Thanks for info. It looks that many thinks are hidden and we can only try to predict.
But it looks that there should be too many S400 and also S300 still, but on other hands not enough for good protection( little efectivity or small number).
Is there any prediction about number of misiles? RU should have many and UA didn't do so massive rocket strikes as RU, but on other hands RU use old S300 against surface target and also there are reports that RU tries to shotdown HIMARS and also Storm Shadows, Neptun, Tocka... and if we assume that because of efectivity they fire more missiles on target, then is very any hope that also RU will have problem with munition?
Not even the Urkainian and NATO militaries know everything about the Russian military, and they have have a lot more resources. But they do know a lot. In December, 2021, a US air defense team briefed Ukraine on Russian capabilities that subsequently proved very accurate.
In November, 2022, Ukraine said of the 8000 air defense missiles Russia had at in February, 2022, they had used 13% of them, leaving 6980. In that same report, Ukraine said Russia wasn't producing any more missiles. If that rate remained consistent then Russia's missile supply would last five years. Since they are expending more missiles in ground attacks and to counter the increased use of Ukrainian missile and drone attacks, it will probably last 3-4 years if there is no new production.
Though how many of them are operational is anyone's guess.
Personally I tend to go off lower estimates. The high ones are too high and don't make much sense when you look at say pre-war orders of battle or what we're seeing in Ukraine.
Eg According to a few sources Russia apparently had 1650 T-72B3s before the war. This includes 1100 T-72B3 and 550 T-72B3M Obr 2016.
Now according to Oryx, following losses have been incurred:
365 T-72B3 (33% out of 1100)
274 T-72B3 Obr 2018 (50% out of 550)
And despite T-72B3 being apparently most numerous model, they've lost more T-72Bs than T-72B3s (452 including 104 T-72B Obr 1989).
T-72B3 casualties are rare these days. Most losses of T-72s are one's labelled Obr 2022 including T-72B Obr 2022 (101 lost) and T-72B3 Obr 2022 (53 lost).
So there's apparently still 735 T-72B3's still out there yet they are rarely seen/lost and somehow we've seen spikes in losses of older T-62s and T-80BVs as well as newer Obr 2022 T-72s and T-90Ms.
I thus doubt 1100 T-72B3s were ever delivered.
I am sooner inclined to think maybe a total of 1100 T-72B3s were delivered spilt into 550 T-72B3 and 550 T-72B3.
This makes losses more realistic and takes into account the fact that standard T-72B3s don't pop up that often anymore (having mainly been expended):
Yes, and with the engagement radar too. That is why they are bunched (and hit) togheter. Only decadent west uses wireless, encoded, LPI comms between command post and launchers for Patriot, NASAMS, Iris, CAMM, enabling them to be spread for kilometers apart.
I read somewhere the TOS-1A Solntsepek multiple rocket launcher (MRL) only has a 6 km range. With so many drones around it is surprising the Russians are able to use them so often, what do you think?
Another very interesting and informative read, thank you very much.
I was surprised how much I already knew - your tireless work here seems to be slowly bearing fruit despite all the setbacks and frustrations, obviously even in the most hopeless cases. But despite all my fragmentary knowledge, I have to admit that I have problems seeing the 'big picture'.
There is still a frustratingly large number of functional systems, but Russia is also a very large country with many vulnerable places and a fairly long front in the war zone. Since these SAM systems have to overlap to a certain extent in order to work reliably, the estimated number no longer seems too scary.
Even though such information is of course not publicly available, do you have any idea how precarious the situation already is for the Russians, where there are weak points, where an aerial breakthrough is most likely to occur and which weapons can then be used to exploit it?
Ukraine has been able to conduct two exploitations following a breakthrough. The first was the 2022 Kharkiv offensive, in which Russia had established a hasty defense with one regiment in reserve and were very slow to react to the observed Ukrainian buildup and attack. At some point, the Russian defense crumbled and adjacent units just ran away. A very small number of Ukrainian troops followed, encountering little to no resistance. Ukrainian logistics and the risk of overextension forced a halt and Russia has been pretty serious about their defenses since then.
