Don’t expect fantastic results from the experimental S-500.
Jun 14, 2024
RUSSIAN DEFENSE MINISTRY
After apparently losing parts of several of its best S-400 air-defense batteries to Ukraine’s American-made Army Tactical Missile System rockets—the vaunted ATACMS—Russia got desperate.
According to Ukrainian intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov, the Russians recently deployed part of their first, and apparently only, new S-500 air-defense system.
The S-500 protects the Kerch Strait from a site in Russian-occupied Crimea, Budanov told Ukrainian media. The Kerch Bridge, which spans the strait, is one of the Kremlin’s main supply lines into occupied southern Ukraine.
The S-500 has been in development for more than a decade—and the timeline for completion keeps getting extended as wartime demands sap resources from the Kremlin’s research and development budgets. Full-scale use is currently slated for 2025.
The deployment of the incomplete S-500 battery to Crimea underscores how dire Russia’s air-defense problem is on the peninsula. Budanov was kind in his own assessment. “This will be an experimental use,” he said.
Don’t expect great results. The S-500, as it exists right now, is a modest improvement over the older S-400. Lately, Ukraine’s ATACMS have been taking out S-400 batteries once a month or so—steadily chipping away at the Russian air force’s pre-war inventory of around 50 such batteries.
On paper, an S-500 battery includes three radars—two of which are identical to the radars that cue an S-400. The third radar, the 77T6, is optimized for detecting fast-moving ballistic missiles—like ATACMS. But the 77T6 is just a few years old and shrouded in mystery.
The 77T6’s capabilities “remain unknown,” Thomas Withington explained in a 2022 report for the Royal United Services Institute in London.
The 77T6-cued S-500 probably works best with a special missile that the Russians also optimized for ballistic targets like the American-made ATACMS. This 77N6 was originally meant to be a “hit to kill” missile—that is, a missile without a warhead that destroys its target by literally running into it.
The principle behind a hit-to-kill missile is that, by removing the warhead, you make the missile lighter, more maneuverable and more accurate. Many of the U.S. Army latest air-defense missiles are hit-to-kill models.
But according to Defense News, Russian industry has struggled to source the precision electronics it would need to produce hit-to-kill missiles. So while the prototype S-500 has test-fired at least one 77N6 missile, the 77N6 currently has a warhead. It’s not a hit-to-kill missile, so it’s not the specialized anti-missile interceptor the Kremlin promised to deliver.
In other words, the S-500 is probably not as effective as it could be against the very weapon that’s been harrying Russian air-defense batteries in Crimea—and which compelled the Kremlin to do something, anything, to reinforces its aerial defenses on the peninsula: the 1.5-ton, precision-guided ATACMS, each of which scatters hundreds of lethal submunitions over a wide area.
Any one of those submunitions can disable a delicate system like an S-400 … or S-500.
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Sources:
1. Kyrylo Budanov: https://x.com/MaluVFX/status/1801365326635876455
2. Royal United Services Institute: https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/defending-mother-russias-skies
3. Defense News: https://www.defensenews.com/industry/2023/10/05/where-is-russias-s-500-air-defense-system/
We’ll see how this newest superest duperest air defense system stacks up against the ATACMS. I’ll place my bet on the latter.
I believe I read that this S500 gadget has an effective range of 2,200km so what difference would it make if it was stationed at the bridge or somewhere else in occupied Crimea?
Well, Red, we know what to think when the roaches make any claims. Maybe we can reduce the S-500’s range to one tenth and be closer to the truth.
Guess what shot to the top of Budanov’s Favorites List?
No doubt, the newestest superdest duperdest junk missile.