Kalibr

Overview

The 3M-14 Kalibr (NATO: SS-N-30A Sagaris) is Russia’s main sea-launched land-attack cruise missile and one of the weapons Ukrainian air-raid alerts name most often. It belongs to a wider family designed by the Novator Experimental Design Bureau in Yekaterinburg, which also includes the 3M-54 anti-ship missile and the 91R anti-submarine weapon. Ukraine’s defence intelligence agency (HUR) lists the M.I. Kalinin Machine-Building Plant (MZIK), also in Yekaterinburg, as a manufacturer of the missiles, and the Omsk Motor Engineering Design Bureau as the maker of its TRDD-50 engine.

The missile first saw combat on 7 October 2015, when ships of the Caspian Flotilla fired 26 of them at targets in Syria roughly 1,500–1,800 km away, according to CSIS Missile Threat. Since 24 February 2022 the Black Sea Fleet has used it against Ukraine from Buyan-M and Karakurt small missile ships, Admiral Grigorovich-class frigates and Kilo-class submarines.

Range estimates vary with the source and, probably, the warhead. CSIS cites a US Office of Naval Intelligence figure of 1,500–2,500 km; Russian officials have quoted 1,500 km and, after the Syria launches, 2,000 km. Wikipedia’s survey of estimates notes the longer figure may belong to the nuclear version.

Design and guidance

The 3M-14 is a conventional subsonic cruise missile. A solid-fuel booster pushes it out of a ship’s UKSK vertical launcher or a submarine’s torpedo tube, then a small turbofan sustains flight at about Mach 0.8. The surface-launched 3M-14T is about 8.9 m long with its booster and the submarine 3M-14K 6.2 m; both are 0.533 m in diameter. The missile flies 50–150 m above ground and lower over water, following terrain to stay beneath radar coverage.

Navigation combines an inertial system with satellite correction and, per a Bellingcat, The Insider and Der Spiegel investigation, optical or correlation recognition of waypoints. The same investigation describes how routes are planned. A team at the General Staff’s Main Computation Centre simulates each missile’s path from launch to target. The flight plan then goes to the launch platform on a ruggedised memory stick. HUR also lists an ARGS-14 active radar homing head for the 3M-14, giving it a terminal seeker.

Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence says the satellite navigation equipment, the SN-99, was originally developed in the 2000s in Smila, Ukraine, and is now mass-produced in Russia. The ministry adds that the Kalibr’s tail section, satellite navigation and onboard computer are shared with Iskander, and some modules with the Bastion and Bereg coastal systems (Ukrainska Pravda).

Electronics and foreign parts

Kalibr wreckage has been one of the clearest windows into Russia’s dependence on imported electronics. Conflict Armament Research found foreign-made components dated 2012–2020 on circuit boards recovered in 2022. HUR’s War&Sanctions database names individual parts. They include a Marvell 88E1111 network controller and an Altera FLEX FPGA in the ARGS-14 seeker, and a Texas Instruments TPS51100 power chip. The database also lists a TI bus transceiver in a missile built no earlier than 2021, and a 64-bit embedded processor in the satellite navigation unit.

iStories traced the supply side. It reports that seeker maker Radar MMS paid almost 700 million roubles to the distributor Inkotech for diodes and microcircuits in the first year of the full-scale war, while intermediaries imported Western-branded components.

In June 2026 Ukraine’s defence ministry said it had taken apart Kalibrs shot down that spring. Guidance boards were more than 80–90% foreign-made, the ministry said. An attempt in 2023–2024 to move to Russian electronics had failed, and an onboard computer built in 2025 still contained imported parts (Hromadske). The ministry suggested the domestic parts may have hurt guidance accuracy.

Warheads

CSIS puts the 3M-14 warhead at about 450 kg of high explosive. Ukraine’s defence ministry describes the warhead found in missiles from 2022 to early 2026 as high-explosive fragmentation with about 3,600 steel fragments, each able to penetrate up to 10 cm of concrete. In spring 2026 the ministry found a cluster warhead for the first time, similar to the one on the Kh-101, meant to cover a wider area such as aircraft parked in the open.

A nuclear version exists. Militarnyi reported procurement documents for 56 3M-14S missiles with a “special warhead”, to be built by Novator in 2024–2026 (Mezha).

Use against Ukraine

Kalibrs were part of the opening salvoes of February 2022 and have featured in most large combined raids since. On 14 July 2022 three submarine-launched Kalibrs hit central Vinnytsia, killing at least 23 people, including three children, according to Ukrainska Pravda. Ukraine said two more were shot down. Through the winter of 2022–2023 the missile was a mainstay of the campaign against the power grid.

The launch fleet has become a target in turn. A SCALP missile hit the Karakurt-class carrier Askold at Kerch in November 2023, and Russia’s defence ministry admitted the damage. The Kilo-class submarine Rostov-on-Don was badly damaged in dry dock at Sevastopol in September 2023 (Kyiv Post). On 12 August 2026 a drone strike on Novorossiysk damaged the forward vertical-launch areas of the frigates Admiral Essen and Admiral Makarov, per satellite imagery analysed by Naval News.

Unit cost is disputed. Forbes Ukraine uses $6.5 million, which Defense Express traces to a 2006 Indian export contract that included services and markups. Its own estimate is no more than about $1 million.

Interception

Because it is subsonic and must cross Ukrainian airspace at low level, the Kalibr can be engaged by the whole air-defence system: fighters, medium-range missiles such as NASAMS and IRIS-T, and short-range guns and MANPADS. A mobile fire group shot one down on the night of 5–6 April 2024, the Air Force said (Ukrainska Pravda). Results per raid vary. Preliminary Air Force tallies in 2025 ranged from 6 of 12 Kalibrs downed on 24 April (Censor.net) to 14 of 16 on 3 September. These are Ukrainian figures and are not independently verified.