Don's Weekly, 24 June 2024: Part 6, the Russian S-400 SAM-System
by Donald Hill
(….continued from Part 5…)
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Deployment Status and Effectiveness of the Russian S-400 Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM) System
Essentially, the S-400 can engage cruise missiles at low altitude at a range of 40 km, aircraft at a range of up to 380 km (depending on the missile used), and ballistic missiles. It is a long-ranged air defense missile system that is considered by many to be the best in the world. South Korea’s KM-SAM is based on the S-400 design but built domestically and exported to other countries.
It’s easier to track the destruction of tanks and IFV’s because they are single vehicles. It’s more difficult to track the destruction of an air defense system because one system consists of multiple vehicles and even the number of vehicles in a system can vary. Russia is believed to have had 56 S-400 systems at the beginning of the war. While four launchers is typical for a single ‘battery’, this could have fewer launchers, or as many as 12.
Centrepiece of every battery is the “Big Bird” acquisition radar, which has a range of 600 km and can track up to 300 targets. The “Cheese Board” acquisition radar, which may or may not be included in a battery, has a 300 km range and can track 100 targets. And a “Grave Stone” engagement radar is needed in order for any of the 3-12 launchers in a battery to operate.
According to evidence and statistics collected by the team behind the Oryx blog, in two years of this war, some 16 or 17 launchers have been destroyed along with 1 acquisition radar, 3 engagement radars and two command vehicles. There will always be more equipment destroyed than is visually confirmed, even more so when it comes to air defense systems far behind enemy lines.
The list in this article from a month ago says that 13 “systems” were destroyed, plus a more ambiguous April 28, 2024 claim of “more systems”, before being specific with a (non-specific amount of) “launchers”. It then lists three radars (of some type), a 92N2 engagement radar and a 96L6 acquisition radar. If all losses were as specific as those last two entries it would be much easier to actually determine how many components of the 56 systems were destroyed. This is not a fault of the list, it is the nature of OSINT.
It is common for just some of the components of a system to be destroyed while others survive intact. Those undamaged components can be recombined with other undamaged components to recreate a complete system.
Determining how many S-400 systems are operational is difficult.
600 launchers are known to have been manufactured. If a system is defined as four launchers and an engagement radar and there were 56 systems as reported then that would mean there were 224 launchers in operations.
Taking exports into account, in 2014, Russia was to deliver 2-4 systems to China and in 2020 they ended the shipments after only delivering two. Belarus has one system. Algeria has eight regiments for a total of 96 launchers. Turkey received two systems. India contracted for five systems to be delivered by 2022 and received three, but the other two systems are delayed until 2026. Other exports might account for another 200 launchers.
If three launchers were theoretically destroyed in each of the, say, 15 systems that were attacked, that would be 45 launchers. Subtract the 200 launchers exported and the possible 50 that were destroyed, that leaves 350 launchers that could be available for distribution among the surviving acquisition and engagement radars and command vehicles to create batteries. The key factor is how many of those radars and command vehicles were destroyed, how many were in storage, and how fast they are being produced, and I don’t have that information.
The fact that the delivery of two systems to India is being delayed to 2026 is an indicator that can be interpreted in many ways. It could mean that Russia needs the systems to maintain the air defense coverage they have. It could mean that with the rising threat of Ukrainian missiles and drones, Russia realizes it needs to cover more territory than it originally accounted for. And it very likely means that production rates are lower than loss rates.
While it is difficult to determine the exact status of Russian S-400 systems, it is clear that Ukrainian aerial threats are increasing while the number of Russian air defense systems are decreasing. The arrival of ATACMS will only increase the pressure. Since arriving in April, 2024, ATACMS successfully attacked S400 systems on April 16th, May 15th, and May 22nd. The radars of two S300 systems and an S400 system immediately stopped working after a June 10th attack, and another pair of S300 and S400 systems lost their radars with secondary explosions on June 12th. As many as twelve ATACMS missiles are being used in these attacks.
And those weren’t the first attacks on S-400s by ATACMS.
In 2023, only 20 ATACMS were delivered to Ukraine. On October 17, three of them were used to destroy or damage 21 Russian helicopters. On October 26, two were used to engage an S-400 system, and while the damage assessment wasn’t precise, smoke was reported at the S-400 location.
Ballistic missiles are extremely large and descend on a target in a near vertical trajectory. Because of that, the most effective way to shoot down ballistic missiles is with hit-to-kill interceptor missiles. During the First Gulf War in Iraq/Kuwait, the Patriot air defense system had been in operation for about six years and was deployed to protect against Iraqi aircraft. When Iraq started launching Soviet-made R-17E SCUD missiles (a ballistic missile based on the German V-2), the Patriot was effective about 25% of the time using proximity blast warheads. By the time of the Iraq war in 2003, Patriot had received hundreds of software updates and the PAC-2 hit-to-kill missile became operational just a year earlier. This time around, they defeated every ballistic missile. It has since been successful in Yemen and Israel, and has successfully engaged the Kh-47 Kinzhal in Ukraine.
The S-400 doesn’t have a hit-to-kill missile.
Russia implied that the 40N6 missile was hit-to-kill before revealing that it wasn’t. Russia then designed the 77N6 to be a hit-to-kill missile, but it’s too big to be used by the S-400. Instead it is being used by the S-500, a new system that is still undergoing research and development, and might have been deployed by just one unit by now.
The 77N6 missile is so large that only two can be loaded onto a single launcher. And the Russians had trouble sourcing the electronics to create a hit-to-kill missile so it’s just another proximity blast warhead after all. That single S-500 system might be more effective against ballistic missiles than the S-.400 but the laws of physics prevents it from being as effective as the PAC-2.
Like a ballistic missile, ATACMS is large and descends in a near-vertical trajectory. But it also has the ability to alter its trajectory, and this movement makes it more difficult for hit-to-kill missiles to track it. A missile with a predictable trajectory can be tracked and the intercept missile can fly to where it’s going to be. If that trajectory changes, the change has to be detected and the intercept recalculated, all at supersonic speeds.
The S-400 isn’t just vulnerable to ballistic missiles. Ukraine’s Neptune cruise missile was able to successfully attack an S-400 system on August 23, 2023 . In conjunction with drones, two Neptune missiles attacked another S-400 system a month later (on September 14). When the war started, there were very few Neptune missiles and some were expended on the Moskva and other naval targets, the original purpose of these missiles. Ukraine announced in November, 2023, that they will increase production by a factor of ten (although the base number is unknown) and increase the missile’s range from 300 km to 1000 km.
This is another aspect of attrition warfare that does not favor Russia. If this trend continues, Russia will have very few S-400’s left in two year’s time and there will be large gaps in their air defenses well before then.
Thanks for this great info.
Is it confirmed that launchers and command vehicle are usually connected through data cable?