Pantsir missile/gun AD system: #2

Did I say anything different?

Yes.

You said Pantsir-SM would essentially replace BUK but the article says they will be using Pantsir-SM specifically for defending S-300V4.

But ground forces will not have that many S-300V4 brigades (at least one brigade per military district), so it will be economicaly wise to buy them more or they could simply order additional Tor-M2 batteries for that porpouse. Pantsir-SM is with its range exactly between Buk-M3 and Tor-M2.

The only system the Pantsir-SM is likely to replace would be Tunguska. WIth many western countries bringing out 25-35km range anti tank missiles, such a system would be useful to operate together with upgraded TOR to defend armoured formations from standoff helicopter and CAS aircraft attack with very long range missiles including Maverick.

The other solution is to buy more simple and cheap BM missiles to destroy all the airports from where drones can take off. Small drone have generally 200-400km range. No need for expensive state of art manoeuvring Iskander for all targets.

Individual Smerch rockets with GLONASS guidance using EW systems to locate drone bases or launch areas. They have a variety of cluster munition warheads to deal with almost anything.

They can also mount ELINT pod of su-25/Yak 130 to look for the command posts of those drones and destroy them which then is safer as they can't use the drones and the command post take more time to be replaced, specially if the company making them was hit by a kalibr missile.

They would probably leave such jobs to sneaky beaky aircraft like their equivalent of JSTARS etc...

Big drones are easy targets that can be dealt with S-300/buks and they can't be used in huge number because they cost too much.

I am sure combinations of systems from drones and Il-20s and Tu-214s and of course satellites and ground stations can be used in combination... certainly stealthy drones flying high and using their sophisticated electronics to just listen and look would be useful too...

IMO the pantsir outperforms the Tor massively in destroying small high subsonic PGMs like the maverick and brimstone and the tunguska needs a replacement.

Pantsir has had its radars upgraded quite a bit to make it effective in this role... TORs radars were always very very good and are likely better now too.

Solid rocket fuel is not cheap and TOR missiles use less... I would expect TOR missiles to be rather cheaper than Pantsir missiles, but as neither have nose mounted seekers both would be a fraction of the cost of say S-350 missiles with ARH...

Why dont 2A38 30mm rounds have airburst ability? Is there a chance they'll get programmable airburst like the 35mm AHEAD?

They really only need air burst rounds to engage small targets like missiles and standoff weapons and small drones... for full sized aircraft they are already fine.

In fact the fragments of an air burst 30mm round would probably struggle to bring down an aircraft like an Apache or A-10, because the fragments are not huge and fast or long ranged.

My understanding is that their 30mm rounds are getting air burst capability using a coded laser to set the rounds off.

Normal airburst rounds need a very very precise timer inside the round... needs to be very very accurate to be of any use, which makes them expensive and the ammo expensive. For bigger rounds they use a radio transmitter that measures distance to things in the air... when the return signal gets strong enough then boom.

AFAIK the Russian rounds use a laser sensor in the rear of the round to set off the round at a specific distance... this means the precision is in the launch vehicle and is reused for every shell which can be simpler and cheaper but still precise.

Unlikely they get airburst. They are developing a 57mm gun systems with such rounds. The pantirs guns are there to create clouds of rounds by tracking the target with the radar which is very effective.

I would suspect both air defence and normal BMPs and BTRs with 30mm guns will get the new ammo as it would be useful for firing at targets behind cover but with no top cover like an open trench or behind a wall.

Some interesting pictures of missilesm and of new Pantsir in arctic colors.

Nice videos and pictures....

The Topwar article was particularly interesting and outlines the advantages of the Russian airburst ammo.

As I mentioned above western rounds use highly precise timers and so when the round is loaded into the chamber of the gun the laser range finder or radar determines the current range to the target and plots an intercept point where the next fired round will intercept the target. It knows the muzzle velocity and ballistic trajectory of the round and can calculate the flight time of the round so it fires the round... as the round leaves the muzzle it passes through a coil or sometimes three... the first two measure the actual muzzle velocity of the shell on its way to the target and the third coil sets the fuse inside the round as it passes through to a specific time. The timer counts down and when it gets to zero... boom. If the calculations are correct this will spread a shower of fragments at the target and damage it... without the airburst the vast majority of the rounds fired would blow past and not have any effect because they need to contact the target to be effective.

This means your gun needs induction coils to measure muzzle velocity (note the 2A38M cannons on the Tunguska and Pantsir already have two coils to measure muzzle velocity to increase the accuracy of their bursts) and another to set the fuses as the rounds are fired, but the real kicker is that the very accurate timers are very very expensive, so each round might cost 30-100 times more than a standard shell. Of course against small targets they will be thousands of times more effective so actually well worth it.

The new Russian system basically uses command detonation using a laser beam directed at the shell from behind to set it off... much much cheaper because all the complex calculations are done in the launch vehicle and if the target starts to manouver you can adapt when your rounds explode to get the best result you can... but making the rounds much cheaper means you can use them as standard rounds.

