Pantsir-S1 News Thread:

Other story is for tracked version of Pantsir for ground units, which will more often work on the move and capability to fire on the move is a big + for them.

The ability to fire and guide missiles on the move will make them much more effective because they will be more difficult targets and they can immediately fire on targets.

Interesting the number of sand coloured Pantsir-S1 systems there are... I remember comments for naysayers that most of the production Pantsirs were that colour because they were all going to the Middle East and the Russians weren't getting very many at all.

Nice to see Russian sand coloured systems...

You have a short memory...

You posted: http://www.redstar.ru/2011/02/22_02/2_02.html

In the "Army will get no tanks in 2011" thread...

It says in the 2011-2012 period what major purchases will be made and it includes these paragraphs:

In addition, the air defense troops the Army will have upgraded the
S-300V4, Buk-M2 and Buk-M3, anti-aircraft missile systems, short-range
Tor-M2U (M), portable anti-aircraft missile complexes "Igla-S" and
"Willow".

I would suspect, though I have no evidence to back this up, that because they already have Tunguska in service and a new model entered production and service in 2003 ( http://kbptula.ru/eng/kbp/rusarmy.htm ) that the plans if I were making them would be that a Tunguska upgrade would be developed based on unifying the sensors of the new Pantsir with the existing Tunguska but leaving the missiles the same as they likely have lots in stock. The issue of missiles would depend on what production capacity I had for each type of missile (which is also used on Kashtan and Kashtan-M) and I would try to scale back production of the older shorter ranged missiles and convert that production capacity to the new types with older short range missiles in stocks gradually used up and replaced with newer longer range models.
Assuming the article above is about new models it is all together possible that this upgrade might already have started.
As these new SAMs are related to HERMES and the difference is that HERMES has a terminal homing seeker it would make a lot of sense to replace all the different existing types of SA-19 with the new missile compatible with HERMES so one missile can be made with different seeker options (including no seeker for the SAM). Obviously making MMW radar homing and IIR homing models as SAMs makes the low altitude penetrators job that much harder.

Regarding the warhead they could use the same warhead in every missile. A powerful shaped charge warhead to penetrate 2m of RHA Steel should not be too hard as the warhead is almost 30kgs of HE. In addition to the large shaped charge the sides and rear can be covered in fragmentation material and rod penetrators can be positioned radially around the warhead to increase terminal effects around armoured targets and for soft targets like aircraft... the multi effect being controlled by the fusing. Detonating at the front of the warhead should result in a nice symmetrical fragmentation pattern but not great armour penetration. Detonating from the rear should result in fragmentation but also powerful armour penetration to the front.

They could put two warheads separated by quite a distance with full calibre warheads of 15kgs each which would maximise the fragmentation and also act as a powerful precursor charge to defeat ERA.

Lots of options there.

In many ways the in service Tunguska is probably already meeting the needs of the Army, though that roof mounted pod thing with EO stuff might be a useful addition, and maybe replace the existing search radar and tracking radar with the newer models and of course the electronics that go with that to improve multi target performance would be useful, but I doubt they would urgently want new 20km range missiles and would continue to use existing stocks of 10km range missiles as good enough.
As I mentioned however from a pure producers perspective I would think only having to make two types of missiles (SAMs and HERMES) would make mass production cheaper and easier... for the Army, Air Force, and Navy... and export.

Pantsir is something I think that will be sold widely and will be very popular so I think maximising production capacity for its missiles will be very profitable.

Selling the same missile for the Army, Air Force, and Navy model will just increase the required volume.

HERMES on the other hand... I don't think Russia will be in a hurry to export them... especially as the main platforms would be the Ka-52, Mi-28N/M, and Su-25SM? The ground based systems seem to be truck based and mainly drawings so the focus seems to be on the air platforms... which would need to be purchased first.

Right now I don't think the Russian armed forces has the ability to fully exploit the 15-20km range of these missiles let alone most of Russias export customers.

I would expect those Pantsirs would be new... UAE ordered 50 systems and seem to have gotten them, so there is no issue with production of these systems at the moment.

The air force seems to be losing its PVO component to a new air and space defence command being set up this year.

I think the 30mm will remain effective for a while in air defence and in the airforce and navy.

I think it will first change as armament for BMP type vehicles first and possibly BTR vehicles last with air defence vehicles somewhere in between.

The real question is how effective will the guided 57mm shells be, and of course how much will they cost.

They are really moving for large numbers of dumb weapons to much smaller numbers of guided weapons so it would follow that trend to go from a burst of 30mm shells to one to two 57mm guided shells.

Potentially the shift to 57mm rounds might allow for a return to APHE rounds.

Modern anti armour rounds tend to just punch through armour because of the amount of armour they generally have to deal with doesn't leave much room for anything else.

A shift to a good penetrating 57mm round might allow an APHE to be developed to increase the lethality of a penetration.

Very simply there are well armoured vehicles and there are armoured vehicles and developing two 57mm AP rounds... one for maximum penetration for Tanks or tank like AFVs, and another round with a HE component that doesn't penetrate as much armour but does more damage to the vehicles it can penetrate... the latter could be fired at the engine compartment of a tank for example or the turret bustle of a tank.

I would expect to see 57mm guns firing guided ammo in whatever replaces the Su-25... which might be manned or might not be.

At sea we already see small boats fitted with automatic 57mm guns and the addition of guided ammo and vertical launch missiles might lead to less use of 30mm gatlings at sea.

