S-500 'Prometheus' and S-550 missile systems

LMFS wrote:

GarryB wrote:The change will effectively mean they can detect targets at much greater ranges and can now launch missiles at a much wider range of targets over a much bigger area.

And more importantly they can intercept targets that were before considered practically unstoppable, like ICBM or the new hypersonic weapons that US still does not have... it is back to the drawing board for them

The introduction of S-350, Pantsir SM and S-500 means that not just  the most advanced modern means of aerial attack but also the ones that the NATO plan to introduce in the next 20 years cound be countered by specific systems.

Pantsir SM with the new little missiles can engage small drones and loitering ammunition  even if they attack en masse while with the longer autonomous guidance ones it can deal with loyal wingman before they could use their own  weapon, the S-350 (a somewhat underrated one) with its AESA radars and fire and forget missiles can engage both the glide bombs and tactical missiles than, thanks to the longest, range version  the same plane that drop them even if stealth. In the same time it can protect also cities and important bases from en masse attacks with heavy cruise missiles that would try to overload the longer range S-400, tasked to protect a way larger area, by a simultaneous attack on different locations. 
About S-500, LMFS said the most already, just add that it can be used also against more conventional menaces.
Let's imagine a B-2 trying to attack Damascus being engaged by S-500 while the missiles it have launched are dealt by S-350 and the eventual few ones of them that will survive by Pantsirs. 
Obviously

marcellogo wrote:The introduction of S-350, Pantsir SM and S-500 means that not just  the most advanced modern means of aerial attack but also the ones that the NATO plan to introduce in the next 20 years cound be countered by specific systems.

Pantsir SM with the new little missiles can engage small drones and loitering ammunition  even if they attack en masse while with the longer autonomous guidance ones it can deal with loyal wingman before they could use their own  weapon, the S-350 (a somewhat underrated one) with its AESA radars and fire and forget missiles can engage both the glide bombs and tactical missiles than, thanks to the longest, range version  the same plane that drop them even if stealth. In the same time it can protect also cities and important bases from en masse attacks with heavy cruise missiles that would try to overload the longer range S-400, tasked to protect a way larger area, by a simultaneous attack on different locations. 
About S-500, LMFS said the most already, just add that it can be used also against more conventional menaces.
Let's imagine a B-2 trying to attack Damascus being engaged by S-500 while the missiles it have launched are dealt by S-350 and the eventual few ones of them that will survive by Pantsirs. 
Obviously

That is the beauty of it, first Russia taunted US to rush ahead with the development of hypersonic weapons to match their new capabilities, and when they are already fully engaged spending (but not getting results even in the initial types as ARRW), they show they already have the antidote for anything they come up with... fully functional and tested and about to enter service. I would not like to be in the position of a military planer in the US right now, I can tell you that...

The introduction of S-350, Pantsir SM and S-500 means that not just the most advanced modern means of aerial attack but also the ones that the NATO plan to introduce in the next 20 years cound be countered by specific systems.

And the beauty of it is that it is not just these three systems... Igla-S and Verba have proximity fuses and can shoot down targets the size of AT-3 missiles and smaller, and also the introduction of 30mm and 57mm rounds with air burst will be much cheaper than a missile but rather effective and rather more efficient than using standard rounds, and of course the new Pine missiles are small and cheap and simple beam riding missiles like a super high speed Kornet.

They tried altitude first with the U2 spy plane, then speed with the SR-71, and then they tried stealth and low altitude flight, and next they want to go with a swarm... but the Soviet and now Russian air defence didn't focus on each one individually... it defends against them all... Russia itself has stepped ahead and gone for hypersonic and is in the best position to defend itself from a new attack that is only in service with their own forces.

With S-500 it is not just range, it means the air defence force... the IADS network of Russia now extends to the fastest objects man has made and it also extends up into space, able to shoot down low flying satellites as well as ballistic and non ballistic missiles, right down to tiny hovering drones and vehicles on the ground.

