Posted on 07/10/2007 2:37:20 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Russia set to test first serial S-400 SAM system next week-1
14:46 | 05/ 07/ 2007
(Clarifies the official's position in the lead, adds quotes, details, background in paras 4-10)
MOSCOW, July 5 (RIA Novosti) - Russia will conduct the first tests of its new S-400 Triumf air defense complex next week prior to its commissioning with the Air Force, an AF air defense chief said Thursday.
"The first serial [S-400] complex will be tested next week," Lieutenant General Alexander Gorkov said. "It has been transported to a testing ground together with crews."
The S-400 (NATO codename SA-21 Growler) is a new air defense missile system developed by the Almaz Central Design Bureau as an upgrade of the S-300 family.
It has been designed to intercept and destroy airborne targets at a distance of up to 400 kilometers (250 miles), or twice the range of the U.S. MIM-104 Patriot, and 2.5 times that of the S-300PMU-2.
"The first S-400 system, which will be put on combat duty near Moscow shortly after the test, will feature missiles with enhanced technical characteristics to sharply increase the combat capabilities of air defense around the Russian capital," Gorkov said.
The general said Russia planned to deploy new air defense systems primarily around all strategically important administrative and political centers in two stages by 2015.
During the second stage, which starts in 2010, Russia will add modernized versions of the S-400 with enhanced characteristics in comparison to the current model, he said.
In April, Colonel General Yury Solovyov, commander of the Air Defense Forces Special Command (former Moscow Military District Air Defense Command), said the Triumf could be used for limited purposes in missile and space defense, but that it is not designed to destroy intercontinental ballistic missiles.
However, he said the system is highly capable of destroying stealth aircraft, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles with an effective range of up to 3,500 kilometers (2,200 miles) and a speed of up to 4.8 kilometers (3 miles) per second.
The Russian Air Defense Forces, which are part of the Air Force, currently deploy more than 30 regiments equipped with S-300 (NATO reporting name SA-10 Grumble) missile complexes, which will be gradually replaced with S-400 systems.
Ping!
Russian air defense troops conducted a test of the new anti-aircraft missile system S-400 on 07 April 2000. At that time, Air Force Commander Anatoly Kornukov said that serial production of the new system would begin in June 2000. Kornukov said air defense troops would get one S-400 launcher system by the end of 2000, but it would be armed with missiles of the available S-300 system.
On condition of normal funding, radars with an acquisition range of 500-600 km should become operational by 2002-2003. However, other sources report that while it was ordered by the Defence Ministry, the military has nothing to pay for it with, so it is unclear when the Russian military will get this new weapon.
The Russian Air Force is studying a reduction in the number of types of air defense weapons, and it is possible that Triumf will become the only system being developed, providing defense both in the close-range and mid-range as well long-range zones.
Yes, and if we can reduce our dependency on fossil oil the price of crude would go down and we would get rid of the despots both in Iran and Russia. They both have a zero profit point at around 35/barrel. Check the price today at my home page.
America dependancy on fossile fuels are from those from Iraq, Saudi Arabia etc, not from Russia or Iran.
Also, main export fuel of Russia is gas, used mainly for power-stations in europe. Europe is clossing all of their nuke plants and using gas ones instead.
So America getting rid of fossile fules will have little or no effect on Russia, or Iran.
Main wxport regions of Russia and Iran are Europe and China.
In the other hand, Saudi and Iraq oil and gas is making US dependant on it and making US run pro-muslim policy in Israel and Serbia.
“However, he said the system is highly capable of destroying stealth aircraft, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles with an effective range of up to 3,500 kilometers (2,200 miles) and a speed of up to 4.8 kilometers (3 miles) per second.”
How effective is this system in taking out our B-2 Bombers, F-22 and F-35 fighters?
I assume that you know that crude oil is an international commodity this means that if the demand is reduced the price will fall.
Furthermore
During 2006, Russia produced roughly 9.8 million bbl/d of liquids (not including oil products), consumed roughly 2.8 million bbl/d in liquids, and exported (in net) around 7 million bbl/d. According to official Russian statistics, roughly 4 million of this total is crude oil. Over 70 percent of Russian crude oil production is exported, while the remaining 30 percent is refined locally.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/Russia/Oil_exports.html
If you want to read a technical report about the influence of the oil price on the Russian economy try this http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2005/wp05241.pdf
If the present oil price will fall so will the Russians.
