Medo wrote:Osa was not outranged in range, but in altitude. Osa could see and engage upo to 5 km in altitude and some drones fly higher than that, like Bayraktar. Sosna have the same altitude limitation of 5 km, so will have the same problem as Osa. But on the other hand, Sosna is fully integrated in IADS to share situational picture and will have support of ELINT and ECM complexes and jammers, which support drones will have no effect on Sosna.
Exact Medo.
In Arksath air defense forces was operative a low number of old Оса -9K33- and an about equal number of Оса-АКМ -9K33M3-.
The first models failed to down almost any UAV (managing to down only some unamanned conversion of Ан-2 with ФАБ-250 bombs on board) while the majority of downed Azeri UAVs was executed by the 10-11 Оса-АКМ ,from a batch of 35 Оса-АКМ acquired by Armenia in a deal for 27 ml dollars.
As you have rightly observed
the Оса-АКМ has an altitude limit of about 5000-5500 metes that allow to down UAVs in the class of TB2 ,when operated in a cautious way,
only when placed in ambush on promontory and raised terrain - as happened in the instances of the Hermes-300 and Byraktars downed-
Another main
limit was the single target engaged, in the latest conflict the
Оса-АКМ operators had usually several UAV within theirs engagement footprint but after having engaged one it was forced to immediately scout out because the system would also be
incapable to down eventual air delivered ammunitions against it.
Сосна is not the successor of Оса but instead
of Стрела-10 on a totally new level; its role is the
coverage of ground forces on march at very low altitude completely undetectable by enemy SIGINT and
not degradable by any kind of EW sytem and to organize totally undetectable
ambushs for enemy helicopters and UAVs attempting to use terrain masking to close with the ground formations.
The
successors of Оса in ground forces formation is Тор in its varous iterations and also here the
difference is simple crushing even taking into account old models.
Self-proclaimed Arksath Republic forces actually with
those tiny and vastly outdated air defenses achieved an huge loss exchange advantage in mere resource and economical terms against enemy air systems , but there was
too much resource gap against the entire Azerbaijan's forces with Turkey support ,even more taking into account that Armenian divisions remained completely motioneless in theirs positions and only a very scarce material support was provided gererally by Armenia.
I repeat with resources in air defense and EW systems equal to even one quarter ,may be even one fifth, of what Azerbaijan has invested in UAVs the latter would have run out of drones within the second week of conflict.