I rather suspect the best response from Russia to an enormous cloud of thousands of drones coming across Europe would be tactical nuclear air bursts amongst them before they cross the border into Russian territory, but also would require strikes against the countries from whom the attacks were launched and those that owned the drones, just to make it clear such attacks will not be tolerated.

As I keep mentioning... if there are any countries on the planet that can make tiny but reliable drones in numbers big enough to create a swarm it would be Russia or China... I certainly wouldn't think the US could make such a drone affordable.

Let's imagine a B-2 trying to attack Damascus being engaged by S-500 while the missiles it have launched are dealt by S-350 and the eventual few ones of them that will survive by Pantsirs.

More importantly that is just one defensive bubble... the S-500 system in Damascus would engage the B-2 but the long range OTH radars would have detected the incoming threat well before it approached its launch position and so depending on the direction of the attack coastal units might shoot down any weapons the B-2 launched before it gets anywhere near its targets, and those missiles might fly past a dozen different SAM sites which would all be put on alert when the attack was detected... ships at sea behind the first flight of B-2s might be alerted to take out any second attack wave, and then enemy ships and other aircraft in the area can be checked to see if they want to join the fiery dive to the ground with your tail missing club...

We talk about the missiles themselves but all the radar and sensors they add to the network greatly increases what your IADS can see which means less guessing and better decisions.

We have heard about modifications of large AAMs to engage smaller targets with mini missiles they deliver hundreds of kms away, and the same could be applied to missiles as big as the S-500, but I would think that in addition to such weapons that another nuclear armed missile could be added perhaps with a cluster of nuclear warheads that could be released at altitude and spread out evenly amongst a swarm of enemy drones and detonated at the altitude they are operating at to stop it dead in its tracks... putting it on the S-500 means you could launch it deep into enemy territory so you are not nuking up your own nearby forces.... perhaps nuclear powered EMP bombs... I guess it all depends on the form and size of these drones... but to get huge numbers they will need to be small which probably means relatively slow and short ranged, which means transport aircraft or missiles to deliver them to their area of operation... which means the best defence will be a good IADS.... something the west lacks so even previous attack methods like cruise missiles would be rather effective against HATO... not to mention drones and stealth and high speed.

MiG and Sukhoi are making new planes and older planes so the gaps there will be filling in too.

I would not like to be in the position of a military planer in the US right now, I can tell you that...

4D chess is something to behold isn't it...

But then creating a powerful and effective IADS does not make sense for the west because they believe attack is their best defence. The Soviets and Russians have been the victims of western aggression since the end of WWI, and to their credit they have done a pretty good job... especially recently... no need for 50K tanks, but they are moving to the quality that the west said was going to save them from the hordes of Soviet forces just waiting to invade europe... now the shoe is on the other foot and HATO have the numbers and are pushing up to Russian borders, undermining democracy and breaking rules of civil decency in the process...

GarryB wrote:
I rather suspect the best response from Russia to an enormous cloud of thousands of drones coming across Europe would be tactical nuclear air bursts amongst them before they cross the border into Russian territory, but also would require strikes against the countries from whom the attacks were launched and those that owned the drones, just to make it clear such attacks will not be tolerated.

The future of war is going to be Illovaisk writ large. Hundreds, if not thousands of cheap COTS drones surveying the battlefield as spotters for the powerful tube and rocket artillery batteries while IADS pushes airpower away with air and missile strikes cratering targets deep in the enemies rear, disrupting enemy communications greatly.

GarryB wrote:4D chess is something to behold isn't it...

Talking a lot about checkmates lately, this is a nice one. Russia is organizing the best possible present to the US in the 20 year anniversary of them withdrawing from ABM with a complete reversal of the strategic balance, from US officially announcing that they were going to put a gun against their head to Russia been the ones that actually have that gun and zero willingness to negotiate it in exchange of nothing as Gorbi did. US are going to need the best their extraordinary cheek and creative stunts can get them in the negotiations

Found this to be a good summary of the new system

It's way too early to analyse the 500th in any way shape or form. Even the S-400 is highly enigmatic, let alone the S-500.

