Pantsir missile/gun AD system: #2

My original point was that since the air defence airburst shells would be used by air defense guns only you can introduce a new caliber without any issues say for barrel production. A 37-45mm cannon for light AA guns and combination platforms could work well without adding any real industrial or logistical burden.

The thing is that they have developed command detonated airburst shells for 23mm and 30mm cannon that they already use in their air defence units, so the need to add new calibres is reduced... even more so because the 57mm S-60 based air defence gun is being reintroduced into service on the 2S38 air defence vehicle with not just air burst shells but also guided shells that can chase targets to a limited degree.

Command detonated airburst shells are useful in 125mm calibre too and they have introduced a new generation of such rounds to replace the Aniet shells... such rounds are useful against a variety of targets... for example to detonate a round in the midst of a group of soft targets without having to hit one of the targets or the ground means all the targets in the group get damaged efficiently.

For air defence guns that massively changes the way ammo is used... normally you fill an interception box with shells and only shells that hit the target are effective so for instance a burst of Kashtan 30mm shells fired at an anti ship missile might be 200-400 rounds fired in a 1-2 second burst... most anti ship missiles are small but don't manouver around too much so many of those rounds are going to be on or near the target but only a few are going to hit with each burst most of the time.... but that is enough.

Having air burst shells means instead of needing to fire large volumes of shells and having them all arrive on target quickly you only need to fire a couple of rounds, so those rounds can be 10 times more expensive than standard rounds and yet all the tracking and detonating can be done from the ship and used over and over making the shells relatively cheap to mass produce. As the rounds approach the target you detonate them and even rounds that were going to miss can do damage with fragments flying around the place.

It means you don't need to burn up so many rounds and they don't need to be fired in enormous volumes... in fact the calculations mean you don't even need super high velocity rounds... the 57mm grenade launcher with a big heavy HE bomb flying at relatively low speed can be fired to intercept a drone and explode near it... the huge HE charge and fragments shattering most drones rather more efficiently than much smaller 23mm or 30mm air burst shells, or much faster but also smaller high velocity 57mm shells.

Adding new calibres is not cheap or simple... they are introducing 57mm rounds because the S-60 was originally an air defence gun round and was rather good against it and would also be excellent against helicopter targets and large drones out to quite decent ranges especially with guided rounds. The 23mm and 30mm will continue to be used because they were effective against larger targets like aircraft and helicopters, but now with air burst shells can be effective against drones too.

Keep in mind they wont be firing at FPV drones from 10km range most of the time.... it will be in close where the range and power of the 57mm and larger calibre guns is pretty much wasted. but 23mm and 30mm guns will aim quickly and the ammo is relatively cheap and dual purpose too. You could have a smart fuse that has an impact function where if it hits something hard it detonates, if it starts to penetrate then it delays the detonation to explode inside the target like a building or light vehicle, and of course also having a command detonation option for airburst if it flys past a target or over front cover of a target hiding behind a barrier or bush.

Obviously larger calibres will become useful and I suspect the long range 152mm shells will be very high velocity which will make them effective anti air and anti armour weapons too.

Guided rounds don't need to be highly manouverable things... being able to turn and shift their trajectory a few degrees to follow a moving target so you get really close and then explode is good enough... and can be cheaper than options to make them into drones or missiles.

The smaller missile is names TKB-1055
The range is 7 km.
Altitude up to 5 km.

That should be plenty for small cheap drone targets. For the larger heavier drones the standard missiles would be justified because of the threat they create, plus Pantsir missiles are just cheap command guided missiles that can be and are made in enormous volumes.

Having 57mm gun vehicles like 2S38 which should be able to shoot at drones to at least 6km if they are detected, and of course vehicles with twin barrel 2A38M cannon effective out to about 4-5km then you have excellent coverage.

Most AHEAD type rounds are not like the larger calibre ANIET type rounds and generally have a nose full of fragments... cubes, ball bearings, odd shaped small stuff. The middle is more cubes and balls and odd shaped fragment stuff and the rear has the rear facing sensor and a very small bursting charge to scatter the fragments in front of it and blow them forward and outwards.

This means when you fire a round at a target, you don't detonate it as it draws level with the target... you detonate it 10 metres short and despite the fact that the shell might have been going to miss by a metre or more exploding 10m short and spraying small heavy very high velocity fragments forward in a cone towards where the target is gives you a good chance of a hit.

For very light cardboard or plastic structure targets these fragments that are probably moving at transsonic speeds by about 1.5 to 2 km range inside the shell will be accelerated by the small dispersal charge forward at rather higher speeds and will do some serious damage.

Very small very heavy fragments will retain velocity rather well and do good damage to maybe 20-25m range... in many cases the first volley might only damage the target but that makes it easier to hit with the second volley, and of course other times hits might come rather easy, or not at all.

The point is that the airburst round is certainly limited by the calibre in terms of the number of fragments it can project and larger heavier calibres can certainly deliver more fragments per shot, but as I mentioned a 30mm 2A42 cannon can fire 800 rounds per minute and a 23mm cannon from a Shilka fires at 1,000 rpm and is water cooled to maintain a high rate of fire.

