I'm inclined to the idea that Pantsir-M removes the need for Tor -> replace with Redut giving a solid area umbrella.
Have seen some rumors they're going to put in Poliment-Redut so if not in place of the Kinzhal/Tor then where could it go?
If they do upgrade the Kinzhal they could cut down Pantsir-Ms to 1 per corner to free up space I guess.
The original Kirovs had both Kashtan and Klintok.... the Russian air bases in Syria have Pantsir and TOR... the Russian army units have Tunguska and TOR... traditionally they both operate together... and of course Kuznetsov has kashtans and klintoks too.
It is certainly possible they might think PR might replace the TOR system, but I suspect PR might be expanded to replace Rif... on the Kirov upgrades and expanded to include larger SAMs as well to become a sort of universal SAM system with missiles from Morfei and the 60km and 150km range S-350 up to full sized S-400 missiles.
If they do put P-R on the Kuz, then I suspect it will be loaded mostly with Morfei and the 60km range missile for mostly close in defence... note with a Ka-31 airborne the 60km range active radar homing 9m96 missile could engage sea skimming missiles out to near max range... that is a quite effective defensive ring...
It'd be cool to see it get a full engine + UKSK + Poliment-Redut + Pantsir-M upgrade
Totally agree... I think with its engine issues dealt with it will sail around a lot more, which will expose the need for friendly foreign bases and a few more larger support vessels...
Side point: we had some discussion of Kashtan being paired with a search radar in other thread which got me wondering about K: What search radar do the Kashtans pair with?
If as we're led to believe the Mars-Passat doesn't work then the only air search radar is apparently a Fregat, yet we've seen the Kashtan (& even Ak-630s) paired with Positiv on other ships that have Fregat which implies its for a good reason -> whats the deal?
Well with the new phased array radars appearing on the Corvettes perhaps they are ready with AESAs... it really does not matter where the source of the target data comes from, as long as the gun mount knows where to point to find the target it can use the tracking radar to rapidly acquire the target/s and engage.
In terms of scanning for targets an AESA is vastly more efficient than any other type of search radar...
I don't see any reason why the Mars Passat array should not be working.... it should either be fixed by now or should have been replaced with something that does work... it is actually smaller than many of the phased array radars used in the land based S-300 and S-400 family of radars... I would think the best option would be to adapt the system developed for the S-500 for all large cruisers and carriers...
Note in a land based Pantsir battery of 6-8 vehicles it is very unlikely they would all be blasing radio waves with all their search radars going at once... one or two could do scan intermittently and pass on the target data to the other vehicles... more importantly the other vehicles could passively listen for radar reflections coming from places that are not returned to the source radar... ie stealth aircraft redirecting energy away from the emitter might reveal themselves to other nodes in the network...
Generally one vehicle will be the command vehicle and will collate the target data and assign vehicles to targets based on their location, the target type, and ammo levels.