The second exploitation was when Russia evacuated Kherson. Ukraine simply advanced as Russia withdrew and failed to pressure the Russian withdrawal across the river, wasting a chance to bag 15-25,000 men and their equipment.
During the 2023 summer offensive, Ukraine rarely operated above the company level and when there were small breakthroughs, they could not exploit them in a timely manner, even at the battalion level.
Russia has their own problems. When the Ukrainian line collapsed at Soledar, north of Bakhmut, all they could do is press forward at the speed of foot. There were no armored and mechanized forces prepared or able to penetrate a breach.
So both sides settle for a war of attrition and localized territorial gain. There is certainly evidence of Russian attempts at envelopment operations, such as at Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Chasiv Yar, but they eventually only advanced through frontal attacks.
The good news is, Russia is losing men and equipment at a much higher rate than Ukraine. They have three times the manpower as Ukraine, but they cannot produce equipment as fast as they are losing it. 2/3 of the equipment they send to the front are vehicle they pull from storage. By the end of 2025, there will be no more vehicles left in storage. They have a large numerical advantage in artillery now, but barrels wear out from use and Russia produces about 50 barrels a year.
If current trends stay consistent, Ukraine will gain an ever-increasing advantage in equipment that could provide a decisive edge in attritional combat over the course of 2-3 years. Ukraine's challenges is sustaining their manpower, sustaining their will to fight and sustaining allied support. If they can do those three things, then I believe they will expel Russia from their land in time.
Thank you for the explanations, very informative and surprisingly positive. But I was thinking primarily of possible scenarios in the air regarding the reduction of SAM systems on the Russian side. Whether there might be realistic options in this regard in the near future that we laymen don't yet know about.
Since the situation on the ground seems pretty static overall (although I would prefer it were really static and the Russians weren't constantly advancing a little), that might be the only way to really hurt them in the short and medium term.
Well, everything is connected. With regards to the destruction of Russian air defenses, those efforts have been ongoing since 2022. Pantsir, Buk, S300, S400...every time these systems are detected and Ukraine has a weapon that can effectively attack them, they do so. Russia tries to protect them by minimizing their signature and moving them around.
With the US prohibition on using US weapons in Russian territory, Russian air defense systems took advantage of their sanctuary inside Russia and simply stayed out of artillery range. Then the US said all their weapons except ATACMS can be used in Russia and HIMARS/MLRS destroyed some of them. If ATACMS could be used in Russia, quite a few more air defense systems and other assets would be destroyed.
In attritional warfare, you hang on to territory only so long as it gives you an advantage or denies the enemy an advantage. Russia pays a high cost to gain territory. When it gets to a point that holding a certain piece of territory is no longer to Ukraine's advantage, then they withdraw and Russia has to begin the process all over again. The long term strategy is to bleed Russia and sustain Ukrainian forces.
Thank you for the information, I learned a lot. Intersting they use cables. It does seem to me that the Ukrainians are getting through and destroying more and more such. But that may be my imagation running wild.
Dear Don, it seems that the current trend of losses depends on ru willingness to continue offensive. However, by losing offensive capacity through equipment expenditure they would not necessarily lose defensive capacity. It all depends on how early they stop, and how effectively manage losses in next 4-6 months.
Recently, the armor losses go down (while personnel losses remain highest) and Sumy offensive seemingly is not happening. The loss of offensive capacity could be tracked, I think, through monitoring how many active directions they maintain. At the peak it seems they had up to 10 active directions. Theoretically in the next several months they would need to more and more focus on Donetsk, stopping Kharkiv direction offensive, then Zaporizhya direction offensive. But maybe it will not happen, and instead they extend offensive to say Sumy. This what I mean by how they will manage losses.
