S-300P/400 News [Russian Strategic Air Defense] #3

The A-235 system is ABM only! It will have three kinds of missiles, ranging from short (40 km altitude) to long (800 km or more altitude). The long range missiles (silo based) will have a nuclear warhead with 5 kt, like the older systems. The short and medium range missiles will have a kinetic interceptor. The short and medium range missiles will be mounted on a truck and are not silo based.

Do you have any information about these TEL trucks?

The system A-235 is ABM only at at the moment is Moscow ABM only, but might be used in Leningrad and/or Vladivostok in time.

Most Soviet ICBMs were shown on trucks during parades, but the trucks were just used to deliver the missiles to their silos so they could be lowered into those silos ready for use. If you have seen TEL trucks for A-235 I would be very interested to have a look.

The S-500 is against ALL kinds of air threats, ranging from drones, to aircraft to all kind of missiles. Like Garry wrote it is high mobile and intended for protection of high value targets.

Agreed it will be able to hit all sorts of targets just like S-300V missiles and S-400 missiles can, but these S-500 missiles are designed to hit targets moving at up to 7km/s or faster and both inside and outside the atmosphere... these are big powerful heavy missiles that will be co-located with other missile systems... having a TOR battery with them means if a small guided missile is detected approaching then a TOR will be launched rather than an S-500 because the TOR is much cheaper and optimised for that sort of task.

A B-2 flying 500km away and yes they would probably launch an S-500 to take it out because of the value of the target warrants it, but a mini Turkish drone... no... not if there was something else that could take it down cheaper.

Both systems are needed, S-500 can't replace A-235 and otherwise. Both systems overlaps in protection and will be part of the typical russian layered air defense.

For defending a fixed point the A-235 is probably better but its radar and command facilities will not be mobile so even if the lighter missiles are truck mobile the system is not so it would make sense to launch from silos because they are already built and provide protection from attack.

The S-500 is mobile which will be its best feature and when they put it in mass production and onto large ships then Russian Air defence capacity will cover all bases... they might end up using it to shoot at rocks from space if they detect them early enough.

S-500 is worldwide well known, but A-235 is more secret project with only rare information. This is to the reason that Russia will sell S-500 for export, if something new is in the pipe. A-235 is a sophisticated high-tech project, intented to secure the strategic interest and existence of Russia. No A-235 component will be ever sold!

Might be a while before export versions of S-500 are available... not the least because export restrictions on missiles don't allow missiles with flight ranges of more than about 300km to be sold... export Iskander has a range of 280km for instance... S-500 would have a range double that in its Russian version.

Just had a look at the thread on the Nudol A-235 missile and its range of 3,000km does make it very much an equivalent of the GBI... except it works more reliably.

It also mentioned mobile launchers which is rather new, but as I mentioned most of the system is not mobile so they must have another reason for the mobile launchers.

Perhaps there are plans to allow the A-235 to be used together with the S-500 system where the smaller A-235 missiles can move around with the S-500 system using target information from its radars and systems to detect targets and threats and to perhaps work together with that to hit higher operating satellites perhaps?

One of the primary problems of the PAC-3 Patriot... the version for ATBM use, is that it needs satellite uplink time to actually work which makes it enormously expensive.

In comparison the S-400 has all the radars and systems it needs to do its job and can be moved to a location and be ready to work in less than 10 minutes... making it actually practical and mobile.

If you had THAAD and Patriot PAC-3 then you would still need a decent SAM to engage cruise missiles and fighters and bombers and other aerial targets before you got something approaching the performance of S-400 and the PAC-2 and PAC-3 and THAAD systems would each cost more than an S-400 system... if you were allowed to buy them.

Funny that USA split their efforts in missile defense between Navy, Army and Air Force, so that USA has x systems, but none of them working really good.

The only air defence systems of the US that I respect are the navy ones... on board their ships and their ships linked together with AEGIS is really the only IADS they ever really developed...

The Army stuff is a joke... Air Force cast off missiles like AMRAAM and Sidewinder and Stinger.

Patriot and THAAD have serious issues and problems and as we have seen in Saudi Arabia.... a well planned attack can completely bypass them and make them look silly.

