Pantsir missile/gun AD system: #2

I was hoping that Russia will offer existing users of Shilka the option to upgrade their Shilka's to Tor or Panstir level. How hard could that be ?

Probably the only current user that could afford to replace Shilka with Tor or Pantsir is Russia and they are still in the process of doing that.

For rich customers the upgrade makes a lot of sense even rich western customers who are seeing how vulnerable they might be to drones and cruise missiles... for poor customers a change in electronics... most of which could be replaced with a couple of laptops by the way... and perhaps swapping the four single barrel 23mm cannon with one or perhaps two twin barrel 30mm cannon would offer a substantial increase in gun performance without costing too much... if they have BMP-2s or 3s or MiG-29s and Su-27s or Hinds with fixed twin barrel 30mm cannon then they already have that round in service anyway...

Money on improved optics and remove the radar completely could improve performance and not change costs very much because optics are not more expensive than radar but are getting much more capable and are passive.

Not really. Tunguska has vintage radar, optics and computers. Pantsir is waaay better.

They are parallel systems that are basically the same thing and both have been upgraded over the years, but their different customers have different demands... the Army doesn't care about having 40km range missiles on vehicles designed to operate with their armour, while the air force doesn't want the expense of tracked vehicles... long distance mobility being more important than short range tactical mobility...

The Army wants these vehicles to go where tanks and APCs go, the Air Force don't care about that, but what they do care is that if you want to redeploy them to an airfield 1,000km away you can drive a wheel based vehicle there in a couple of days... 12-16 hours if pushed with good roads, whereas a tracked vehicle would struggle with such a long trip and would probably need airlift transport or being put on a train or boat.

The current Tunguskas have new optics and new radar sets and new missiles and are very capable systems even today...

12 millions $ each. Tor and pantsirs are around 15 million. Indians got fucked by the corrupt army generals in charge of the buying.

Not saying you are wrong but the claimed reason was mobility, so a 12 million dollar product that is less capable but can actually get there is better than a 15 million dollar product with better performance but can't go to the places they need it to go.

Of course it could also just be an excuse with a decision that the contract can't go to Russia again because we already use a lot of their stuff.... I mean their brand new medium range missile is a modified SA-6 for goodness sake...

Eventually they realise.... they are finally making their own AKs under licence, and the MRCA programme part two will likely pick MiG-35s to make up the numbers because the Rafale is just too expensive for what it is... it is really hard to tell what is corruption or just following stupid policies that we don't know about...

That's impossible it doesn't use missiles. That's a gun system with a radar. The one they could upgrade to tor lvl is the Osa.

I don't think he means upgrade, I think he means replace... the way Russia is still replacing Shilka and OSA with Tunguska and TOR respectively.

My dislike for those pagan Indians aside, I understand the deal with South Korea has not been signed. Assuming it is, how will Pakistanis destroy those K 30? K 30 will be protected by Shilka and Osa. India has recently upgraded their Shilkas.

The easiest way would probably be with helicopter launched missiles from Hellfire to Kornet-EM which have launch ranges from 8km and 8.5km in the anti armour versions... Osa could be targeted with anti radiation missiles... which is why the Soviets upgraded to TOR and Tunguska because they can at least defend themselves from incoming missiles.

Israel last year destroyed pantsirs and shilka with optical guided atgms and suicide drones.

True, but to be fair AFAIK they only got two Pantsirs and they were on their own and out of missiles and not operating when engaged... so an operational error... with guns they should have been able to defend themselves from quite a few more attacks.

Right. I forgot to write it but that means their AD will, just like their airforce and navy, be composed of systems from different countries more precisly from Russia, India, Israel and now south korea.

That's impossible to integrate inside a proper IADS and even IFF won't be the same. So we can expect those south korean k-30 to shot down their Apaches if they are not destroyed by the rafales before while their Spyder will be busy launching missiles at MKIs which will be intercepting their mirages that will be fighting their mig-29s.


Chinese must be laughing as much as Pakistanis.

There is no reason all these systems couldn't be integrated into a single unified air defence network, but the problem is that they really don't seem to see the importance of having one.... I think experience in Syria shows the folly of that view... and IADS changed the way things worked over Syria from the Israeli airforce operating openly over Syria to sneaking pot shots from the mountain ranges of nearby neighbouring countries... occasionally scoring a hit when the conditions are right... and for a country like Israel that has been cleaning up the military forces around it for the last three quarters of a century... that is rather dramatic...

IFF is never the same. It always has to be developed in house. In fact Russian and US laws prohibit the export of IFF.