So the only way to make this trend a decisive trend is to significantly extend military support, 2-3 times more monthly volumes perhaps. Otherwise it is all matter of chances.
With regards to equipment losses and stocks. Stocks may last a bit longer, but there is a maximum monthly capacity for refurbishing and preparing equipment to go to front lines (not to mention producing it). The current rate of losses, say in terms of armors, seems to be around 3 times higher then that monthly capacity. So before the stocks exhausted, an earlier mooment of the need to scale down offensive by factor of 3 should come.
As a proof of the limited monthly capacity some osinters use pictures of storage bases vs repair plants. While bases were losing stored equipment at quick rate, it is significantly slower recent months, but the locations around plants are full of equipment. Means it was brought there to do something, but not yet to front lines.
I do caveat my statements saying they are based on current trends. Actions can decrease or increase loss rates. Stopping offensive actions would be a major departure from current and past Russian actions. It would reduce but not eliminate attrition of their vehicles (and personnel).
If they continue to gain ground, however small, like they are doing in Donetsk, it seems to compel them to continue to attack. When they do not gain ground, such as at Vuhledar, Synkivka, and now (maybe?) Terny, they tend to stop attacking after a period of time. Bilohorivka is one place where that doesn't seem to be true. They keep attacking, at least on a small scale, despite no progress since January when they gained 500 meters.
The analysts I've read mentions both the storage facilities and repair facilities. There is some percentage that has already been plundered for parts or the vehicle is too damaged to repair. How much is hard to determine with precision. Some tanks have been sent to Ukraine without turrets to act as APCs.
Russia will constantly lose defensive capability with artillery barrel wear.
I am not sure that only tactical successes are really a motivation for what they are doing. Though, it is logical, in terms of it gives the opportunity to reach their political goals, i.e. pretend being stronk and unaffected.
I agree. The goals of the invasion have been redefined a couple times and that seems to be the current goal by statement and actions. I believe its is very unlikely they will meet even these limited goals. That suggests the attacks will continue unless they redefine their goals once again.
How can Ukraine regain Donetsk which is a city with a million inhabitants? Russia got stuck in much smaller Mariupol for months and caused many civilian casualties and destruction of the infrastructure.
Similar to Cherson, nobody will fight for it :). How many people still lives there and how many fill fight for RU and how many for UA. But the biggest change to regain is RU collapse as in Afganistan.
That's a future scenario and the further in the future it is, the more variables there are relative to the present.
One possibility is not to fight for it by taking the territory around it or destroying Russia's capabilities to fight. What is certain is that if Russia loses it they will try to destroy it if they have the capacity to do so, much like Kherson. That is another reason not to directly assault it.
In this post, under the Ukraine section, I used a NYT graphic that shows the relative damage to Ukrainian cities. If you see all that damage immediately on the northern side of the Dnieper, that was all caused after the Russian withdrawal from Kherson. All of it.
1.: The S-400 cannot really effective against low-flying cruise missile at range of 40km. For this, they needed an battery level surveillance radar.
The S-300PS got the 5N66M NVO, while the S-300PM/PMU got the 76N6 NVO-M radar, on a top of a 25m tall extendable tower. This radar provide the necessary low-level 'sight' for the system. Both the tower and the NVO radar built in Ukraine, which, for some reason won't provide them to the Russians.
The S-400 originally will have to get a better radar, the VVO, but this won't reach the serial production just as the Russian built mobil radar tower base.
Because of this the S-400 have some difficulty against the low-flying and low radar cross section type cruise missile (like the Storm Shadow).
2.: The PAC-2 does not have had Hit-to-Kill missile. The PAC-2 system use the MIM-104D/E series missiles, the MIM-104D/E got a 84kg fragmetion warhead.
The (MIM-104F) PAC-3 missile is a Hit-to-Kill or impact type, without dedicated warhead.
