Ukraine

Анжеліка Кальченко

This is the Pantsir. In 30 years, it has changed beyond recognition. From a self-propelled anti-aircraft system to a whole family of machines adapted for absolutely different tasks. It is placed on mobile platforms, special towers, and even the roofs of civilian buildings. Specifically, right in the center of Moscow. Recently, Holgeng high-precision complexes reported on another batch of Pantsirs delivered to the Russian Ministry of Defense, stating that the complex fully confirms the declared characteristics in real conditions and forms a reliable protective dome over the troops. However, specially modernized to fight against Ukrainian drones, it is, ironically, being mass-destroyed by drones themselves. Today we will analyze how it is designed, how effective it actually is, and why its latest modifications already bear little resemblance to the original. My name is Anzhelika Kalchenko, this is Military Report. Let's begin.

The development of the Pantsir began at the Tula design bureau Instruments of Construction, as a successor to the Soviet Tunguska complex. The first experimental sample was shown as early as '95, but the path to the army turned out to be long. Serial production was launched only in the second half of the 2000s, and the complex was officially accepted into the armament of Russia only in 2012. Almost 20 years between the first prototype and combat readiness.

Initially, the Pantsir's task was relatively narrow – to cover important military and economic objects, as well as to protect long-range SAM batteries of the S-300 and S-400 types from high-precision weapons. Interestingly, this complex became acquainted with Ukraine long before 2022. OSINT researchers recorded the Pantsir-S1 in the occupied Donbas as early as the winter of 2014-15 in the Debaltseve area, and later in Shakhtarsk, Makiivka, and Luhansk. But it was the full-scale war against Ukraine that forced the Russians to rewrite this concept. Combat experience showed that the main threat was no longer cruise missiles or aircraft, but mass attacks by drones, which are cheap in comparison. And the complex, which was supposed to destroy single high-tech targets, had to be urgently rebuilt for a completely different type of war.

Thus, in recent years, a whole line of Pantsir modifications has appeared. Each subsequent version resembles the 2012 original less and less. But to understand how far the later modernizations have gone, it is first worth analyzing how the basic Pantsir-S1 is designed, the one from which it all began.

Structurally, it is a hybrid that combines both guns and missiles in one machine. For targets at a short distance, two twin-barrel automatic 2A38M cannons of 30 mm caliber are used, capable of together providing a firing rate of up to 5,000 rounds per minute at a distance of up to 4 kilometers. This is a kind of last line of defense when the target is already too close for a missile. For greater distances, the complex is equipped with 12 two-stage solid-fuel 57E6 missiles with radio-command guidance. The length of each is 3.2 meters. The rod-type warhead weighs 20 kilograms, of which 5.5 kilograms is explosive. The missile is capable of intercepting targets flying at speeds up to 1,000 meters per second. This is almost three Machs. For comparison, a Grad MLRS projectile flies at a speed of about 700 meters per second. That is, the Pantsir is capable of intercepting even such targets. The kill zone for the basic version is from 1.2 to 20 kilometers in range and up to 15 kilometers in altitude. The declared probability of a hit with one missile is from 70% to 90%, depending on the target type.

But the weapon itself is only half of the complex. The least important is how it finds and tracks the target. And while we analyze the control of the Pantsir, subscribe to the channel to always be aware of the latest military news.

The Pantsir conducts target search using a rotating three-coordinate radar station with a phased array antenna. As soon as a target is detected, it is passed to a separate tracking radar. If the radar is turned off or its operation is hindered by interference, the complex can switch to passive mode and track the target using an electro-optical system that combines a thermal imager and a television channel.

All of this is managed by a crew of three people – a commander, an operator who performs target detection and tracking, and actually manages their destruction, as well as a driver-mechanic. At the same time, the complex can act either autonomously or as part of a battery of up to six machines simultaneously. Fire can be conducted both from a stationary position and on the move, and the operator chooses between automatic target acquisition or manual tracking via the optical channel.

By the way, at the beginning of March 2022 in the Mykolaiv region, territorial defense fighters captured two Pantsir-S1s at once. The basic version of the Pantsir was placed on a KAMAZ-6560 chassis. And although such a layout in theory did not give the complex mobility, in practice, due to the great height and narrow base, the machine had a tendency to overturn and performed poorly off-road.

By the way, the KAMAZ chassis, although the most common, is far from the only one used. There are also wheeled variants based on the Belarusian MZKT and the German MAN. The developers also envisioned tracked bases, such as the arctic variant on the DT-30PM chassis and the GM tracked chassis. In addition to these, there are marine versions that are installed on some Russian ships and supplied to the DPRK.

In the end, all the first Pantsirs were delivered on the MAN SX-45. But not to Russia, but to the United Arab Emirates, which as early as 2000 ordered 50 complexes at once for 734 million dollars. In 2020 in Libya, pro-government forces even captured a Pantsir-S1 on such a chassis from a fighter of the Libyan National Army, which was supported by Russia. Later, the complex was secretly transported to Germany, and from there by a C-17 military transport aircraft simply to the USA. London wrote that the Americans feared that the missile complex could shoot down civilian aircraft if it fell into the hands of arms dealers or militants in the war-torn country.

