According to information published by Военный Осведомитель on September 11, 2022, the Russian Navy launched Kalibr cruise missiles on the Armed Forces of Ukraine installations from the Black Sea.
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Russian Kalibr cruise missile launching on Ukraine from the Black Sea (Picture source: Военный Осведомитель)
In late August 2022, Ukraine launched a counteroffensive against Russian forces occupying the country since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February of the same year. Engagements were reported on Ukraine's southern Kherson and Mykolaiv oblasts.
A week later, another major Ukrainian counteroffensive began in the northeast, in Kharkiv Oblast. On 10 September 2022, Taras Berezovets stated that the southern counteroffensive had been part of a "disinformation campaign" to distract Russia from the real counteroffensive being prepared in the Kharkiv oblast.
The 3M-54 Kalibr is also referred to it as 3M54-1 Kalibr, 3M14 Biryuza (Бирюза, turquoise), (NATO reporting name SS-N-27 Sizzler and SS-N-30A), 91R1, and 91RT2, is a family of Russian cruise missiles developed by the Novator Design Bureau (OKB-8).
There are ship-launched, submarine-launched, and air-launched versions of the missile, and variants for anti-ship, anti-submarine, and land attack use.
Some versions have a second propulsion stage that initiates a supersonic sprint in the terminal approach to the target, reducing the time that target's defense systems have to react, while subsonic versions have greater range than the supersonic variants. The missile can carry a warhead weighing up to 500 kg of explosive or a thermonuclear warhead.
The missile is a modular system with five versions: two anti-shipping types, one for land attack, and two anti-submarine types. The missile is designed to share common parts between the surface and submarine-launched variants but each missile consists of different components, for example, the booster. The missile can be launched from a surface ship using a vertical launching system (VLS).
It has a booster with thrust vectoring capability. The missile launched from a submarine torpedo tube has no need for such an addition but has a conventional booster instead. The air-launched version is held in a container that is dropped as the missile launches, detaching from the container.
According to some reports, the missiles are capable of shooting at sea targets up to 375 km away, and at land targets up to 2,600 km away. However, other sources claim that the range of the missile does not exceed 2,000 km.
Their length varies from 6.2 to 8.2 meters. Their weight ranges from 1,200 to 2,300 kg.