3.: The Hit-to-Kill missile does not means better anti-ballistic missile. It's means lighter and/or faster missile. That's the main reason this is the new "star" among the SAM missiles.
4.: I hardly call the S-400 "vulnerable to ballistic missiles", without knowing what happened the mentioned cases. In the battlefield there is no "test field" cases, both side have had many more elements, like different type of surveillance systems (radars, drones, satellites), electronic warfare systems and the possibility the ZSU use the ATACMS in parallel with drone attacks (multiple angle attacks).
So it's never "black or white" clashes.
What is definitely missing is the dedicated close-in defense layer of SHORAD system(s). In the Russian side this mostly Pantsir-S1 systems right next to the S-400 systems.
We see such systems in 2022 videos and photos (or more earlier in Syria), but now we rarely see them.
Thanks for info. It looks that many thinks are hidden and we can only try to predict.
But it looks that there should be too many S400 and also S300 still, but on other hands not enough for good protection( little efectivity or small number).
Is there any prediction about number of misiles? RU should have many and UA didn't do so massive rocket strikes as RU, but on other hands RU use old S300 against surface target and also there are reports that RU tries to shotdown HIMARS and also Storm Shadows, Neptun, Tocka... and if we assume that because of efectivity they fire more missiles on target, then is very any hope that also RU will have problem with munition?
Not even the Urkainian and NATO militaries know everything about the Russian military, and they have have a lot more resources. But they do know a lot. In December, 2021, a US air defense team briefed Ukraine on Russian capabilities that subsequently proved very accurate.
In November, 2022, Ukraine said of the 8000 air defense missiles Russia had at in February, 2022, they had used 13% of them, leaving 6980. In that same report, Ukraine said Russia wasn't producing any more missiles. If that rate remained consistent then Russia's missile supply would last five years. Since they are expending more missiles in ground attacks and to counter the increased use of Ukrainian missile and drone attacks, it will probably last 3-4 years if there is no new production.
https://visitukraine.today/blog/1212/how-many-missiles-russia-has-left-commentary-of-the-minister-of-defense-of-ukraine
Russia once had 2000 S300 launchers. By 2017 it only had 800.
Though how many of them are operational is anyone's guess.
Personally I tend to go off lower estimates. The high ones are too high and don't make much sense when you look at say pre-war orders of battle or what we're seeing in Ukraine.
Eg According to a few sources Russia apparently had 1650 T-72B3s before the war. This includes 1100 T-72B3 and 550 T-72B3M Obr 2016.
Now according to Oryx, following losses have been incurred:
365 T-72B3 (33% out of 1100)
274 T-72B3 Obr 2018 (50% out of 550)
And despite T-72B3 being apparently most numerous model, they've lost more T-72Bs than T-72B3s (452 including 104 T-72B Obr 1989).
T-72B3 casualties are rare these days. Most losses of T-72s are one's labelled Obr 2022 including T-72B Obr 2022 (101 lost) and T-72B3 Obr 2022 (53 lost).
So there's apparently still 735 T-72B3's still out there yet they are rarely seen/lost and somehow we've seen spikes in losses of older T-62s and T-80BVs as well as newer Obr 2022 T-72s and T-90Ms.
I thus doubt 1100 T-72B3s were ever delivered.
I am sooner inclined to think maybe a total of 1100 T-72B3s were delivered spilt into 550 T-72B3 and 550 T-72B3.
This makes losses more realistic and takes into account the fact that standard T-72B3s don't pop up that often anymore (having mainly been expended):
365 T-72B3 (66% of 550)
274 T-72B3 Obr 2018 (50% of 550)
Same can probably be applied to SAMs etc.
I edited the last line in my reply above to be more precise.
Ah my misunderstanding.
And again how many of those 800 were operational and how many were just rust piles is another question.
Or exported. Just six months ago, 24 launchers were reportedly sent to Tajikistan. https://armyrecognition.com/news/army-news/2023/russia-delivers-two-divisions-of-s-300-air-defense-systems-to-tajikistan
Is it confirmed that launchers and command vehicle are usually connected through data cable?