Enterprises of Russia’s Almaz-Antey Concern have launched serial production of missiles for the S-500 Prometey air defense systems currently in development, a defense industry source told TASS.

https://tass.com/defense/1324639

"State tests are completed": Almaz-Antey has started supplying the S-500 Prometheus air defense system to the troops. 

The latest S-500 Prometheus anti-aircraft missile system went to the troops, the Almaz-Antey concern began supplying the complexes. This was announced by Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov.

Borisov answered a number of questions from journalists at the Tyumen Oil and Gas Forum, including those concerning the new Russian anti-aircraft system. According to him, the S-500 air defense system has completed state tests and has already begun to be delivered to the troops. At the same time, the complex is not yet delivered in a full configuration, but in a truncated one. The Deputy Prime Minister refused to disclose details.

"State tests have just been completed and the first deliveries of this complex have begun. And that is not yet in the full nomenclature, which, at the request of the customer, Almaz-Antey should be made" – he said.

Answering the journalist's question, which country can become the first buyer of the new anti-aircraft system, Borisov suggested that India, but immediately made a reservation that only potentially. Currently, there is no question of selling the S-500 abroad, the primary task is to saturate the Russian troops with new complexes.

Information about the conclusion of the first contract for the supply of S-500 air defense systems appeared at the end of July this year. Then it was reported that the Ministry of Defense ordered "the supply of more than 10 S-500 anti-aircraft missile systems". In early August, mass production of missiles for the S-500 began.

According to available information, the minimum set of equipment for the S-500 Prometheus will consist of a combat control point with an automatic control system (ACS), a radar complex, a multifunctional radar "illumination" and up to 12 anti-aircraft missile launchers based on Russian or Belarusian-made tractors.

Source: 

Does the S-500 complex have powerful road mobile  OTH radarcapable of accurately detecting stealth fighters, as well as relaying the detection info to Russian aircraft? I know the S-500's missiles aren't against fighter aircraft, but I hope it's radars are capable of independently guiding ARH air to air missiles like R-37M or if. 810 without the launching aircraft having to turn on its radar.

Can we reasonably theorize that the S-500 has extremely powerful and accurate L band radar with 1000km + range?

I doubt. Those trucks they are mounted on can't give them enough power.

Low frequency radars generally need huge antennas to work as advertized.

This system will be connected to ground based OTH radars directly through the IADS.

Guiding missiles from other plateform is possible through datalink which is the core of IADS so it should be possible. But is it needed ? I doubt. It's better to use airborbe radars because the enemy aircraft when locked on by a ground radar will go down to loose the lock with the radar horizon which doesn't work against airborne radars.

It works within an air defence network with enormous ground based radar that can't see targets closer than 1,000km but can see targets out to about 6,000km or so like the container system that tracked US F-35s flying along the Iran/Iraq border from inside Russian airspace...

The S-500 needs to hit targets in orbit so I would think a radar range of 2,500km would be necessary to not require external sources of data to work, but obviously like any SAM it will fit rather well into the current IADS of Russia and provide a new level of detection and performance.

A previous post on this thread talks about the outstanding performance of the new radars and about how they are much better than existing radars like the ones even in use with S-400, mostly because they are designed to be on all the time.

I know is sounds funny, but one of the core failures of the Patriot during Desert Storm was its radar... like most SAMs it was designed to be operated for a couple of hours and then turned off.   The S-300 and S-400 battery radars don't scan the airspace 24/7... simply because it gives away your position and over time the clock becomes out of sync and you start to get problems.

With most things timing is everything, with most military things it is critical... imagine talking to someone over the phone and they are tracking something in space on its way towards you and you were using different time zone times... they would say look in this direction at this time and you should see your target... but when you look there is nothing there... because it actually went past an hour earlier.

For an air defence system like a SAM all sorts of things need to be coordinated and timed perfectly... when a target is coming in at 7km per second if you miss by half a second that means your interceptor will not get within 3.5km of the target at the minimum... probably much more because your interceptor will be moving during that half second as well... so assuming your interceptor is also moving at 7km/s a half second out and your interceptor might not get closer than 7km... in space even a nuke warhead might not be good enough for a kill in that situation... and if a system is run for days you might find you are minutes out of sync...

