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Originally Posted by Molon Labe
I thought most Russian SSMs where high altitude weapons with a terminal dive manuever.
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Apparently not the ones I mentioned.
Actually, the -12 and -19 do have options for high flying profiles. Typical doctrine says that one flies high as a scout to designate targets for the rest, which fly low. I suppose that they can also be set for "all fly low" or "all fly high" depending on tactical situation.
However, that kind of thing would be hard to implement - just one flying high and all others low, with the low ones knowing to send ONE replacement when the high one gets shot down... certainly more than can be done in 90 minutes or even a week (as far as it can ever be done at all). Probably better overall just to adhere to the majority, and let them all fly low.
The -9 and -2s are medium range weapons and thus don't need anybody to fly high for target updating.
Even the AS-4 eventually received HI-LO and LO-LO variants in the 70s, but I have no idea how low "LO" is. Given these variants are supposed to be of similar vintage to Sandbox, and use a rocket engine with little fear of ingesting water, its flying altitude could have at least matched Sandbox, but I have no idea so would leave it at its present altitude, which is 500 feet (or is it 500 meters?)