Yes, and with the engagement radar too. That is why they are bunched (and hit) togheter. Only decadent west uses wireless, encoded, LPI comms between command post and launchers for Patriot, NASAMS, Iris, CAMM, enabling them to be spread for kilometers apart.
Yes, they always are. Was the case in Syria, too.
I read somewhere the TOS-1A Solntsepek multiple rocket launcher (MRL) only has a 6 km range. With so many drones around it is surprising the Russians are able to use them so often, what do you think?
Lots of comfirmed destroyed TOS.
In reality the Ukrainians still lack the drone and artillery capability cover the whole front.
So TOS are still able to pound away.
Because of the electronic warfare, UAVs are no guarantee that everything is always seen right on time.
Thanks for this great info.
Another very interesting and informative read, thank you very much.
I was surprised how much I already knew - your tireless work here seems to be slowly bearing fruit despite all the setbacks and frustrations, obviously even in the most hopeless cases. But despite all my fragmentary knowledge, I have to admit that I have problems seeing the 'big picture'.
There is still a frustratingly large number of functional systems, but Russia is also a very large country with many vulnerable places and a fairly long front in the war zone. Since these SAM systems have to overlap to a certain extent in order to work reliably, the estimated number no longer seems too scary.
Even though such information is of course not publicly available, do you have any idea how precarious the situation already is for the Russians, where there are weak points, where an aerial breakthrough is most likely to occur and which weapons can then be used to exploit it?
Ukraine has been able to conduct two exploitations following a breakthrough. The first was the 2022 Kharkiv offensive, in which Russia had established a hasty defense with one regiment in reserve and were very slow to react to the observed Ukrainian buildup and attack. At some point, the Russian defense crumbled and adjacent units just ran away. A very small number of Ukrainian troops followed, encountering little to no resistance. Ukrainian logistics and the risk of overextension forced a halt and Russia has been pretty serious about their defenses since then.
The second exploitation was when Russia evacuated Kherson. Ukraine simply advanced as Russia withdrew and failed to pressure the Russian withdrawal across the river, wasting a chance to bag 15-25,000 men and their equipment.
During the 2023 summer offensive, Ukraine rarely operated above the company level and when there were small breakthroughs, they could not exploit them in a timely manner, even at the battalion level.
Russia has their own problems. When the Ukrainian line collapsed at Soledar, north of Bakhmut, all they could do is press forward at the speed of foot. There were no armored and mechanized forces prepared or able to penetrate a breach.
So both sides settle for a war of attrition and localized territorial gain. There is certainly evidence of Russian attempts at envelopment operations, such as at Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Chasiv Yar, but they eventually only advanced through frontal attacks.
The good news is, Russia is losing men and equipment at a much higher rate than Ukraine. They have three times the manpower as Ukraine, but they cannot produce equipment as fast as they are losing it. 2/3 of the equipment they send to the front are vehicle they pull from storage. By the end of 2025, there will be no more vehicles left in storage. They have a large numerical advantage in artillery now, but barrels wear out from use and Russia produces about 50 barrels a year.
If current trends stay consistent, Ukraine will gain an ever-increasing advantage in equipment that could provide a decisive edge in attritional combat over the course of 2-3 years. Ukraine's challenges is sustaining their manpower, sustaining their will to fight and sustaining allied support. If they can do those three things, then I believe they will expel Russia from their land in time.
Thank you for the explanations, very informative and surprisingly positive. But I was thinking primarily of possible scenarios in the air regarding the reduction of SAM systems on the Russian side. Whether there might be realistic options in this regard in the near future that we laymen don't yet know about.
Since the situation on the ground seems pretty static overall (although I would prefer it were really static and the Russians weren't constantly advancing a little), that might be the only way to really hurt them in the short and medium term.