Things as critical as timing for warhead explosions so you destroy the target rather than shred its tail... but in Desert Storm that was more to do with the fact that Patriot was supposed to shoot down conventional aircraft and not mach 7 rockets flying about mach 2 faster than they were designed to fly so often as they came in they broke up and the patriot would naturally home in on the largest piece which was normally the fuel tanks and rocket motors which were no longer the most dangerous parts.

The important thing is that the new radars are going to further improve the overall picture for that region for the ground forces and in future the ships that operate them...

Note long wave radars don't necessarily use a huge amount of power, but they do use it more efficiently when used against stealthy targets where the shape of the target no longer effects detection range and the entire aircraft reflects the signal...

I should mention that part of the reason the PAC-3 Patriot... the anti ballistic one... is so much more expensive than S-400 is that it requires satellite time, which is an ongoing cost and very expensive for the system to work properly.

S-400 and presumably S-500 is completely self contained with everything it needs to do its job, though obviously would be very vulnerable on their own but when integrated into an IADS network become much more powerful and make the IADS it is attached to rather more aware of its surrounding airspace...

India Could Potentially Become 1st Buyer Of Russia's S-500 Missile System: Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov

https://br.sputniknews.com/defesa/2021091618026041-sistema-s-500-entra-em-servico-do-exercito-da-russia-e-pode-ser-exportado-para-india/

GarryB wrote:I should mention that part of the reason the PAC-3 Patriot... the anti ballistic one... is so much more expensive than S-400 is that it requires satellite time, which is an ongoing cost and very expensive for the system to work properly.

Which makes it a more superior system compared to the S-400 because satellite time makes the PAC-3's interceptors that much more accurate.

Let Russia develop such tech first. Cost of S-400 and S-500 will also increase.

marcellogo wrote:Let's imagine a B-2 trying to attack Damascus being engaged by S-500 while the missiles it have launched are dealt by S-350 and the eventual few ones of them that will survive by Pantsirs. 

Fertile imagination. Given the proclivity of Syrian S-300s to shoot down Russian intelligence gathering aircraft we should not be worried.

B-2 will not attack S-500 regiments in isolation. They will be accompanied by Boeing E-6 Mercury, Lockheed EC-130H Compass Call and the EC-135 will provide support followed by F-18 Growlers coming at low altitude. EW will degrade the S-500s radar effectiveness. This will be followed by deployment of ADM-160 MALD DECOYS in dozens and drone-like decoy that generates a radar return similar to the B-2. Eventually the S-500 regiment will be attacked with AGM-88 Harms and JSOW munitions.

Syria lost three Pantsir-S1 and one Buk-1 air defense systems deployed in Idlib.These systems became a target of Turkish drones, which employed electronic warfare to evade the air defense systems.

Not that U.S needs to use B-2 against the S-500.

Tomahawk missiles fired from US surface combatants in the Mediterranean Sea that has features such as digital scene matching and area co-relation and terrain contour matching, can target even without the navigation of the GPS system, rendering the S-500 across the border incapable of intercepting the missile

Russia has sukhoi and mig-31 in the air with r-37.

S-400/500 will turn on their radar at the last moment. Surveillance radars will be far away from them. They have all the OTH and Nebo like radars and small smaller ones covering dead zones.

S-400 engagement radar has a very narrow pencil beam so only the aircraft locked on will know its painting him. Those other aircraft won't see it.

They are also using fake radars in mass so US harms will likely be used against 200 $ radar repeaters.

The drone used by turkish army had 200km range around they C2 post which against Russia means 10 minute survivability at such distance.

B-2 may have a very small RCS but its IR signature is just as huge as any airliner so it will be detected by any russian SHORAD out there. B-2 uses dumb bombs so it must be at least 5km from the target. Get luck destroying an S-400 with that.

And let's not forget most of their f-18 will by swiming with fishes in the sea because those carriers aren't going anywhere near russian shores.