Indeed, everyone has to come up with their own IFF system... you can't use someone elses because that means if an enemy gets access to your system then their system becomes vulnerable too and you can bet your ass they wont accept that.

You can bypass the problem of integration by using your own IFF interrogators... the South Korean or Russian or Chinese or Israeli systems can be fitted with Indian interrogators that use the information for the systems they are mounted on but also pass that information to the shared network.


The IFF system that communicates to the IADS can be all Indian developed, as could the IADS... Vietnam had problems with the Spyder... mainly because it uses IR search and tracking and in hot places such systems are less effective, but they also had problems integrating it in to their network which is largely Soviet based.

Not easy but clearly worth the effort.

Good point... one of the Hermes missiles is supposed to have a ground to ground range of 100km so it would need a really big and powerful booster rocket that should get it to 1.8km/s or so to be considered hypersonic...

Not operational AFAIK... it is a KBP product... here is the web page:

http://www.kbptula.ru/en/productions/multi-service-weapon-systems/germes-a

It has been talked about for some time already and is supposed to be offered in a range of terminal seekers and be basically based on the SA-19 family of two stage missiles (Tunguska and Pantsir). Obviously those SAMs are command guided and don't have terminal seekers, whereas the Hermes is supposed to have a 30kg multipurpose warhead for anti armour and anti ground target and anti aircraft use with a range of guidance options including Glonass, inertial, laser, IIR, MMW radar, optical and a few other options.

The long range missile in Syria seems to be a different weapon that is a single stage missile with a large optical nose port for targeting.... it actually looks a bit like a modified R-73 or something...

Arrow wrote:Tor-M2 is still a much better system than Pancyr.

Probably I should not feed the troll... but...
Anyway, the translitteration is pantsir...
In addition what you write doesn't  make sense. They are different systems and serve different purposes.  

It is like saying that a pickup truck is better than a station wagon. While they are both cars, they are designed and optimised for different users  and use cases.

Pantsir is a missile gun system used mainly for defence of air force bases or other static objects, while Tor is a mobile missile system normally accompanying the army.

Tor's advantage is that it is capable of acquiring and tracking targets (but not shooting) while the TLAR is moving.

Pantsir missiles have a longer range and believe Pantsir launchers can also launch Hermes missiles (surface to surface missiles, also used as air to surface from helicopters, airplanes and possibly large attack drones) (basically the hermes missiles are the Russian response to the american hellfire, similar purposes, even if the hermes is a bit bigger and with a longer range).

Both of them (Tor and Pantsir) can be navalised and I see them as complementary.   It is also possible that in the future they can try to increase commonality between the 2 systems, but maybe the difference is good because possibly strategies to avoid one could not work on the other and viceversa.

Tor is capable of firing in the move.

Ah ok, if so even better

TOR and Pantsir have a lot of overlapping features and capabilities and are both very capable systems.

At its core the TOR system is intended as a CIWS for land vehicles... operating just behind the armoured units it is protecting and shooting down enemy munitions in real time... with a range of 12km the first models really only covered the vehicles they were operating with and would probably only reach the munitions enemy platforms fired... the current model has a range of 16km which means much the same focus but with twice as many missiles ready to fire (16 vs , but the new models they are talking about with a range of 32km should allow enemy aircraft to be engaged as well as any munitions they might launch...

The Pantsir is more oriented to defeat the aircraft launching the munitions as well as the munitions themselves, with a 20km range and now a 40km range it is very well suited to deal with all sorts of battle field threats.

Both are also ideal for use supporting larger SAM batteries like BUK or S-400 respectively.

TOR is the Army system and is traditionally tracked and intended to keep up with and protect armoured forces... Tunguska is the same and a Pantsir version of Tunguska will likely to continue to operate with Army forces.

Pantsir is also an Air Force weapon and will remain a core short to medium range system for Navy, Air Force, Army, and other branches that need air protection.

As AESA technology matures and becomes more affordable TOR might end up with three or four faced tracking radars that are fixed and scan 360 degrees electronically allowing a rather high rate of engagement to be achieved with missiles launched vertically and heading towards their target on their own.

TOR lacks a gun, but considering its role of shooting down missiles at 6-10km range above the vehicles it is defending a gun would not be much use anyway.

An air defence system made up of only short range systems would be a fairly limited system... once the max range of the missiles had been determined by the enemy they could sit back and send in munition after munition... eventually they will find a gap... it will of course be quite expensive and will take time because they are very capable systems, but adding the S-400 means being able to take down enemy platforms carrying the munitions being fired which of course would greatly reduce the capacity and interest of the aggressor to continue testing your airspace... which is what you really want.