Yes, it can detect stealth
“RIA Novosti also quoted Solovyov as claiming that the S-400 had the ability to destroy stealth aircraft, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles with an effective range of up to 2,200 miles and a speed of up to 3 miles per second, or 10,800 miles per hour.”
http://www.spacewar.com/reports/S400_Missile_System_Ready_To_Defend_Moscow_999.html
http://www.missilethreat.com/missiledefensesystems/id.52/system_detail.asp
“Nevertheless, Moscow has been aggressively marketing the S-400 throughout Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Many believe that China will be Russia’s main customer. Between 2003 and 2004, China spent approximately $500 million on future S-400 systems, which accounts for the 7 percent increase in China’s foreign weapons acquisitions during that period.(17) In addition to China, Russia has offered the S-400 to the United Arab Emirates, once in 2002 and again in 2004.(18) There is also speculation that Iran, a potential nuclear power, is currently seeking to acquire its own batch of S-400 missiles.(19)
It is evident that, once the S-400 completes its final tests and enters production, it will quickly become one of the most sought after missile defense systems in the world.”
China and Iran may get this system. What a cheery thought!
There is stealth and stealth. The F-22 is much more advanced than the B-1 or B-2. How effective would it be against the F-22. Also, do we have missiles that can home in on the weapon and destroy?
Not realy. Any jet baring anti-radar missile will be a target himself, and S-400 will be protected by Buk and Tor. Last one would target anti radar missiles.
Uh... no... just the opposite. See for example:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0106/p06s02-woeu.html
With that said, if the S-400 is anything close to what it is touted to be, then it will be a very lethal weapon to any legacy aircraft (and for that matter even to the F-35, whose stealth is not all aspect like the Raptors, and has that stealth mainly geared to X-band frequencies mostly used by radars in airplanes. The S-400 could conceivably down a JSF, but the Raptor is in another league).
The interesting thing about this missile (for China) is that it can actually be an 'offensive' air-defense weapon. With its long range, and on where China places the batteries, it can actually reach out over a good part of the Taiwanese strait and act as an offensive weapon against any Taiwanese jets that fly past a certain marker. It would cause major headaches for the Taiwanese. It would also be hard for the Taiwanese to take down using airstrikes for the simple fact that their planes would have to get close enough (and nothing the Taiwanese have would survive long enough), and even if they did the S-400 doctrine is to have the missile batteries protected by a shorter range system (e.g. the Tor) which would engage missiles targeted at the S-400. And tracking down mobile launchers can be a demanding task - for instance it took some time to track Saddam's mobile Scud launchers during GW1 ....and that was in open desert against an aging ballistic missile type that was only good for attacks against city-sized targets.
The US could deal with the S-400, but nations like Taiwan would have a terrible time against this missile. Enough S-400 batteries along the coast of China would have a serious detrimental effect against the Taiwanese.
Thanks for the informative post. I know the US has been developing missile defense, including PAC-3, Arrow, Theater Defense, etc. Does the US have anything comparable to the S-400? Does it need it?
Does the US need something similar? Well, IMO (and I could be 100% wrong ....a better person to ask would be people like JeffHead and Sukhoi-30mki) the US has such air2air superiority in terms of aircraft (see: Raptor) that it doesn't have the same need for SAM systems. Now, the Patriot is a SAM (and the PAC-3 is one lethal mofo), but you can see that they are primarily utilized for anti-missile duties. Russia on the other hand did not have the same level of aircraft superiority that the US had, and thus put a lot of time and effort towards developing SAM systems. BTW this is more or less the same process that occured in their Naval doctrine ....they couldn't match the USN in the open seas ship-to-ship (in terms of quality not numbers), and thus put a lot of effort towards developing several types of anti-ship missiles. This is the reason why Russia seems to be releasing a new variant of supersonic anti-ship missile every other month ....legacy from the Soviet days where much effort was directed towards that area in a bid to find a way to answer the West's dominance in the sea.