The article also mentions guided rounds which is interesting too...

Against a fast manouvering target even airburst rounds are not much use...

With a normal level flying cruise missile type target that doesn't change speed or height or direction, you can look at its flight speed and flight direction and calculate the time the round would take to get to it and draw a line ahead of the target the distance it would travel in the amount of time the round would take to get there which would give you a fairly small box where the target will be when the shells arrive.

As I said if the target is not doing any manouvering at all then the box will be an intercept point and one Air burst shell might do the job.

The problem is that if the target is a small nimble drone that is turning and climbing speeding up and slowing down, then the box where it might be when the shells reach it could be enormous... a square kilometre or more and a thousand rounds of airburst shells wont fill that box with enough fragments to get the coverage you need to assure a kill.

A guided shell on the other hand can compensate for any manouvers made by the target between it being fired and interception... so even if it is 100 times more expensive than an air burst shell and 200 times more expensive than a normal standard shell then it is worth it but only for that specific manouvering target.

The guided round would only be used against small manouvering targets... airburst rounds against targets behind cover, soft stationary targets on the ground, and fast that are manouvering a little to avoid standard rounds but not flying all over the place. Standard rounds can be used for static positions or vehicles that are not moving or hovering targets.

And with airburst 30mm cannon shells using a laser beam command detonation system and not coils over the muzzle etc, practically every platform that currently uses 30mm cannon shells should be able to use them effectively and because the gun platform sets the rounds off remotely just fire them towards the targets area and just as they are about to blow past set them off like remote control bombs... very useful... air targets are going to struggle... a small drone will appear on sophisticated IIR sights and can be tracked with lasers to determine precise range...

So a small nimble drone flying at mach 5?

There are no small nimble drones that fly at mach 5.

Compared to a helicopter based drone that can hover and change direction very easily, any target moving at mach 5 will be moving in a fairly straight line... while it can turn and of course speed up or slow down it would actually be an easier target.

Let me give you a better picture.

You have a ZSU-23-4 and 3km away there is a Helicopter drone. The cannon shells of the 23mm guns leave the barrels at about 1km/s but they don't maintain that speed... as soon as they leave the muzzle they start to slow down and being full calibre rounds they slow down quite quickly... by the time they have passed 2km they are probably subsonic, but because they are quite heavy they push through the air rather more efficiently than a much lighter round like a rifle bullet and once they are subsonic the drag is much less.

The point is that the rounds fired at targets 3km away might take 5-6 seconds to reach the target... being a helicopter target in those 6 seconds if it was hovering it could see the muzzle flash and fly left or right or forward or back, or it could climb or descend.... or any combination of any or even all of those manouvers... for the gunner on the ZSU the kill box would be the distance forward or back, to the left and the right and up and down that helicopter could fly in the 6 seconds your shells will take to reach it... which is quite a big box to fill if you think about it... even firing a 200 round burst. If the helicopter is facing away you could aim directly at him and the recoil and inaccuracy of cannon shells at 3km would provide the spread needed to allow for any manouvers he might perform out of the blue before your shells hit.

If the helicopter is already flying at high speed... then the intercept point will be ahead of the helicopter in the direction it is travelling... he can still turn left and fight... climb or descend, speed up or slow down... but his ability to go backwards is seriously reduced by going forward at speed.

A target moving at mach 5 makes the intercept point much further ahead of where the target is when you fire, but missiles moving at such speeds at low altitudes wont be amazingly agile.

Scramjet powered manouverable weapons like Zircon would preferably be dealt with by S-400 and S-500 missiles because if you have a battery of 8-10 57mm naval guns firing dumb airburst shells to form a screen of fragments the hypersonic missile has to fly through it should be damaged because any fragment will be run in to but the incoming mach 10 missile at mach 10 at the very least and fragments flying towards the target might mean the fragments hit at mach 13 or more (because the fragments will be moving at mach 3+)... but the problem there is even if the target missile is shredded... it would have to happen quite a few kilometres away from the target ship because even mach 10 debris is dangerous...

These 57mm shells... the air burst ones and the guided ones are going to make them effective.

Even 30mm cannon shells in enormous volumes fired at each target are not reliably effective against small targets without air burst shells, because even firing 200 rounds at one target most of the rounds will not make contact with a very small target, but airburst shells exploding within 2-5m of the target will all do damage.

The problem was that previously effective air burst shells are approaching the cost of missiles, but these command detonated shells are much much cheaper and potentially more flexible in that you can set them off when you want... against ground and air targets.

In order to enlarge the intercept area (it's shape will vary, but it will likely never be a box) you need a high velocity, high maneuverability and to keep your distance from the enemy AA guns.

High velocity is not hugely important for guns.... a slower round with a bigger heavier HE charge and more and heavier fragments actually makes more sense.

They have essentially gone from WWII and a 37mm gun for air defence, which just could not cope with faster modern aircraft, so they went for light 23mm cannon with lots of rounds in the air per burst to "cover" a bigger box area with projectiles. They went to 30mm cannon shells to deal with ATGM helicopters slightly further away. The new problem of small drones is that you would be firing thousands of 30mm cannon shells to hit a small drone at 4km range because if your rounds don't impact the target then they just go past and do nothing.

