Does any who's not just speculating know why these aren't used today for fast overseas transport between cities which aren't too far inland? The relevant wikipedia section is pretty lacking.
wow 320kg warhead. thats lots of explosive power, and speed... that is a heavy duty missile. Good luck to Phalanx and sea sparrow stopping a a half dozen of these (apparently china bought them)...
That's why we have AEGIS cruisers and destroyers. The entire concept was developed during the cold war specifically to counter this class (large supersonic sea-skimming missiles) of threats.
ITYM "large subsonic sea-skimming missiles". Moskit was specifically designed to punch through US Aegis defenses faster than they could intercept. While things have moved on, there's still some question over whether western naval defense missiles such as Standard or Aster can intercept a Moskit -- especially whatever version the Russians are using, as opposed to selling to Iran and China.
The MD-160 was intended (in the 1980s) to be a can-opener for US carrier battle groups -- able to close at 300 knots in nap of earth, evading detection, then launch six Moskits at once. (By way of comparison a Tu-22M or Tu-95 could only carry one or two Moskits.) Luckily the USSR ran out of money before they could build more than one of the things, which now sits in mothballs (despite various proposals to build more as, e.g., passenger ferries or high speed mobile disaster-relief hospitals).
They totally could have been a can opener. Imagine how many missiles it would take to disable or sink a carrier - short of a nuclear device. Battle groups are too sophisticated (if im not mistaken 2 anti-submarine destroyers). To actually find and takedown a carrier today requires huge effort and firepower.
>While things have moved on, there's still some question over whether western naval defense missiles such as Standard or Aster can intercept a Moskit
In April 2012, the French Navy successfully shot and downed an American GQM-163 Coyote target. The GQM-163 Coyote was simulating a sea-skimming supersonic anti-ship cruise missile traveling at speeds of Mach 2.5 (3000 km/h) with an altitude of less than 5 meters. The Aster 30 missile was fired by the Horizon class frigate Forbin (D620), also present during the shoot was Forbins sister ship Chevalier Paul (D621). The successful shooting represents the first time a European missile defence system has intercepted and destroyed a supersonic, sea-skimming "missile". The trial was described as a "complex operational scenario".
But, 2.5 mach and "test case" with your own hardware, can never know what a Russian missele is programmed to do.
So so. Remember reading an article in a Russian technical journal about it a while back. Apparently that is why one of the prototypes crashed, choppy sea. The pilots pulled up (as that is the typical instinct of a pilot) and that disrupted the ground effect and it crashed.
The economic problem is that flying near the ocean surface is quite dangerous. You can have swells as high as 50 feet and rogue waves even higher than that. This means that erkranoplan either to be built as sturdy enough boats to wait out storms and incur the economic penalty of waiting, or as capable enough aircraft to be able to fly over them. Either prospect makes them less desirable economically.
Please note that the Lun was not an obligate ground-effect plane: its ceiling was 7500m, though it obviously lost efficiency without ground effect and needed ground effect to take off and land.
I didn't know the Lun had that high a ceiling! There's still a potential problem if it can't land in a storm, however. It might climb above the swells, then run out of fuel at high altitude.
I saw a documentary about this machine when I was younger, the plan was to use the "Caspian Sea Monster” only to military purposes, as probably anything designed in the URSS back then, mainly for movement of soldiers and tanks across the waters.
As masklinn notes, the operating ceiling is 7500 meters (for which there is an efficiency hit). So long as the city is not too far inland, this outperforms air freight in all ways on paper.
Well, the thing has no landing gear, so the inland city better have a lake or something.
The 7500 meter figure, is that with cargo or without? Aircraft can typically do pretty amazing things with an empty cargo hold and a few sips of fuel in the tanks.
Honestly, I'm really having trouble seeing this thing as anything but a Soviet propaganda project with no real economic argument for it.
The thick, warm, rich air at sea level is not exactly the best operating environment for turbojets. And if there really was a benefit to harnessing the ground effect that outweighed the negative effects of low altitude, why not use a proper aircraft like an Antonov and just fly it low enough to take advantage?
And I assume the 50%/50% figure above is in relation to contemporary Soviet aircraft? Which where, themselves, thirsty compared to contemporary western aircraft let alone modern aircraft. The thing had 8 (Eight!) turbojets!
I think the implicit question is not "why aren't Soviet-era military jets competing with modern cargo planes?", it's "why isn't a modern version of this competing with modern cargo planes?". (The former is just comparing 1970s apples to 2010s oranges.) In this context, it's reasonable to assume a landing gear and modern engines.
Re: the Antonov, I think the idea is that it needs to be very low to utilize ground effect, and the only way to do this safely is over water with a hull capable of emergency water landings at the very least.
Wings of Russia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr8N0Z4Cl0U
In flight https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8Nu94khHoo