In an air to air war the US airforce will already have destroyed anything foolish enough to take off, thus the need for a true SAM system was relegated to the background. Superb SAM systems like the Patriot were tasked more towards anti-BM roles, and a couple of SAM systems developed for area defence purposes (ranging from the Stinger type given to the Mujahadeen and other MANPAD types, to the CLAWS/SLAMRAAM - the surface launched version of the AMRAAM mounted on a HMMWV).
Now, the Navy does have a missile family very similar in purpose and nature to the S-400 ....the Standard Missile (with blocks that are tasked with everything from shooting down planes to the Theater Defence version for engaging ballistic missiles).
Think of the S-400 as a Russian answer to the problem of not having the same air-to-air capabilities as the US. Same thing with their anti-ship missiles ....if you cannot come up with a knight on a war-horse, then device a way of developing a crossbow quarrel that can have some hope of killing a knight on a war-horse. Which, in turn, makes the knight develop better armor/breed faster horses. Which makes the person who couldn't afford the knight have to develop more penetrating crossbow bolts and crossbows that fire faster and more accurately. Which makes the knight develop ever better armor, and start injecting bl@@dy steroids into his now 'super' steeds. Which then prompts the crossbow guy to start rubbing magic pixie dust on his crossbows and tip the bolts with harnessed lightning ....and which point the knight decides to do away with horses and start riding to battle in a dragon ...at which point ....
Anyways, catch my drift. When one side manages to reach a certain level, the other side immediately works on ways of negating and (even better) surpassing the threat. For instance the US noticed that in the wars that Israel went against the Arabs (and soundly defeated them ...e.g. the 6 day war and the Yom Kippur war), that the Soviet made SAMs had the biggest impact onthe IAF (in some cases causing attrition rates last seen in WW2). This was one of the main impetuses for Stealth ...a way to overcome SAMs that were becoming more and more effective. With that the Soviets (and later the Russians) now had to come up with ways of countering this threat, and while they still have some ways to go before they can claim (without overt propaganda) to having 'solved' the stealth problem, what they do have has basically reached a level where it is suicidal for legacy aircraft (e.g. F-16s) to fly against the system (e.g. S-400). And when they finally reach a level whereby the missiles can engage Stealth aircraft you can be certain that by that point the USAF will be flying hypersonic unmanned aircraft that skim the atmosphere of the Earth like a stone skipping water (plans for such stuff is already underway). Again, you get a magic crossbow i go and get myself a freakin' Fire-Drake!
Anyways ...long post. Basically, does the US have something analogous to the S-400? Well, yes it does (Patriot for land and Standard in the sea). Does it need it? Well, on land not really since US war doctrine is supposed to have suppressed all air threats to the level where all that is needed is some area defence weapons (to take care of the helicopter gunship that got away and is now trying to take out a group of Marines), or anti-ballistic missile defenses like the Patriot in case the Son-of-Saddam decides to lob a Scud filled with VX gas at Telaviv! Now, the Navy is a different case. It requires such a system to counter all sorts of nasty threats that can pop up from/under/above the sea ....e.g. a Klub missile launched from a lurking Kilo sub, streaking Moskits missiles coming enmasse from over the horizon, or an air-launched Yakhont with the USS Enterprises' name written all over it ...and over 30 of its Yakhont friends. Oh, and there is the anti-ballistic missile theater defense role as well. All these are primarily filled by the Standard missile and its various block versions.
Hope that helps. Now wait for a real expert to come and really answer your question.
S-400 is superbe weapon. there are no wonder-weapons, yet S-400 and olde S-300 will change stretegy of deployment of airforce and air warfare.
Up so far, one or another were fighting to achieve air-superiority. With weapon like S-400 I believe that there will be no airsuperiority as we know it.
Air forces will be reduced to smaller number of specialised types of jets. Air superiority fighters such Su-27 onwards, and F-22 will loose its pourpuse, I belive, and I can be wrong, that future lies on projects like Su-25/39 for attack apurpuse, and MiG-25/31 for interception and transport and rotary wing aircrafts.
In short, S-400 and S-300 can be compared like this:
Imagine WWI cavalery charging at enemy mashinegun nests...
That is S-300
Now imagine enemy cavalery charging at enemy 20 mm gatling GAU nest...
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