Pantsir-S1 News Thread:

And also in english...

http://tass.com/defense/1060201

If they can manage about 18-20km altitude then you can bet the F-35s wont be overflying them... and their high viz gray camouflage will make them much easier to track optically...

With such a launch speed you could reduce the warhead from its 20-30kgs and replace it with a 15kg rod of DU down the core of the last stage with a scramjet motor to maintain speed and use it as a kinetic weapon against enemy armour... moving at 3km per second the penetration performance of a 15kg DU penetrator would be eye watering... no tank would be safe...

I had read about new boosters giving 1.7km per sec speed on launch, but 3km/s is really impressive...

I had read about new boosters giving 1.7km per sec speed on launch, but 3km/s is really impressive... wrote:

How is this possible?

Well it could be a combination of a much bigger booster section that is both wider and longer... it does mention in the article that the new missile cannot be used on older S1 vehicle mounts which suggests it is too big to fit the space provided for those missile tubes.

The missiles are also two stage missiles which generally has an unpowered final stage that relies on its narrow long aerodynamic shape to reduce speed loss in flight... I remember reading somewhere it loses about 44m/s of speed every second due to drag... obviously if it was turning hard it would lose speed rather more rapidly, but from 1.3km/s losing 0.044km/s every second is not that important considering it will only be in the air for 10-20 seconds or so... the first second will be accelerating to 1.3km/s, so the next second it would slow down to 1.256km/s and the third second of flight it will be moving at 1.212km/s... fourth second it would be moving at 1.168 km/s and the fifth second 1.124km/s, then the sixth second it will be moving at 1.080km/s and th seventh second at 1.036km/s... it wont be until the eight second that it gets below 1km per second at 992m/s... by which time it will have travelled 9km and hit most of the targets it was launched at.

For longer ranged targets it would have been lofted into the air so the drag would actually be reduced because it would gain speed from gravity.

For targets to the original missiles range of 8km and then 12km and then 20km for the S1 they decided it was not needed for any propulsion for the terminal portion of the missile... a narrow slim missile was considered adequate.

The new missile is intended for engagements to 45km and beyond so a small scramjet motor and small fuel supply could very easily be fitted to boost range and terminal performance out to extended range and altitudes.

I suspect they just developed a new rather more powerful booster.... note the boosters used so far are standard solid rocket boosters used for sounding rockets... 1.3km/s and 1.7km/s were the specs for two solid rocket boosters advertised in publications I read in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

I would expect new propellants and simply larger boosters have been developed since then...

Written by the Russian media equivalent of Vann I suspect...

All model Pantsirs are excellent air defence missile systems, but they are not perfect and have some limitations.

Improved versions are developed based on actual experience so any failings are brought out in actual combat use and improvements are added to the design to make them even more capable.

There has never been a situation in Russia where Pantsir is used on its own... it will always be part of the defence network and in Army units it is always used with TOR and other systems.

PapaDragon wrote:
Wasn't it posted here that Pantsir is completely useless and that MoD is insisting on replacement with Tor or some completely new?

Not useless. S1 proved to be nowhere near tor but it is not that bad. It has difficulties with small drones and low flying at low speed targets. However it proved to be able to deal with "normal" targets like grad rockets, medium flying military drones and cruise missiles.

S2 was already started since long ago while SM is a variant that include experience in Syria. They want it to be able to destroy conventional targets but also guerilla targets like civilian small drones ...

S1 is still very good at destroying Tomahawks and cheaper than S2 or SM.

If it were Vann I couldn't have cared less

I know what you mean...

Yeah, the military affairs personality just reposted something on his VK/Livejournal, and he eventually took the post down.

I seem to remember George posting it, but not commenting on it one way or another... a few other people commented on it including myself who mentioned that the early model missiles were intended for use against helos and fairly straight flying ATGM threats in flight so their ability to hit hard jinking evasive targets was limited, but that the new small missiles designed to fit four to a single launch tube as well as newer missiles were designed to hit evading and erratic targets that were trying to destroy air defence systems rather than the targets they were protecting.

If the Pantsir system was useless, it wouldn't have been introduced into the Russian Armed Forces to start with. They test these systems rather intensively before they are brought into actual combat. Additionally, they've proved their worth in Syria many times over.

There is a constant battle of measure and counter measure so the SA-6 missile systems were great when first used but weaknesses were found and exploited, but replacement systems fill those gaps and made the BUK system potent again. Without being used in a conflict they realised such a system would be vulnerable to ARMs so they upgraded it from the SA-11 to SA-17, which could shoot down ARMs and had further optical guidance options added...

Air defence systems have faced Israeli and US attack before and often don't come out very well... currently they have lost two Pantsir systems that were not operating as part of a network or a battery protected with mutual support... against the Israelis with US assistance... that is amazing performance that a third world country with nukes could develop and deploy such a system can only prove out previous assessments of it being a third world country as being the bullshit it is.