Ie a really big ship might have 57mm gun mounts where it might have had two single 30mm gun mounts so instead of having 8 single 30mm gun turrets plus 6 Kashtan systems it might have 2 twin 30mm gun turrets and 4 57mm gun turrets and 6 Kashtans.

Very small boats might have a 57mm gun instead of a 30mm gun.

http://www.kbtochmash.ru/press-centre/articles/articles_2.html

Just looking at their pattern with other systems they will likely keep platforms and systems that are inter service systems.

What I mean is that Tunguska, Pantsir-S1, and Kashtan-M are related systems, with the Pantsir-S1 being the most upgraded and up to date.

I would expect the Pantsir-S1 system will replace Tunguska and Kashtan-M in service, though for the Tunguska it will need to keep up with tanks and armour so will likely get a chassis similar to the vehicles it operates with which will likely include wheeled and tracked armoured vehicles for light, medium, and heavy brigades.

TOR and BUK are both used by Army, and Navy, with the Navy model of BUK the most sophisticated so we might see the vertical launch navy model on an Army vehicle... the missile is too long to mount vertically so it will likely be like the Vityaz pictures with a truck or perhaps tracked vehicle with a large box of missiles stored in the horizontal position that is rotated back 90 degrees to allow vertical launch for engagements from any direction.
For the TOR the current Army model is the most sophisticated with more ready to use launch-able missiles and better electronics so that model will likely be adopted by Navy vessels that need a cheap light defence missile.

There is talk of a new optical/IR guided missile to replace the SA-13, and the SOSNA system which includes the navy PALMA missile gun turret for export and cheap domestic use that has the advantage over the Kashtan that it doesn't need under deck space for equipment so it is easy and cheap and simple to mount it on a vessel.

Then we have Morfei and Vityaz which have only been seen in truck mounted versions, plus the S-400 and the S-500.

The S-500 system is interesting in that I think it will likely be deployed with an S-400 battery with a Pantsir-S1 regiment protecting it.
The S-500s role is strategic, but it still needs to be protected from air attack so operating an S-500 battery within an S-400 regiment with Pantsir-S1 vehicles as site protection should enable the S-500 to perform its role and also greatly improve the protection of the site being protected.

I think of Desert Storm when the US used helicopter gunships to take out large long range radar sites to blind them before the cruise missiles and stealth aircraft were sent in... a Pantsir-S1 battery would have stopped that from working.

Nice find!

If it is for Morfei then this might be used for both Morfei and Vityaz as a combined sensor package. To be effective the radar would need to see at least 150km to 200km for targets as the long range Vityaz missiles can reach 120km already.

If that is the case this sensor mount could be used for naval Vityaz/Morfei and the equivelent land based system too.

The optics remind me of Palma and Sosna sensor balls so it might be a multifunction system designed to support a range of weapons.

I think the time of one sensor for one system might be over for the Russian Navy... it was good for each system to have its own separate guidance as there would be no conflicts of use, but it would mean more compatibility issues and of course extra weight and the space with good fields of view is limited in addition to problems of mounting lots of heavy moving antenna high up on a ship is never a good thing. This seems to have fixed radar antenna and a very small moving optics ball... do you know if it has radar antenna on all four sides or just three (if the latter perhaps this is mounted at the front of the ship and another with a rear facing radar antenna is fitted aft...)

It clearly seems to be AESA... with quite small elements.

Wonder if it is a real system or a model.

And name for the system?

Perhaps this is a command module with an AESA radar that searches 360 degrees in some LPI mode that detects targets and passes target data to other vehicles in the unit and up the command chain?

It should have much better performance against low flying and small RCS targets and its continuous 360 degree coverage will make it much harder to sneak up on or hit.

Twin AESAs that size will not be cheap yet looking at it it seems to have the same folding down arrangement as the standard search radar and seems to have some sort of protection plate above where the guns would be, presumably to protect the radar from empty shell casings flying around.

Of course they are currently putting the new naval version into service... perhaps this is testing of that system?

Of course we could speculate all day... good find... very interesting.

Note in this photo the older model does not have the small cabin directly behind the truck cab so this system might have more radar operators or more electronics:







Just looking at the three images above I would say the side door behind the truck cabin is only on one side and is wrong in the drawing, but I still get the impression that the area behind the cabin for electronics and crew is slightly larger in the new vehicle.

Such a back to back radar design suggests offering better coverage with more range.

You can't just spin a radar around as fast as you like... you need to give time for the radar signal to go out and reflect and come back so by putting radar antenna back to back you double the rotation speed and improve air coverage which is important for long range and high speed targets that need rapid radar updates to keep a close track on them.

If you have a HARM coming in at mach 3 detection is simply not good enough, you need to track it to see its precise path through the air so its future position can be calculated and interception points determined rapidly. At such a speed even a minor turn can shift an interception point by kilometres in fractions of seconds... but the point is you don't know where to shift the interception point till the turn or speed change or both has been completed... which means continuous calculations of predicted locations for the missile need to be generated in real time. With double faced spinning radar you detect targets much earlier so you can direct tracking radars which give you a continuous and more precise track of the targets manoeuvres so the missile launched to intercept the target has the most precise information about where the target will be when it gets there and if there is a change that the missile control computer takes the new interception point information and generates flight manoeuvre control commands to send to the missile to redirect it to get it to the new interception point at the right time.