Well, everything is connected. With regards to the destruction of Russian air defenses, those efforts have been ongoing since 2022. Pantsir, Buk, S300, S400...every time these systems are detected and Ukraine has a weapon that can effectively attack them, they do so. Russia tries to protect them by minimizing their signature and moving them around.
With the US prohibition on using US weapons in Russian territory, Russian air defense systems took advantage of their sanctuary inside Russia and simply stayed out of artillery range. Then the US said all their weapons except ATACMS can be used in Russia and HIMARS/MLRS destroyed some of them. If ATACMS could be used in Russia, quite a few more air defense systems and other assets would be destroyed.
In attritional warfare, you hang on to territory only so long as it gives you an advantage or denies the enemy an advantage. Russia pays a high cost to gain territory. When it gets to a point that holding a certain piece of territory is no longer to Ukraine's advantage, then they withdraw and Russia has to begin the process all over again. The long term strategy is to bleed Russia and sustain Ukrainian forces.
Thank you for the information, I learned a lot. Intersting they use cables. It does seem to me that the Ukrainians are getting through and destroying more and more such. But that may be my imagation running wild.
Dear Don, it seems that the current trend of losses depends on ru willingness to continue offensive. However, by losing offensive capacity through equipment expenditure they would not necessarily lose defensive capacity. It all depends on how early they stop, and how effectively manage losses in next 4-6 months.
Recently, the armor losses go down (while personnel losses remain highest) and Sumy offensive seemingly is not happening. The loss of offensive capacity could be tracked, I think, through monitoring how many active directions they maintain. At the peak it seems they had up to 10 active directions. Theoretically in the next several months they would need to more and more focus on Donetsk, stopping Kharkiv direction offensive, then Zaporizhya direction offensive. But maybe it will not happen, and instead they extend offensive to say Sumy. This what I mean by how they will manage losses.
So the only way to make this trend a decisive trend is to significantly extend military support, 2-3 times more monthly volumes perhaps. Otherwise it is all matter of chances.
With regards to equipment losses and stocks. Stocks may last a bit longer, but there is a maximum monthly capacity for refurbishing and preparing equipment to go to front lines (not to mention producing it). The current rate of losses, say in terms of armors, seems to be around 3 times higher then that monthly capacity. So before the stocks exhausted, an earlier mooment of the need to scale down offensive by factor of 3 should come.
As a proof of the limited monthly capacity some osinters use pictures of storage bases vs repair plants. While bases were losing stored equipment at quick rate, it is significantly slower recent months, but the locations around plants are full of equipment. Means it was brought there to do something, but not yet to front lines.
I do caveat my statements saying they are based on current trends. Actions can decrease or increase loss rates. Stopping offensive actions would be a major departure from current and past Russian actions. It would reduce but not eliminate attrition of their vehicles (and personnel).
If they continue to gain ground, however small, like they are doing in Donetsk, it seems to compel them to continue to attack. When they do not gain ground, such as at Vuhledar, Synkivka, and now (maybe?) Terny, they tend to stop attacking after a period of time. Bilohorivka is one place where that doesn't seem to be true. They keep attacking, at least on a small scale, despite no progress since January when they gained 500 meters.
The analysts I've read mentions both the storage facilities and repair facilities. There is some percentage that has already been plundered for parts or the vehicle is too damaged to repair. How much is hard to determine with precision. Some tanks have been sent to Ukraine without turrets to act as APCs.
Russia will constantly lose defensive capability with artillery barrel wear.
I understand and thank you for your work!
I am not sure that only tactical successes are really a motivation for what they are doing. Though, it is logical, in terms of it gives the opportunity to reach their political goals, i.e. pretend being stronk and unaffected.
But also it seems that they are obsessed with capturing all Donetsk region. For example this interview, although not super fresh, from one of the most experienced UA commanders: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.censor.net/en/resonance/3490714/palisa_pavlo
So namely Slovyansk and Kramatorsk are the targets. And that is by the end of the year. So most probably we would observe more activities around that.
