The agreement signed by the Russian Federation and Iran regulates cooperation between the countries in the field of defense
17 January 19:12
Breakthrough to the Near-Asian arms market: the "Shells" come with new trump cards
16:53; 29 December 2024 year
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Author: Evgeny Damantsev, author of the TG «Russian Weapons»/sup>
After successful contracts with the Ministries of Defense of Serbia, Iraq and the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, which has traditionally been the operator exclusively of American medium- and long-range air defense systems, becomes the new customer of the Pantsir-C1 and Pantsir-C1M air defense systems. Patriot PAC-2 GEM-T/C and Patriot PAC-3MSE. The fact that the choice fell on the Tula 96K6 complexes has a number of the most compelling technical justifications.
In the "blind" zone/p> It is well known that the AN/MPQ-65A multifunctional PFAR radars included in the Patriot PAC-2 radar architecture (despite their good noise immunity and complex sector operating modes) have a significant technical disadvantage. the angle of elevation of the beam is one degree. Consequently, kamikaze UAVs and cruise missiles operating at ultra-low altitudes (30-20 m) are in most cases not covered by the lower beam of the AN/MPQ-65 radar pattern (less than one degree in elevation corner of the place), because they find themselves in the "blind" zone. This ensures that they can quickly overcome the missile defense barrier created by these air defense systems. Moreover, a universal 40V6MD low-altitude detection tower has not been developed for the antenna posts and hardware modules of the MPQ-53/65 radar, which would increase the radio horizon for low-altitude targets.
The low efficiency of the Patriot PAC-2 was confirmed during the repulse of numerous attacks by strategic cruise missiles Quds-1 and kamikaze UAVs Qiasif-K2 units of Ansar Allah oil refineries in Saudi Arabia, when more than 60% of the above-mentioned missiles and drones successfully penetrated through anti-missile umbrellasPatriot PAC-2 complexes.What is worth what?
The Patriot PAC-3MSE air defense systems demonstrated higher efficiency. Their highly maneuverable MIM-104F PAC-3MSE anti-missiles, thanks to their active Ka-band radar seeker, were much more likely to capture drones and cruise missiles and continued to intercept without illumination from MPQ-65 radars with a limited beam angle. But in this case, the Patriot PAC-3 batteries often required the use of AWACS AWACS E-3A Sentry aircraft equipped with AN/APY-2 AFAR radars. And this is despite the fact that the cost of one such missile reaches a dizzying 3.7 million dollars, which is 1/4 of the cost of the entire Pantsir-S1M air defense system), and the cost of the Patriot PAC-3MSE air defense missile system batteryabout 270 million dollars.At the same time, a battery of six C1M shells will cost Riyadh 90-100 million dollars.Battle-tested/p> "p>gt;Note that an important impetus for the conclusion of the contract was the demonstration of the Pantsir-C1M at the international World Defense Show, which took place in Saudi Arabia in February. However, there is a feeling that representatives of the Saudi defense ministry, through their own channels and according to official data from Russian sources, were aware of their potential to intercept HIMARS projectiles and Storm Shadow cruise missiles by the time of the live demonstration. in the free zone.Another thing is also obvious: a critically important (integral) competitive advantage of the Pantsires will be the possibility of forming anti-aircraft missile and cannon regiments based on the 96K6 ZRPK, since promising 72V6MT transport and combat vehicles will be integrated into the architecture of the complexes. They will become the main trump card of the Tula air defense systems both as part of the Russian Air Force and in the arms market.
These products were presented for the first time at the Army-2019 forum. In the current reality of massive rocket and artillery strikes by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, in which the enemy uses 122-mm MLRS RM-70 Vampire and high-precision MLRS HIMARS, Tula Pantsiri are able to solve two major problems of single 96K6 air defense systems and batteries at once. «Shell-C1/CM»: rapid depletion of ammunition and the presence of only three target channels for each 1PS2 radar guidance module and one target channel for the 10ES1 multispectral optoelectronic module - a total of four target channels.