Concerning the lack of gun for Tor... maybe in the army it is meant to be used in conjunction with an antiaircraft gun system like the derivatia 57mm gun or something like the 30mm naval Ak630 (but probably in that case it would be too similar to Pantsir)....

S300, s400 are excellent  systems,  but in my opinion do not make much sense if you don't have already a set of good short range systems, both to protect them and other targets, also because the s400 missiles are very expensive and should be used only on valuable targets.

As said before, no air defence system is ideal on his own...they need to work together. And if you don't have money for a s300 probably the second best is a very good medium range system like buk-m3

One of the important points of s300 /s400 is also the radar capability, and those info can be passed then to other systems to engage the hostile targets

Isos wrote:

The cruise missiles will be easily shot down by the S-400.

6 launchers per s-400 with 4 missiles each that means 24 targets.

For Russia it's not a problem no one will attack them and they have plenty of air defence systems to protect the s-400 but a country like Venezuela or egypt or Turkey such numbers are very low and US could destroy their s-400 in one attack.

Meanwhike Serbia operated smaller systems and did very well. Just like Vietnam. Or even Egypt with sa-6.

Just as with manpower over the centuries, in AD in the final analysis there is probably no substitute for numbers, either defensive or attacking.

Concerning the lack of gun for Tor... maybe in the army it is meant to be used in conjunction with an antiaircraft gun system like the derivatia 57mm gun or something like the 30mm naval Ak630 (but probably in that case it would be too similar to Pantsir)....

TOR replaced the OSA, which replaced towed 57mm S-60 guns.

Soviet armoured forces came in two main types... motor rifle and tank... both had tanks and BMPs but a motor rifle force had more troop transports (APCs and BMPs) while a tank force had more tanks but still had BMPs and BTRs (IFVs and APCs).

Within those armoured forces they generally had both SAM missile units and SAM/Gun armed airdefence units.

OSA and TOR were the SAM forces, while the SAM/Gun forces were originally a mix of SA-9 and Shilka, then SA-13 and Shilka, which was then replaced by Tunguska which combined better guns with longer range and higher rate of fire with heavier projectile, and longer ranged faster cheaper missiles on one vehicle.

With the new 57mm gun and new missiles these vehicles will likely separate, but it is likely they will continue to mix guns and missiles as the gun systems often have a secondary ground role... though they might develop such high fire power vehicle turrets in the future to replace the use of expensive air defence vehicles...

Tunguska is not cheap with lots of electronics and sensors and missiles and relatively thin armour... a turret with two twin barrel 30mm cannon mounted on a low slung armoured turret mounted on an Armata chassis filled with enormous amounts of 30mm cannon shells... perhaps with a couple of 80mm and 122mm rocket pods mounted on the turret would be a potent escort vehicle to defend columns from ambush... or to suppress enemy positions...

Twin barrel 23mm cannon with much smaller 23x115mm shells would be just as devastating to the target but would be able to carry probably more than twice as much ammo by weight and size... a six barrel 23mm cannon as fitted to the MiG-31 has a firing rate of 12,000 rpm... fired in 10-20 round bursts it would be devastating too while being quite light and compact... the bursts would be very short as the gun fires 200 rounds a second and in effect would be much like a shotgun blast of explosive rounds hitting the target...

S300, s400 are excellent systems, but in my opinion do not make much sense if you don't have already a set of good short range systems, both to protect them and other targets, also because the s400 missiles are very expensive and should be used only on valuable targets.

But that is the point... currently I suspect the S-400 and S-300 missiles in Syria are not being used so Israeli planes can find a spot to pop up and launch from and then escape easily with little chance of being shot down, leaving the short range systems to try to deal with the long range stand off weapons they launch.

Using airborne radar aircraft enemy aircraft even hiding in nearby mountain ranges would be seriously threatened by an S-400 system... missiles could be launched lofted high in to the air to come down and use their own ARH seeker to find and destroy aircraft from above... do you think Israel would keep launching such attacks if there was a risk Syria might start shooting down Israeli planes over Israeli airspace?

Israel will run out of aircraft to launch their attacks long before they will run out of stand off munitions...

S300, s400 are excellent systems, but in my opinion do not make much sense if you don't have already a set of good short range systems, both to protect them and other targets, also because the s400 missiles are very expensive and should be used only on valuable targets.

