System "Grad" - the rage of heaven

The Grad rocket fire system is known even to those who are not interested in weapons and military equipment. It is the direct successor of the military glory of the legendary Katyushas, which became the forerunners of the new era of artillery systems development, embodying all the fundamental TTX inherent in the subsequent generations of MLRS: compactness, high mobility, suddenness and the ability to hit multiple targets in very large areas with one salvo .

From the very first salvo "Katyusha", from which the earth itself stood on its hind legs, and the fascist hordes came to a state of panic, and to this day domestic missile installations are the best in the world. The Grad system, which was put into service in the now distant 1963 year, replaced Katyusha and became the base type of the Soviet Army's missile armament. For many years, this reactive system did not know equal among similar types of foreign missile weapons.

Installation "Grad", the development of which was approved by a special government directive in 1960, had an original design based on fundamentally new engineering solutions that had never been used before. The development of the MLRS was carried out by NII-47, headed by the talented weapons designer A.N. Gognichev. The Grad system was designed to replace the outdated BM-14 missile system.

122-mm shells of fragmentation-explosive type M-21-OF were used as ammunition in the installation. The Grad system was designed to suppress the areas of concentration of armored vehicles and enemy troops, artillery and mortar batteries, supply hubs, bunker fortifications and nodal strong points. That is, the scope of these installations was very diverse. The need to create such an effective type of weapons at that time was dictated by a tense confrontation of political systems and the ensuing "cold war".

The "Grad" system consists of a launcher mounted on the Ural-375D truck, a fire control mechanism and a special vehicle for ammunition transportation and charging. In subsequent modifications, a high-terrain truck Ural-4320 was used as a running gear . The speed of these missile systems is up to 90 km / h, which provides extremely high mobility and maneuverability.

The modern system "Grad" is equipped with a special automated launch complex "Vivarium". The fire is conducted by unguided reactive 122-mm shells. Information about the location of targets and their nature is processed by a computer system, which is an essential part of the entire battery. According to the staffing schedule, the installation produces a volley in twenty seconds, and the recharge time is only seven minutes. The delivery of ammunition is carried out by a charging platform of a special design. The standard ammunition of one battery consists of three volleys. This is quite enough to destroy almost any goal.

The combat part of the MLR "Grad", the purpose of which is the guidance and launch of warheads, consists of forty tubular guides 3 m long and a barrel diameter of 122.4 mm. The horizontal and vertical guidance of the projectile is produced by a special powerful electric drive.

"Grad" systems perfectly proved themselves during the Afghan war, the Karabakh conflict and both Chechen campaigns. This missile system is very popular in almost all Arab and African countries, where civil wars sometimes become sluggish and permanent.