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.