Returning to the KAMAZ chassis, one can recall another illustrative case in Serbia in 2021. On a bypass road near Belgrade, a Pantsir-S1 overturned while heading to a military training ground with three missiles on board. One of them even fell out of the turret. As a result of the accident, three military personnel were injured, and traffic on the ring road had to be stopped in both directions. The first serious flaws of the basic version the Russians

They began making corrections almost immediately after the system was adopted into service, and modernizations have not ceased since. In 2015, the Pantsir-S2 appeared with a new detection radar station, which received two antenna arrays instead of one. This increased the speed of data acquisition regarding the air situation. Simply put, the system became faster at seeing the situation in the sky. After that, the Pantsir-SM was developed. The general architecture remained the same, but the radar is now capable of detecting aerial targets at a distance of up to 75 km, twice as much as the base model. A new missile with an increased engagement range of up to 40 km was also developed for it. The system was first shown publicly at the "Army-2019" forum, mounted on a "Tornado" wheeled chassis with an armored cabin and reinforced anti-mine protection. And at the beginning of 2024, tests were completed for the Pantsir-SM-S, a version for army air defense on the GM-59-70 tracked chassis, the same one used in the "Tor," "Buk," and "Tunguska" systems. This made it possible to accompany troops and long-range air defense systems off-road, while simultaneously unifying equipment between different systems. In less than 10 years, the system received double the detection range, new missiles, and a new chassis for different types of terrain. But the real turning point occurred when the Russians realized that the main threat was no longer aircraft or cruise missiles, but swarms of cheap drones. And for this problem, a completely different Pantsir had to be created. In August 2024, the "Precision Systems Holding" presented a version that differs radically from everything that came before. The Pantsir SMD-e. This is a stationary defense complex created specifically to protect industrial and administrative facilities from mass drone attacks. Unlike the Pantsir-S1, this module is completely devoid of 30-mm automatic cannons. The system became purely missile-based. Instead, a new surveillance radar appeared here with an active electronically scanned array measuring 1.2 by 1 meter. The detection range is up to 24 km, and it is simultaneously capable of tracking up to 20 targets. Another millimeter-wave radar, borrowed from previous Pantsir versions, was installed in the front part of the module, as well as an optoelectronic station, the same as on the Pantsir-SM. The ammunition load also changed. Now there are two types of missiles – 12 standard ones with an interception range of up to 20 km, or 48 special anti-drone TKB-1055 "Gvozd" missiles, which are more compact with a range of up to 7 km and an interception height of up to 5 km. These types of missiles can be combined in different proportions depending on the task. Although the practice of installing Pantsirs on the roofs of Moscow has existed since 2023, from May 2026, the Russians began to massively deploy new anti-drone versions there. But by modifying the module, the developers removed one important detail, which later proved to be critical. The thing is that a purely missile system has an inherent physical flaw. The TKB-1055 missile, the one specifically created for drones, has a minimum launch range of 500 meters. This means that any target closer than this distance is simply unreachable for the system. A so-called dead zone arises, a space in which the Pantsir SMD-e physically cannot protect itself. In the base Pantsir-S1, this problem was covered by automatic cannons. They took out everything that flew too close for a missile. But in the SMD-e, there are no cannons at all. That is, the system created specifically to fight drones lost the very tool that effectively destroys drones at short distances—cheap, fast, with a high rate of fire. It turns out to be a paradoxical situation: the closer a drone flies to the anti-drone system, the fewer the chances of it being shot down. Still, one should not underestimate the Pantsirs. One telling fact shows how seriously this system is taken in the West. The American concern Lockheed Martin created a full-scale mockup of the Pantsir-S1 based on a Peterbilt 320 cargo platform. The mockup is needed to test targeting systems on the F-16 and F-18. That is, American pilots are literally training to recognize and destroy this air defense. According to data from the monitoring of the new Oryx project, since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the destruction of at least 40 anti-aircraft missile-gun systems Pantsirs has been recorded, and at least another 6 were damaged. One of the illustrative examples occurred in July 1926. Military personnel of the 15th separate artillery reconnaissance brigade "Black Forest" hit a Pantsir-S1 with a drone right at the Russian Khalino airfield in the Kursk region. In the frames of the published video, it is seen that the system was in a combat position, meant to protect the airfield from drones and cruise missiles, but at the moment of the attack, it simply did not work. And this is not an exception; videos published by Ukrainian units regularly record the same picture – the Pantsir demonstrates difficulties specifically with capturing small-sized drones. For example, in February 1926, on the territory of the "Azovstal" metallurgical plant in temporarily occupied Mariupol, pilots of the 413th "Reit" regiment destroyed a Pantsir-S1 on an MZKT chassis with a drone. The Pantsir traveled the path from a system for covering strategic facilities and S-300 batteries to a narrowly specialized anti-drone system. And it is exactly such systems that today, without exaggeration, every army in the world is looking for. It is worth admitting that the idea itself and the solutions embedded in the Pantsir are indeed not unfounded. But the war against Ukraine has shown that even the newest versions continue to regularly lose to the very targets for the fight against which they were developed. The echeloned air defense system of Russia, which is so actively advertised and modernized, still has gaps that have not been managed to be closed for years. But not only Russia's ground-based air defense is changing under the pressure of war. The Kh-101 cruise missile also underwent a significant transformation with a change in purpose. Therefore, we recommend watching this video, in which we analyze its evolutionary path and real application in detail. That's all from me. My name is Anzhelika Kalchenko, this is Military Reports. See you!