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MOSCOW – Capable of detecting, tracking and destroying all manner of mannedaircraft, drones, cruise and ballistic missiles, the S-400 is currently themost advanced mobile air defence system in Russia’s arsenal.
A recent article link inKrasnaya Zvezda, the official newspaper of the Russian defence ministry,was accompanied by a photograph showing an unusual looking S-400 missilelauncher, with the launcher’s traditional upside-down horseshoe formationof four large missile tubes replaced by one traditional launcher off to oneside accompanied by four more compact tubes on the launcher bed’s left side.
The article was dedicated to the recent Russian-Serbian air defenceexercises, known as ‘Slavic Shield 2019’link, whichfeatured air defence troops from the two countries using S-400s andPantsir-S anti-aircraft systems to simulate a response to a massive airattack by a mock enemy at the Ashuluk training ground in Astrakhan region,southern Russia.
Krasnaya Zvezda did not mention the apparent non-standard S-400 launcher,with the article only going into detail about how Russian troops acquaintedtheir Serbian colleagues with the capabilities of the S-400’s 91N6E ‘BigBird’ target acquisition and battle management radar, and mentioning thatthe Serbian troops were shown the steps in the system’s operation.
However, the mystery photo, combined with footage from a report on thedrills by Zvezda, the defence ministry’s official television channel,showed Serbian troops observing the unusually stocked S-400 launcher.
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Eagle-eyed observers from bmpd, a military blog affiliated with the Centerfor Analysis of Strategies & Technologies (CAST), a Moscow-baseddefence-related think tank, were the first to spot the unique-lookingS-400, and assumed link thatalongside the more standard-looking 48N6 missile (which has a range of upto 250 km), the cluster of missiles off to other side of the launcher’s bedwere 9M96s – a shorter-range (12-120 km) guided missile also used in thesystem.
The interchangeable deployment of both types of missiles on a launcher haspreviously been shown at exhibitions. However, this is the first time thecombination has been shown on this particular truck configuration, and onactive duty with Russian air defence troops. – Sputnik
Russia is assumed to field nearly two dozen regiments of S-400s across atleast 41 artillery battalions, with hundreds of launchers deployed acrossthe western, eastern, southern and central military districts to defend thecountry’s airspace. Belarus, China and Turkey possess export versions ofthe S-400, with Russia pledging last weeklinktobegin delivering the system to India within the next year-and-a-half.Turkey and India have both committed to buying the Russian air defencesystem despite the threat of US sanctions.
