Nope, it's a lot of waste. As for cost-effective AAD, perhaps Sosna could be installed. There's no need for additional radars and it has a bit longer range than Verb/Strela.
My point was that most existing air defence SAMS on ships are all about shooting down planes at long range before they launch missiles, and at medium and short range to shoot down missiles and glide bombs and of course helicopters and small platforms with shorter range weapons down to speed boats.
The new systems designed to defeat tiny drones are on the way and they will take time... such threats were always present but I rather suspect it was intended for gun mounts to deal with such threats.
With modernised ammo and night and all weather sights guns can still be very effective at targets very close to a ship like sea surface drones and aerial drones some of which might have small payloads but could target air defence systems on the ship to weaken it and make it vulnerable to attack by larger more conventional weapons.
FPV drones are generally too short range for ships at sea but ironically for this ship operating in rivers and near costs it is actually an issue.
Currently, FPV drones are not the main threat, nor are the larger Bayraktar ones (they can be reached by a 100mm gun, by the way), but submersible ones. In that case, Pantsir wouldn't make much of a difference.
Actually it is funny you say that because the Russians are the most advanced nation when it comes to supercavitating rounds and supercavitating HMG rounds on deck guns would actually allow the engagement of targets a few metres below the water surface, and the old anti diver anti torpedo rockets that were loaded into the RBU family of rocket propelled depth charges can also be loaded into the UKSK launcher system...
Larger drones are no threat because standard SAM and gun based air defence systems would deal with them effectively enough and as we saw in the Ukraine conflict they were quickly picked off when going against an enemy with decent Air Defence. I would wonder how effective western air defences would be against such a threat because their air defence systems are so sparse and so expensive so it would dramatically weaken a western armed force simply by making them use up their AD ammo on disposable targets.... this is even more important in the naval sense... the UK ships have 48 SAMs and then it is protected by its guns only... sending some drones to attack it and it will quickly use up its missiles and become very vulnerable.
And it is not a small patrol ship like Buyan.
This is a problem for every sea going ship and the solution will take time to develop and integrate into all their ships.
her is , in a quite ironic form though
He is having a bit of fun... you can joke along with it, or you can be bitter and twisted and angry about it... how do you want to live your life... he understands that the Ukraine and indeed Syrian conflict have revealed new threats and that trying different solutions is important and is being done, but a comprehensive systematic solution will take time and the west will of course immediately call it silly or stupid and then when they find out the actual results they will quietly adopt all the same solutions themselves.
The west became rich and powerful by travelling the world and finding new ideas and combining them to make them even better... and of course being ruthless heartless bastards... destroyers of civilisations...