A 57mm shell or grenade (depending on whether you are talking about the gun or the grenade launcher) has much more room for explosive and fragmentation material, while 125mm rounds will tend to be HE FRAG shells with a special air burst fuse fitted. It might have fragments in the nose to hit targets in its path, but it will also have lots of prefragmented side walls to direct fragments sideways too.

They already have smart fuses in their RPO-M rockets that will detect in real time if the rocket is stopped by the target, or if it is penetrating into a room or bunker or light vehicle, which triggers whether it uses a HEAT warhead to blow a hole in a wall or hull side of a vehicle and then as it enters explodes inside the target, or if it delays the explosive and just pushes its way into the target and explodes. I would expect with tank and artillery and air defence shells they can be just as sophisticated.

These light 23mm and 30mm airburst rounds will be used against drones... the will be mounted on air defence and anti drone vehicles... for use in the ground fire role as shown by the 23 x 152mm twin guns mounted on trucks or armoured vehicles use standard HE frag rounds which will be rather more devastating to troops even wearing body armour.

Infantry vehicles will most likely be equipped with 57mm grenade launchers that pack significantly more HE and fragmentation material than even 30mm cannon rounds.

There also have been news about Pantsir-SM variant without guns and tracking radar, but with double amount of missiles. That will be 96 smaller missiles in total on one vehicle. However I didn't see any news of it being in metal yet.

Without the tracking radar it would only be a lot of extra missiles ready to fire... the tracking radar is used to send command guidance signals to the outgoing missile so essentially it will just be extra missiles a vehicle nearby could use up before it starts to use its own missiles.

Makes you wonder what is the point in continuing to use this huge rotating and tilting structure. Why not just use vertical launchers like with the Tor?

The solid rocket booster accelerates the missile for about 1 second and then falls away. Being able to point the missile directly where you want it to go means less manouvering in the early part of flight when the missile will get the best speed and range if it is not manouvering and just accelerating and climbing.

Vertically launching them could still be done if they are boosted out of the tubes and up into the air with rocket thrusters to turn the missile in the direction it is to move before the big solid rocket motor lights up, but the length of the missiles, especially the very long range missiles with the very big booster rocket would be problematic mounted vertically.

Even TOR only fits inside the turret ring to allow a full length missile to be used.

The new ARH tiny 10kg SAMs to intercept artillery rockets and shells and presumably also drones could be small enough for vertical launch tubes in enormous numbers... they could save money by having a radar vehicle with AESA radar arrays pointing in every direction including up and having command guided as well as IIR guided and ARH guided missiles.

The command guided Pantsir and TOR missiles are actually rather cheap, but as production of AESA radar components increases the price for the modules should dramatically reduce to the point where they could be very cheap.

Equally QWIP IIR sensors that can detect normal and IR light frequencies could become a dollar a chip with a very high resolution sensor able to work in many weather conditions and also day or night.

That actually makes the trailer more useful and autonomous... the search radar on Tunguska and Pantsir is obviously used to find targets and plot their positions and courses that can be shared with over vehicles in the battery and also sent to HQ, but in a battery if all 6 vehicles were running their search radar there is a chance of interference and obviously a massive amount of radar emissions for any wild weasel flight.

Sometimes one vehicle in the battery will operate its search radar and hand target data to all vehicles in the battery or sometimes they will have a specialised battery radar that does the search and the information is collected by the command vehicle and it allocates targets to different vehicles in the battery based on which is closest to the threat and how much ready to fire ammo and missiles they might have at the time.

Once they have the target data the vehicle does not need its search radar but it does need its tracking radar because the tracking radar tracks the target but also the outgoing missile and sends flight commands to the missile to manouver the missile to hit the target.

When used in optical mode the tracking radar still commands the missile but based on optical tracking of the target rather than radar tracking of the target so radar jamming wont stop the missile hitting you.

Eventually, hopefully they might get AESA radar arrays small enough and light enough and cheap enough to put four on one vehicle facing front and sides and rear so they can be fixed and don't need to move to give 360 degree coverage... having an array on top for diving top attack missiles and drones might be a good thing too...

Of course they often put the optronics mount there in a ballturret...

That would allow 360 degree horizontal electronic scanning... which is vastly superior to mechanical scanning... especially for fast targets.

Actually for the TOR such a set up would be a massive improvement.

Right now the TOR needs a turret to turn the tracking radar in the direction of the target, which limits the original model to 8 ready to fire missiles because they are placed inside the turret ring because of their length they wouldn't fit anywhere else in the turret.

The newer TOR missiles are smaller and 16 missiles can fit inside the turret ring.

But with four AESA radars that could perform both tracking and search functions and would not need to be traversed as they can scan electronically much faster than any turret could turn, plus the full 360 degree coverage would allow 360 degree launches with the vertically fired missiles.

Without a turret and a turret ring you could fit an enormous number of missiles ready to fire... even just making the turret ring a square would probably allow double the missiles again, but a trailer could carry an enormous number of missiles ready to fire.