Obrad Vučurović

Obrad Vučurović (born July 1, 1921 in the village of Krivošije near Herceg Novi , † September 18, 2013 in Belgrade ) was a rocket engineer and general of the Yugoslav People's Army. Since the 1960s, he was the main project engineer at the Military Technical Institute in Belgrade (VTI-Vojnotehnički Institute) for the missile development of the Yugoslav land forces. As a pioneer of Yugoslav missile development, its greatest achievement was the R-262 missile in the M-87 hurricane . When working on the R-262, Obrad Vučurović oriented himself towards technological developments in Russian space travel in the 1950s. From this he developed technological innovations for the conception of unguided ballistic tube missiles, which in the R-262 offered a stronger impulse and greater range with a relatively small deviation compared to comparable ballistic tube missiles at the time. He achieved this through a special design with a two-phase rocket motor as well as complex wing units of the rocket capable of braking maneuvers. With the development of complex control electronics, the design effort in the construction of today's comparable weapon systems is no longer necessary. The innovations made by Vučurović in the construction of unguided ballistic missiles have therefore not been pursued further for further military technical development. In particular, their development was based on Iraqi funding. Due to the wars in Iraq, the regime there at that time was no longer able to complete any further development.

Military career

The volcano's surface-to-air missile was the first missile project in which Obrad Vučurović was involved

The M77 was the first independent missile of the Yugoslav land forces. It was more technologically advanced than the Soviet degree system

The M-77 Oganj differs from the 122 mm of the Soviet grade not only in the 128 mm caliber. The M-77 is designed as a defensive system with a fragmentation warhead for the defense of stronger troop concentrations at bridgeheads, the Grad system with individual warheads as an offensive system for use against heavily reinforced front lines

He finished elementary school in 1932 and grammar school in 1941. On July 13, 1941, he joined the partisans. He completed the war with the rank of major of the OZNA, later he moved to the UDBA. After the war he enrolled in mechanical engineering in Zagreb, he studied among others with students of Werner von Braun, who taught as visiting professors in Zagreb. One of his teachers became the head of the Aerospace Center in Stuttgart. Pavle Savić, head of the Yugoslav nuclear program, recommended Obrad Vučurović to Paris for two courses. Here he studied weapons and nuclear technology. In Paris he got to know the modern basics of rocket technology. After his return he served in the garrisons of Cetinje, Kotor, Zagreb and Belgrade, interrupted by his function as head of department in the Military Technical Institute (VTI) in Belgrade and director in the sector of joint development of the land forces at VTI (1981-1987).

In Yugoslavia, the development of military missile technology goes back to the work of Obrad Vučurović. In the early 1960s he was involved in the development of a liquid-powered Yugoslav surface-to-air missile under the name Vulkan. For this purpose, the Yugoslav army had supposedly bought the Japanese kappa as a research rocket. In secret, it should serve as an object of study for one's own military development. Based on the example of the Kappa, Obrad Vučurović had the volcano's booster motor rebuilt at the Pretis (Vogosča) military plant in Sarajevo. Together with Vladimir Ajvaz, he developed the engine for the second stage of the volcano based on a liquid rocket at the "SOKO" aviation company in Mostar. With the purchase of the Kappa, Yugoslavia also got the basics for rocket fuels. The SPS Vitez plant used the chemical raw materials supplied from ZORKA (Šabac) and Vitkovići (Goražde) to produce finished blocks of smokeless dibasic solid fuel, which contributed to the further development of the R-262 engine.

Obrad Vučurović enjoyed a particularly respected position within the hierarchy of the generals of the Yugoslav People's Army due to his rocket construction technology, which was completely new to be developed for the country. He was not only responsible for the development of the weapon systems, but also for building up the series production of the military-industrial complex. Due to Obrad Vučurović's high demands on the quality and innovation of military products, some of the large arms factories had reached a considerable technological level, which the factories could no longer maintain after the collapse of the country.

M77-Oganj of the Yugoslav caliber

After the Yom Kippur War, the importance of multiple rocket launchers became apparent. The JNA gave from 1971 a weapon system comparable to the Soviet grade system to be developed. The project leader was Obrad Vučurović. Instead of the widely used Soviet caliber 122 mm, he chose the Grad rocket launcher with an unusual caliber of 128 mm. This system, called Oganj, was ultimately able to demonstrate a higher range, greater precision and a more modern vehicle concept, but the Yugoslav army did not succeed in selling it to third world countries. Tito the President of Yugoslavia himself promoted the prototype of the system among dictators of the North African states, as in 1973 with the Libyan dictator Muammar al Gaddafi , where he presented it on the test site of the VTI in the VOC (Vojno Opitni Centar) Nikinci near Ruma . For Egypt alone, a rocket based on the Oganj development was produced in 1987, but this was reduced to 122 mm. It was only after 2010 that a modular launcher, called the "Morava" MLRS, was developed that can use the old Yugoslav as well as the dominant Soviet caliber. The M77-Oganj had thus proven to be a sales failure. The technological advances in the Oganj flowed into the further development of the subsequent large-caliber system of the M-87 Hurricane, which was financed at the request of Iraq.

