The S-13 rocket was named “Tulumbas” in honor of a percussion musical instrument, a type of tympani. The S-13 has a caliber of 122 mm and is capable of inflicting powerful damage to the enemy on the ground. Penetration capacity – 6 meters deep fortification and 1 meter reinforced concrete.
The Russian Ministry of Defense showed that Tulumbas was launched from Su-25 attack aircraft at extremely low altitudes. Judging by the video, the missiles went towards the targets and successfully hit them.
“The peculiarity of Tulumbas type missiles lies precisely in their power. This is a very armor-piercing projectile. In this case, the bullet is reactive. Its caliber is comparable to a cannonball, but its power is much higher. The destruction of reinforced concrete bunkers is guaranteed, a military expert, reserve colonel Yuri Gavrilov told socialbites.ca.
The rocket was developed in 1978 at the Institute of Applied Physics in Novosibirsk and VIII Toropova by JSC GosMKB Vympel.
“The reason for the appearance of this missile is the analysis of military conflicts in the Middle East in the late 1960s and the first half of the 1970s of the 20th century. They showed the world that old approaches to deploying and camouflaging aircraft at military airports are a thing of the past.
Arched-type reinforced concrete bunkers appeared at airfields, which withstand hits of conventional high-explosive and high-explosive fragmentation bombs. These conditions influenced the development of domestic aviation weapons. In particular, it is just in time for the development of 122 mm unguided rockets of the S-13 family.
The first developed basic missile entered state tests together with the universal weapons block UB-13 in 1979, ”Mr. Valentin Karpov, Doctor of Military Sciences, told socialbites.ca.
Arched bunkers showed their high reliability, and from 1975 the NATO command began to equip all military airfields with exactly such bunkers. Therefore, the C-13s were originally designed for attacks on alliance airfields.
Valentin Karpov added that these missiles were developed relatively long ago, but so far they have not been actively used. They were used in a limited way during the war in Afghanistan, during the two Chechen campaigns there were isolated cases of their use when it was necessary to destroy the underground points of the militants.
“Every weapon, every ammunition has its own purpose. “Tulumbas” is not an ordinary missile, it has a special use for point targets with great lethality and maximum power effect, respectively. Intelligence data is of great importance in order to hit the priority target exactly. Where you can operate ATGMs, where you can use hypersonic “Daggers”, but here, as you can see, Tulubas turned out to be effective,” retired Major General Vladimir Popov told socialbites.ca.
There are a number of modifications of the S-13 missile. During the operation in Ukraine, the last one was used – S-130FS-1 (high-explosive fragmentation). The application was demonstrated from the Su-25 attack aircraft. These missiles can also be used by Su-30SM warplanes and attack helicopters.
“The S-13 is a universal weapon. Theoretically, they can be placed on any plane and helicopter. But you cannot hide from them. These missiles open any bunker. Another thing is that the C-13s do not have a long range. Depending on the modification, it can be from 2 to 5 km. Therefore, the combat vehicle using them must come very close to the target. This requires a very high level of skill from the pilots,” Karpov explained.
Source: Gazeta