RTN wrote:

GarryB wrote:I should mention that part of the reason the PAC-3 Patriot... the anti ballistic one... is so much more expensive than S-400 is that it requires satellite time, which is an ongoing cost and very expensive for the system to work properly.

Which makes it a more superior system compared to the S-400 because satellite time makes the PAC-3's interceptors that much more accurate.

Let Russia develop such tech first. Cost of S-400 and S-500 will also increase.

Then why the heck couldn´t the PAC-3 not shot down a simple drone coming from Yemen? Suprior tech my ass!

RTN wrote:

marcellogo wrote:Let's imagine a B-2 trying to attack Damascus being engaged by S-500 while the missiles it have launched are dealt by S-350 and the eventual few ones of them that will survive by Pantsirs. 

Fertile imagination. Given the proclivity of Syrian S-300s to shoot down Russian intelligence gathering aircraft we should not be worried.

B-2 will not attack S-500 regiments in isolation. They will be accompanied by Boeing E-6 Mercury,  Lockheed EC-130H Compass Call and the EC-135 will provide support followed by F-18 Growlers coming at low altitude. EW will degrade the S-500s radar effectiveness. This will be followed by deployment of ADM-160 MALD DECOYS in dozens and drone-like decoy that generates a radar return similar to the B-2. Eventually the S-500 regiment will be attacked with AGM-88 Harms and JSOW munitions.  

Syria lost three Pantsir-S1 and one Buk-1 air defense systems deployed in Idlib.These systems became a target of Turkish drones, which employed electronic warfare to evade the air defense systems.

Not that U.S needs to use B-2 against the S-500.

Tomahawk missiles fired from US surface combatants in the Mediterranean Sea that has features such as digital scene matching and area co-relation and terrain contour matching, can target even without the navigation of the GPS system, rendering the S-500 across the border incapable of intercepting the missile

The plane was shot down by a S-200 before the syrian air defence network was connected to the russian one.

The S-400 (S-500 wont engage enemy aircraft most of the time) has a feature that works with ELINT systems and can attack sources of ECM. Your precious E-6, EC-130H, EC-135 (a 60 year old plane, really?) and Growlers will be shot down by 40N6 missiles at 400+ km range or by R-37M fired from MiG-31BM or Su-35 aircraft at 300km.

ADM-160 will be fried by russian REB systems.

The syrian air defence systems in Idlib shot down more then 60 enemy drones in 3 days. After that the Turkish had nothing left.

Tomahawk is a obsolete missile. The last time it was launched against syrian targets 95% were either shot down or destroyed by ECM.

RTN wrote:

marcellogo wrote:Let's imagine a B-2 trying to attack Damascus being engaged by S-500 while the missiles it have launched are dealt by S-350 and the eventual few ones of them that will survive by Pantsirs. 

Fertile imagination. Given the proclivity of Syrian S-300s to shoot down Russian intelligence gathering aircraft we should not be worried.

B-2 will not attack S-500 regiments in isolation. They will be accompanied by Boeing E-6 Mercury,  Lockheed EC-130H Compass Call and the EC-135 will provide support followed by F-18 Growlers coming at low altitude. EW will degrade the S-500s radar effectiveness. This will be followed by deployment of ADM-160 MALD DECOYS in dozens and drone-like decoy that generates a radar return similar to the B-2. Eventually the S-500 regiment will be attacked with AGM-88 Harms and JSOW munitions.  

Typical armchair expert.


The main characteristic of the S-300 is the mobility, the early warning radar system follow the agressors with VHF/UHF radars, the enemy aircrafts has no cluse about the position of the S-300 units - they are activated only if they are in good position to shoot down the intruders.

So, the end result will be like the F-35 will recognise that the S-300 is behind him, and getting few missile into his engine .
And all of the decoys can spend they life wandering around.

Those decoy are just tomahawks without warheads. They must be just as expensive. Same type of engine, same electronics and computer to guide itself, same materials.

If they were that cheap US would have put a warhead on it and programed to blow up on a target.