The USN Standard system is rather more capable and is something worth a bit of respect, because together with AEGIS it is actually a proper IADS even if it is not a nationwide system protecting the US, but a shipwide system protecting groups of US ships.

As far as I know is THAAD and AEGIS not intended for the interception of ICBM. GBI is! GBI is based on the Taurus missile and a kill vehicle. It's a silo based system. Of course THAAD and AEGIS have the capabilities of ICBM interception...or let's write terminal interception of warheads.

THAAD is a theatre ABM system it was never intended to intercept IRBMs because under the INF treaty such things were banned anyway, and the ABM treaty meant anti ICBM or SLBM weapons were banned too so THAAD was designed and intended to engage short range ballistic missiles and it is not super great at doing that.

AEGIS uses Standard SM-2 and SM-6 missiles... they are two stage long missile with decent range that I would probably compare with the S-300V system if you could combine the two into one missile. They can shoot down air targets and ballistic targets and seem reasonably capable.

GBI is comparable to A-235 and it's predecessors, like Garry wrote.

Except A-235 is the latest evolution of a mature operational ABM system.

Considering that Russia now has a ring of OTH radars looking out from its borders for threats from the wave tops to deep up into space, what they are lacking is an ABM missile that is located around the place to defend more than just Moscow... which was essentially a limitation of the ABM treaty.

Now the treaty is gone and considering that unlike previous ABMs located in Moscow that had ranges of 400-500-600km at most, these new missiles reach much further and much higher, so basing them all in the ring around Moscow limits their reach... A-235 means they can be located further afield and more radars scanning the airspace inside Russian territory can be used for ABM management to shoot down a variety of targets... they could put A-235 missiles near the Northern and Pacific Fleets, near St Petersburg, in a multitude of other places where it could be useful to hit threats early.

S-500 is going to take that a step further and make roaming ABM systems a reality... whether it is on armoured trains carrying unlimited range nuclear powered cruise missiles or on ships sailing around the world able to put into port and defend the local area from any heavy ballistic attack... something unheard of previously, though with SM-6 and its relatively wide deployment on US ships something the US has had too, though S-500 seems to be going to be rather more impressive in every regard.

When they mentioned a 7km/s target speed they did say it could engage targets going faster in some situations...


S-400 can engage targets moving at 4.8km/s which means it can probably engage SLBM warheads already anyway.

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It is not just missiles and radars that form S-300 and S-400 batteries, there are also all sorts of other support equipment that is critical to its performance... force multipliers if you will that can jam or distract those trying to deal with said batteries with jammers and decoys and other equipment.

Isos wrote:
Older systems use older stuff that is not really produced anymore.

Upgrading them to S-400 level is just as expensive as buying a new system since pretty much everything needs to be upgraded inside. At the end only the truck could stay the same but that would be an old plateform.

And missiles have a limit date so after some point you either need to upgrade them or remove them and buy new ones.

For smaller systems it's worth modernizing them because it can be cheap but for big systems not really. You would prefere to have new S-400.

The opposite really. Its the larger stuff tends to have a greater scope for modernization since they have lots of "fat" that can be trimmed down and a multitude of elements that could be refined further to collectively improve performance. In fact, the biggest step change of Russian SAMs compared to their Soviet iterations is the modern electronic base. Suddenly everything has much tighter ECCM, system reaction times have grown leaps, and interceptors could connect with their targets at further ranges since the guidance computer can calculate much more effective trajectories for their interceptors to follow. They simply replaced the antiquated Soviet electronics, and boom.

Even if it costs a lot, the potential of getting S-400 level performance out of obsolescent equipment is not to be dismissed.

And the upgrade likely wouldn't cost as much, considering the extended commonality between the S-400 and the S-300PM series. Fun fact, the term S-400 is marketing; it was originally S-300PMU2, but S-400 probably rolled better on the tongue. Updating the electronics base would definitely be expensive, but then again, you only really need to update specific components like the radar processing computers and that would be enough to bring it to speed. Plus the logistics for at least the automotive base are already bought and paid for, so that already takes care of much of the operating cost for the system.

Another thing to consider is when refurbishing stuff they wouldn't really throw the old stuff to the dumps just yet. Instead what happens is the replaced components typically gets sent to a warehouse to be used as spare parts - or even retrofitted to the oldest stuff in the reserve so its not as hopelessly out of date.