. 9/25 Mach speed
A liquid-fueled BM? Didn't expect to see those come back into the picture. Isn't Turkiye already producing solid-fueled BMs?
Or is this a repurposed SLV concept?
Whilst I agree, Gazap is damn impressive. If it can carry a few of those and accurately disperse them all whilst avoiding interception then I can see how non-nuclear could be viable. 50-100 million is basically the cost of a fighter jet. I guess that's a price worth paying if push comes to shove. With all that said, yes, you're more than likely correct about this being only on paper until nukes are ready.
Well, a fighter is expected to be used again & again. Missile is by definition single use.
Bro, Gazap is an upgraded and glorified MK84 dumb bomb. Its only speciality is being thermobaric. At the end of the day it is a 970kg bomb including its encasing. Total explosive content is around 500kg. It has a very limited effective radius (even though fragmentation radius is 1km, lethality area is smaller. Within 160m radius everything is incinerated). It is a very potent bomb. But is it worth sending MIRV version of these to hit specific targets 6000km away?
By the way, even though missile travels at hypersonic speeds, those individual bombs will be at low supersonic speeds at best.
I agree.
A 1 ton thermobaric would do serious damage in its own right but even 5-6 of them wouldn't totally knock out an entire airbase. Cratering runways/aprons is the most consequential damage as it puts all aircraft there out of commission without even having to destroy each hangar/HAS.
But this kind of damage can be repaired within a short time as it's mostly just civil works-related, nothing too technical. So best done in conjuction with other tactical strikes or in preparation for an air operation to be carried out immediately afterward in that area.
Problem with using an ICBM for this kind of attack is that any reasonably advanced enemy would have ample warning time from a number of sources (radar, satellite, etc), more than enough time to relocate most tactical assets (aircraft, even personnel) out of the targeted area, minimizing the losses. And this is all if we ignore the cost-benefit equation entirely.
This class of weapon is really for strategic (read: nuclear) use against counter-value targets that cannot be moved (cities).
ICBM makes sense as an R&D program that can be brought to the fore if & when nuclear weapons are on the table. Not sure I see the point otherwise. Again, if it's being pursued for pride reasons, that's a different matter.
