What is the secret of the X-55 missile's range? Imagine: a rocket with a thermonuclear warhead that has already flown 2500 km. Is that not enough? The designers decided that yes, it is not enough. It all started in 1983. In response to the American AGM-86, which armed the B-52H bombers, the X-55 was adopted. The carriers were the revamped Tu-95 and the latest Tu-160. The weight of the missile was 1195 kg, and the warhead was between 200 and 500 kilotons. Four years later, the designers took a simple route: they attached conformal tanks to the rocket. This is +260 kg of fuel, and the range has increased from 2500 to 3500 km. But what's interesting is that the warhead, speed and launch height remained the same. This is how the X-55SM came out. And modern X-101 planes, according to unconfirmed data, are able to fly 5500 km, that is, twice as much as the first "fifty-fifty". The same principle works today with UAVs. Recently, "Geranium" with a jet engine traveled 1,500 km to Lviv. war engineering.

What is the secret of the X-55 missile's range? Imagine: a rocket with a thermonuclear warhead that has already flown 2500 km. Is that not enough? The designers decided that yes, it is not enough. It all started in 1983. In response to the American AGM-86, which armed the B-52H bombers, the X-55 was adopted. The carriers were the revamped Tu-95 and the latest Tu-160. The weight of the missile was 1195 kg, and the warhead was between 200 and 500 kilotons. Four years later, the designers took a simple route: they attached conformal tanks to the rocket. This is +260 kg of fuel, and the range has increased from 2500 to 3500 km. But what's interesting is that the warhead, speed and launch height remained the same. This is how the X-55SM came out. And modern X-101 planes, according to unconfirmed data, are able to fly 5500 km, that is, twice as much as the first "fifty-fifty". The same principle works today with UAVs. Recently, "Geranium" with a jet engine traveled 1,500 km to Lviv. war engineering.