Head of the KOL-15

The KOL-15 project (Hurricane M-87) was the greatest challenge in the military development of the land forces of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) after the completion of the M-77 Oganj . The project was not one that JNA preferred. The tactical interpretation of the (M-87) rocket launcher, later named Hurricane, would prevent military combat units of the Warsaw Pact on the order of a division from crossing the large lowland rivers of the country (Sava, Drava, Morava). For the warhead, cartridge ammunition and poison gas grenades were developed in land wars against large armies. The basic idea arose from the requirement of Iraq, which in the Gulf War was interested in a weapons system against greater troop concentration due to the personal superiority of the Iranians. For its massive armament, which the then ruler Saddam Hussein pursued on a sustained basis, Obrad Vučurović in the KOL-15 had significant financial opportunities for rocket, launcher and vehicle, with which he could also draw from an almost "inexhaustible" reservoir of engineers. He was able to have his engineers redevelop practically all components according to his plans, without paying attention to costs or practical benefits. The vehicle was also specially built for the needs of the hurricane. From Germany, the company Leifield had newly tested and developed machines for processes in cylinder spinning for shaping the rocket motor chambers in the Pretis plant. SPS Vitez imported extremely powerful extrusion presses for the extrusion of 160 kilograms of dibasic smokeless solid propellant (NGR 375) for the chamber of the marching rocket engine. In total, more than 100 factories in the metal, chemical and vehicle industries, telecommunications and electronics in Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia worked on the individual components of the weapon system. The vehicles were finished in Novi Travnik, the complete rockets with fuses and fuel were finalized in Pretis-Unis (Vogošča). When selecting the steel and aluminum alloys, special alloys were required. In particular, the tubes of the throwers had to meet the highest requirements. For them, high-performance steels were produced in the Ravna steelworks in Slovenia, and the finished tubes were processed in Pretis-Unis. More than 500 rockets were fired during the tests. In addition to the military test sites in Prevlaka and Luštica, it was in particular Krivolak in the then Republic of Macedonia where the weapon system was also fully tested. The final tests then took place in Iraq. One problem with the tests was the exercise with the cartridge ammunition. It was not possible to use them at Prevlaka and Luštica over the Adriatic. In Krivolak, several villages and all livestock had to be evacuated beforehand, as the bomblets often caused greater dispersion than was planned in advance.

As a project engineer for the overall development of the KOL-15, Obrad Vučurović coordinated the supervision of the planning and the weapon system testing up to the delivery of the 0th series to Iraq from 1975 until his retirement on December 22, 1987. The hurricane was presented to the public on December 18, 1987. After deliveries to Iraq began in 1990 in the 0th series, further production stopped in 1991. SFOR destroyed all weapons system components mothballed in Bosnia, several rocket vehicles in Bratunac, fuel in Vitez and missiles in Vogosča. Likewise, the Iraqi stocks of missiles and launch vehicles were rendered harmless by US Army specialists.

A variant called ARS-120 with a range of 120 km and a diameter of 400 mm was derived from the R-262. It was followed up first in Iraq and later in Serbia.

In the engine of the R-262 rocket, Vučurović used a two-phase motor for multiple rocket launchers of this diameter (the Soviet Uragan is significantly smaller at 226 mm). The motors working with different pulses ignited at the same time. Due to the inertia of the large marching motor and the higher impulse of the bus, the power in the first 0.2 seconds came almost exclusively from the booster. With this, the march motor was ignited with a burn time of 4.2 seconds when the rocket left the tube, which ensured greater precision than in comparable systems. The rocket, whose impulse did not come primarily from the marching engine, also had advantages for the safety of the carriage vehicle. An essential requirement of Vučurović was that the booster catapulted the rocket with its short extreme impulse from the tube at the muzzle to 130 m / s. No comparable missile had such a high muzzle velocity at that time. With the relatively long range of the R-262 of 50 km, he was able to guarantee it an acceptable level of precision.

A whole battery of launchers, each with 12 rockets, each with 96 bomblets, could distribute several thousand explosive devices over an area of ​​several hectares of land.

Another innovation in the development of unguided ballistic missiles are corrections of the ballistic trajectories of unguided missiles, which Obrad Vučurović introduced for the first time and which function via a combination of different brakes.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Obrad Vučurović
2. ↑ RTS Vremenplov September 17, 2014
3. ↑ Interview with Obrad Vučurović in the Odbrana, 69, August 1, 2008: 8–12 Istina o Orkanu
4. ↑ Japan rocket technologies misused by Yugo military in 1960s
5. ↑ BALLISTIC, CRUISE MISSILE, AND MISSILE DEFENSE SYSTEMS: TRADE AND SIGNIFICANT DEVELOPMENTS, FEBRUARY 1994-MAY 1994
6. ↑ Sputnik article on VTI and Obrad Vucurovic
7. ^ NY Times, 1973 Leader of Libya, On Yugoslav Tour, Inspects Weapons
8. ↑ ARMING SADDAM: THE YUGOSLAV CONNECTION