The solution was airburst, but there was a parallel problem too that 30mm cannon shells were not so good against small targets except in enormous volumes (ie why the navy uses gatling guns and lots of them), but also that they were struggling to penetrate the armour of western BMPs that are getting to weights of 30-32 tons which is comparable to T-34 medium tanks

A solution for both problems is an increase in calibre to a more powerful round because if you have a bigger shell you can put more electronics in it for airbursts so instead of firing thousands of individual smaller rounds, instead you fire 2-3 shells and have them detonate around the target area you expect the target to be and instead of thousands of rounds you have tens of thousands of splinters trying to kill the target.

The heavier round would also allow better penetrators for use against enemy armour too.

Their clever use of APFSDS rounds for their grenade launcher however means I suspect their BMP will have the 57mm grenade launcher with its APFSDS for dealing with enemy armour and the S-60 gun will be used for anti aircraft use.

The S-60 was an anti aircraft gun and its 1,000m/s shells does extend the range at which it can be effective against aircraft. An APFSDS round should be very effective against against ground armour too... the huge HE rounds of the 57mm grenade launcher would make them more effective against ground targets especially with airburst rounds for use against enemy infantry and positions.

The higher velocity S-60 rounds should allow air targets to be engaged out to almost double the grenade launchers range (12km vs 6km).

An f22 could easily be shot down regardless of what evasive maneuvers it takes if it gets too close to a Shilka or even ZSU-57-2, while a b29 could evade a Shilka's fire if it keeps it's distance.

Agree, these 57mm AA guns can't be their only air defence systems... but what a fantastic selection they have...

Not that much. It is not powered so its path changes will be low. You still need to aim at the target precisely.

They look like rather large control fins fitted to the projectile... certainly you could not just point it in any direction and assume a hit, but with a manouvering target you really can't aim precisely either. The current intercept point never remains the same with a manouvering target... that is the definition of a manouvering target... a target whose destination changes rapidly and continuously.

With Pantsir such a target would be engaged with a missile for obvious reasons, but this guided round means fast targets that make some flight changes after the round is fired can still be hit.... which is probably about as good as you can expect.

The alternative for a gun is to waste thousands of rounds and hope you get lucky...

An airburst round even guided by a radar will have lot of Pk. You just need a high velocity gun so that the round comes very fast on the target. Being cheaper you can fire ten of them per target instead one guided round.

For most targets Airburst rounds make the most sense because most of the targets it will be firing on wont know they are under attack because they are drones or standoff missiles or bombs... for a target like an A-10 which will be manouvering hard to evade being hit then predicting its position several seconds into the future is impossible... and usually you would use a missile.

This guided round gives you another option.

A 57mm air defence gun battery will not be firing thousands of guided shells as their standard round. Their standard round will be the airburst command detonated shells because they are almost as cheap as standard HE shells but are much much more effective against air targets.

A guide shell might be able to turn 10-20 degrees in flight without generating too much drag and slowing down.

I seem to remember that because of the size of the rounds in the propellent case that their muzzle velocity is only 700m/s... compared with the standard rounds at 1,000m/s and the APFSDS round at 1,500m/s... but being able to steer closer to a target to get that 1.5kg bomb it carries closer to the target before setting it off makes it worth it against some targets.

Pantsir doing his thing

Pantsir-SM-SV

For current forces, yes.

But imagine the turret on an Armata or Kurganets or Boomerang Chassis for the future...

It´s job will be to guard S-300V4 units.

It´s job will be to guard S-300V4 units.

Of course, but its improved electronics and systems can be put on other chassis with the smaller missiles to suppliment the Tunguska in service to completely replace the remaining Shilkas and OSAs along with the new TOR systems...

It is interesting... the Pantsir and Pine and TOR all seem to be likely to become a mishmash of related missiles.... the Pantsir from 20km-40km range against a variety of targets up to 15km altitude, but it also has those quad missiles per tube loadout for smaller lighter targets like drones, but Pine could be enlarged to fill the gap from 1km to 20km from the 1km to 10km gap it fills now, and TOR also fills that 0-15km range gap and there are mini missiles being developed for that as well to engage small light targets.

Add to this the Kornet-EM missile to 10km and perhaps also the Bulat missile for targets to 5-6km or so and you have a group of relatively cheap simple but accurate and fast missiles that could engage air and ground targets quite efficiently...

Should be interesting...

The small missile for pantsir are not only for drones. They can destroy any target but will mainly be used against drones.

Indeed, it could be used against targets that don't require full sized missiles with full sized warheads... things like lightly protected ground vehicles or aircraft... because the smaller lighter missiles can be carried in larger numbers, they can be loaded up to engage a variety of enemy targets...

Wall-E got an upgrade.

They have a lot of optically guided weapons... I hope they unify the sensors across a range of ground and air and sea vehicles and launch platforms to make them cost effective and improve performance...