As said before, no air defence system is ideal on his own...they need to work together. And if you don't have money for a s300 probably the second best is a very good medium range system like buk-m3

Think of it in terms of a game of chess... in this case only the US and the Russians have a full set of pieces. When attacking third world countries the US or Israel normally play a game of chess where they have a full set of 16 pieces, while their opponent has 9... a king and 8 pawns. The US and Israel are skillful chess players but their reputation for being big and powerful largely comes from playing idiots with incomplete sets... sometimes they play a clever opponent like Serbia proved to be, but Serbia probably had 4 Pawns and a King... no matter what surprise damage they managed to inflict on the entirety of NATO... the F-117 shootdown was like taking their Queen... the result was never really in doubt.

Long range missiles compliment short range missiles... a long range missile can cover much more territory than an enormous number of shorter ranged missiles can... which is not to say a battery of S-400s is all you need... but you need both for the best possible defence.

Having S-400s makes attacking the smaller systems much much more complicated and greatly increases the number of munitions needed to overwhelm the system... even just having one S-400 battery means vastly better views of the battle space because of its excellent radar and EW systems... which on its own have enormous value... look at the Saudi Arabian incident... you can't stop an attack if you don't see it coming rendering even the most capable and modern systems totally ineffective and useless.

S-400 suffer the same issue. Once you know where it is you can just stay bellow radar coverage and launch cruise missile to destroy it.

How do you know where it is?

You might detect the radar signature of an active S-400 site, but what about other S-400s that might just be listening passively... waiting for another sensor to detect the aircraft you use to launch your attack with... suddenly your aircraft is under attack from an unexpected direction from less than 100km with an S-350 missile closing in at mach 5...

Why would you think S-400s would be so easy to defeat?

The US and Israel seem to hold it in high regard... the US spent 1.5 trillion dollars on the F-35 programme for the express purpose of defeating the S-400, and looking at the games the Israelis are playing in Syria I suspect it was money wasted.... 1.5 trillion could have bought a shitload of standoff cruise missiles...

But having a s-400 means spending lot of money on 1 system. And you will still need 4 or 5 pantsirs aroubd it to protect it because it is a bug target. So your air defence will be concentrated and you won't cover lot of space.

Just a circle of airspace 800km across... Effectively Three to Four S-400 batteries could probably cover the airspace over New Zealand... yeah.... what a waste...

If the big cities are deep inside your territory then the enemy will need to fly above your mainland to use its weapons making it an easy target for pantsir working in passive mode.

Having a few S-400 would force them to fly very low making them much easier targets for Verba and Pantsir and TOR...

Pantsir s1 alredy proved to be very good. Pantsirs SM is better however it must have a price comparable to tor's price which is a rather costly system.

The systems are not cheap, but the missiles are... they are simple command guided missiles that you can buy in enormous numbers... something western fanbois rarely take in to account... gold plated western SAMs with ARH seekers are not cheap and are not produced in anything like the numbers Russian SAMs are produced in because they can't afford it.

For Russia it's not a problem no one will attack them and they have plenty of air defence systems to protect the s-400 but a country like Venezuela or egypt or Turkey such numbers are very low and US could destroy their s-400 in one attack.

S-400 is mobile and very capable and is not used in a vacuum... they might use the S-400 radars to find targets and get a clear air picture... older SAMs like the SA-3 and other models can be integrated into the air defence and all contribute to the defence... together with aircraft...

No single battery of anything will make a country safe from US attack, but it could certainly inflict some real damage if cleverly used... damage enough to prevent an attack in the first place.

It will also protect that country from practically any other country that does not have the resources of HATO to call upon.

Meanwhike Serbia operated smaller systems and did very well. Just like Vietnam. Or even Egypt with sa-6.

Serbia is an example of clever use of air defence systems where the main problem was lack of modern missiles and systems...

If they had Pantsir and S-400 NATO air power would have been punished... and I really don't think they would have had the balls for a ground invasion so it probably would have ended up a stalemate...

Just as with manpower over the centuries, in AD in the final analysis there is probably no substitute for numbers, either defensive or attacking.

Can't agree with that... Israel would not exist if that were the case... the colonial history of Europe would not exist either... Japan occupied most of China in the 1930s despite a serious lack of numbers, and in the early 1940s the Germans occupied territory of multiple countries whose combined populations vastly outnumbered Germany itself...

Local superiority in numbers can be achieved with good planning and mobility of forces and of course aggression.

Don´t forget mobility. The S-400 can move in 10 minutes.

But again that is critical... the S-400 can move... but if the operators never train to move and in combat it never actually moves then that feature becomes irrelevant and nullified.

Russian units do train during exercises to move around a lot. I remember reading about air defence exercises in the 1980s where an air defence battery is told it will have an exercise tomorrow... at 3am the alarm sounds for the exercise and they are told to go on a route march 1,000km to the location where the air defence exercise will take place... of course they need a lot of extra fuel and they take all the support vehicles they need with them... and go.