And this, mildly put, would mean losses continued.
I agree. The goals of the invasion have been redefined a couple times and that seems to be the current goal by statement and actions. I believe its is very unlikely they will meet even these limited goals. That suggests the attacks will continue unless they redefine their goals once again.
How can Ukraine regain Donetsk which is a city with a million inhabitants? Russia got stuck in much smaller Mariupol for months and caused many civilian casualties and destruction of the infrastructure.
Similar to Cherson, nobody will fight for it :). How many people still lives there and how many fill fight for RU and how many for UA. But the biggest change to regain is RU collapse as in Afganistan.
I am afraid that Kherson and Donetsk are two different kettle of fish.
That's a future scenario and the further in the future it is, the more variables there are relative to the present.
One possibility is not to fight for it by taking the territory around it or destroying Russia's capabilities to fight. What is certain is that if Russia loses it they will try to destroy it if they have the capacity to do so, much like Kherson. That is another reason not to directly assault it.
As far as I know Kherson was left quite intact
It was. Since then, Russia has regularly pounded it with artillery, rockets and bombs.
This article from November, 2023, said Russia fired 2,706 shells at Kherson and other villages in October of that year. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/14/kherson-bombs-ukraine-war-russia/
In this post, under the Ukraine section, I used a NYT graphic that shows the relative damage to Ukrainian cities. If you see all that damage immediately on the northern side of the Dnieper, that was all caused after the Russian withdrawal from Kherson. All of it.
https://donaldhill.substack.com/p/ukraine-update-a55
Thanks Don I appreciate the work you put into these reports and I learned things
I would love more info about the Neptune in its latest upgrade. Chuck Pfarrer has a great info graphic today on Twitter.
Some more information:
1.: The S-400 cannot really effective against low-flying cruise missile at range of 40km. For this, they needed an battery level surveillance radar.
The S-300PS got the 5N66M NVO, while the S-300PM/PMU got the 76N6 NVO-M radar, on a top of a 25m tall extendable tower. This radar provide the necessary low-level 'sight' for the system. Both the tower and the NVO radar built in Ukraine, which, for some reason won't provide them to the Russians.
The S-400 originally will have to get a better radar, the VVO, but this won't reach the serial production just as the Russian built mobil radar tower base.
Because of this the S-400 have some difficulty against the low-flying and low radar cross section type cruise missile (like the Storm Shadow).
2.: The PAC-2 does not have had Hit-to-Kill missile. The PAC-2 system use the MIM-104D/E series missiles, the MIM-104D/E got a 84kg fragmetion warhead.
The (MIM-104F) PAC-3 missile is a Hit-to-Kill or impact type, without dedicated warhead.
3.: The Hit-to-Kill missile does not means better anti-ballistic missile. It's means lighter and/or faster missile. That's the main reason this is the new "star" among the SAM missiles.
4.: I hardly call the S-400 "vulnerable to ballistic missiles", without knowing what happened the mentioned cases. In the battlefield there is no "test field" cases, both side have had many more elements, like different type of surveillance systems (radars, drones, satellites), electronic warfare systems and the possibility the ZSU use the ATACMS in parallel with drone attacks (multiple angle attacks).
So it's never "black or white" clashes.
What is definitely missing is the dedicated close-in defense layer of SHORAD system(s). In the Russian side this mostly Pantsir-S1 systems right next to the S-400 systems.
We see such systems in 2022 videos and photos (or more earlier in Syria), but now we rarely see them.
Which is a definitive problem...
I just read that a S500 intercepted an ATACMS missile. Is this to be expected?
https://x.com/m0nstas/status/1806640848647409672?s=46&t=bHu7mUm3540YF-Iw5KGBfg
I also read the opposite
https://x.com/pstyle0ne1/status/1806645714484691165?s=46&t=bHu7mUm3540YF-Iw5KGBfg