Pantsir-S1 News Thread:

Vladimir79 wrote:Israel has been destroying Syria's air defences with impunity.  Making excuses doesn't change the facts they are helpless to stop them much less changing the fact that any Russian naval vessel relying on Pantsir M is helpless to stop attacks in the point defence role.  That is why the MoD is desperately looking for a replacement.

They have tor and ak-630 that work very fine.

Syrian experience against Israel is not a proof of anything. Israel has always much more intel data on where syrian air def are and all the time they were overwhelmed.

The simple fact is that attack is always easier than defence... the israelis have all the time to examine any particular base in Syria and work out how the defences are organised.

If you see three Pantsir systems then a quick rule of thumb calculation will work out how many munitions and UCAVs you need to send at that base at any one time to overwhelm the defences.

But like I said before, if Pantsir was rubbish the US and Israel and Turkey would be happily operating aircraft in Syrian air space with little regard for anything anyone said.

The facts are that what Russia has done to their air defence network has turned them from international airspace to controlled airspace the US and Israelis refuse to fly F-35s into... gee whiz... must be junk, because any fanboy will tell you a weapon system is either the best in the world and no one can beat it or it is rubbish there is nothing in between.

Have read on a few sites that the problem is that the missiles are not so effective against targets that are manouvering hard and that the upgrades in design are intended to deal with that.

The new improved system is supposed to have two different missile types, one an extended range missile with a max range of 30km and another shorter range missile which is smaller and carried four to a launch tube... more importantly it has larger control surfaces and is rather more manouverable though with a shorter effective range.

Vladimir79 wrote:

Isos wrote:

They have tor and ak-630 that work very fine.

Syrian experience against Israel is not a proof of anything. Israel has always much more intel data on where syrian air def are and all the time they were overwhelmed.

Those are last gen systems.  The new ships have Panstir M as a more affordable yet supposedly superior system of point defence.  The Israelis didn't just wipe out a Pantsir battery, they wiped out 5 batteries of four different types in one air raid.  

Do you have proof of that ? On the videos we can identify only two pantsir being destroyed. The third one is something like a osa or a strela 10. The two pantsir were clearly not working.

The first being the one with crew clearly seen outside the pantsir and not operating it on the very first video. The second is this one (the second vehicle in this video with what can be a strela being destroyed at the beggining.

It is clear from the video it is launching missiles so how can it's radar be down

It is not clear at all. The path followed by the missiles is not similar at all to pantsir's missile.

The only fact that can be used to say the system is not that good is that tor was send to protect hmeimim air base while pantsirs were already there.

You can see here that only the guns are elevated and the radar is down.

Vladimir79 wrote:What is this nonsense about radar up or down?  It has a search and track radar and an engagement radar.  The engagement radar doesn't go up or down.    

Do you know how it works at least ? Engagement radar can't see 360°. If they really did use only the engagement radar then they should just destroyed the pantsirs themselves.

When you have so much missiles/drones targeting your position you turn it on you don't rely on a ir camera.

If they were so well linked other pantsirs should have protected those reloading.

It's not the first time syrian don't know how to use russian simpliest hardware.

Normally Pantsirs operating as a battery would not all have their search radars operating, simply because they will all be detecting the same targets and could end up all engaging the same target which would ensure that target is destroyed but would be horribly inefficient.

If I understand the situation properly it seems there were only a couple of Pantsirs at each site and they relied on target information from the IADS network, so they would be handed targets by the network and would engage that target until it was destroyed and then transmit to the network that they were ready to engage another target. The network would note the target was taken out and decide on the next most dangerous threat for the vehicle to engage... in other words the IADS does the threat assessment and chooses which vehicle engages which threats.

Based on the known capacity of these vehicles... the speed of their missiles, detection and engagement ranges, it is merely a mathematical calculation to determine what sort of attack force would be needed to penetrate the defences.

As I mentioned above they have smaller more manouverable missiles intended to engage manouvering targets, but in Russian protected bases they could easily just use TOR missiles to hit manouvering munitions... it has side mounted rocket thrusters and in the last split second before impact and shift a few metres in any direction to improve lethality... you can see some of the side thruster rockets when the missile is launched up into the air to turn the missile toward the intended target. There are more side thrusters than are needed for launch that can be used in the last split second of interception... normal control surfaces are used to get the missile close and rocket boosters used to make it even closer just before they cross or impact... for a manouvering target they are necessary, but non manouvering target will likely result in a hit anyway.

Right now the Army and VDV seem to be in the process of introducing the SOSNA-R which is a smaller missile with larger control fins, and they are also developing the small 9M100 IIR guided short range missile too.

It is good that they are learning lessons from the conflict in Syria, but that was always going to be an issue... it doesn't matter what you come up with... the other guy is always going to examine it carefully to find weaknesses and problems to exploit.

A proper Russian IADS includes aircraft and airborne radar and a whole lot of other things not present in Syria defending Syrian forces.