Naval Air Defence systems

I suspect they have two obvious options... they have developed new airburst 30mm shells so they might continue with the mix of 30mm and missiles on one vehicle/turret mount, and add a separate 57mm vehicle/turret, where the 30mm gun would only be used against popup targets at close range like drones and also to protect the vehicle while it is moved somewhere safer to reload the missiles, or they will remove the 30mm guns and replace the 30mm guns with 57mm guns.

Remember at the end of WWII their air defence was a single barrel 37mm gun, which was replaced with a twin 57mm gun and 14.5m HMGs in various mounts... the towed 57mm guns continued on long after the self propelled vehicle was replaced by the Shilka with 23mm cannon but was replaced in the 70s by the OSA, but they kept the 23mm guns and then replaced them with 30mm guns and missiles on the one platform.

The rate of fire from those smaller calibre cannon meant a pattern of projectiles could be launched through which no normal sized target (ie aircraft) could fly through without getting hit, but small drones and munitions means the rate of fire and number of rounds that need to be fired to assure a hit on even a level flying target becomes impractical.

In terms of hunting animals that move fast like rabbits or ducks the best weapon to use is a shotgun because it offers multiple chances of a hit with each shot... an animal generally does not have thrust vectoring propulsion so if they are moving in a specific direction in the fraction of a second between making the shot and impact of the projectiles they can't move very much in any direction so as long as you have lots of pellets with a nice even spread over a square metre or so the chances are very good you will hit the target with enough pellets to stop it.

Rabbits and ducks are size 3 to size 4 pellets which are a few mms across with about 100 in each shell. Each one will go right through a rabbit or duck sized animal within about 30-20m or so.

Against a human wearing clothes such a load is totally inadequate... our skin is thicker and our flesh is heavier as are our bones... number 3 or 4 shot is more likely to enrage a human than humainely dispatch them.

The problems for the shotgun are the same for the air defence gun... scale up the calibre to have a chance of damaging the target terminally and you reduce the number of rounds per shot (for a cannon heavier projectiles needs bigger rounds and heavier guns that usually don't fire as fast but often fire further.)

The problem is that 000 buckshot might only have 12 projectiles in one 12 gauge shell case... so at 20m if you draw a circle 1m across and randomly put twelve impacts on it that is pretty much what you get with a shotgun... the problem is that you have no control where in that 1m circle those projectiles are going... one shot on a human target you might get one ball bearing through the brain and two through the heart and one through a lung and the rest missing the target completely but that would be a kill... equally the next shot with the same ammo from the same gun at the target standing right next to the first target and you might skim an arm that opens a wound but a trivial wound and all the rest of the projectiles go wide.

WTF am I talking about... well in the 1980s they were testing Gepard (35mm) against a full sized paper target of an Mi-28 at a range of 2km and to be honest the target looked like it had been hit by a shotgun blast from 20m with buckshot... there were about 20 or 30 holes in the target all randomly scattered... if you look on another thread about the 57mm gun mount on a BMP-3 showing firing on the move at a target 2km away with their tight cluster of hits it puts things in perspective... in the 1980s they didn't want air defence guns to be lasers putting all their rounds in a small spot on the target because their target is moving and manouvering so they wanted hits all round the point of aim to compensate for any change in movement by the target between when the gun opens fire and impact time... they didn't want inaccurate guns but they didn't want super accurate either in case the aim point is wrong.

With the new 57mm gun mounts however an airburst ammo they want more accuracy again because it is the fragments that will make up for miss distance... not rate of fire or weight of fire... that is why they only want one barrel... lighter and simpler and cheaper.

It looks like they can fit a 57mm gun mount in to the space of a 30mm gatling gun mount so it will be interesting to see what they do... they generally mount HMGs and rifle calibre machine guns on their ships too so fire power wont be compromised in any event... a 57mm gun firing a single round that hits a small boat sized target would be just as devastating as a burst of gatling fire with a couple of hits and a couple of hundred other rounds splashing all around the target like it was supposed to do...

I think next gen Pantsir will become more stealthy so removing the guns might make a positive difference...

Naval models will be slightly different... ie Rif and Rif-M are S-300F missiles rather than S-300Ps.

Also after upgrades it is likely they will use S-400 missiles as the Rif and Rif-M would likely no longer be in production.

Though the may have older missiles in stock that could perhaps be used up in exercises I would think 250km and 400km range missiles will be used with the large launchers and the S-350 60km and 150km range missiles used in Redut tubes.

Palash is based on the Pine SAM, and is a much simpler cheaper launcher that may require hand loading for the missiles... I don't think they are autoloaded.

I suspect a newer version of Redut for the heavier ships that will carry S-400 and S-500 missiles, or perhaps the new UKSK-M might replace the UKSK and Redut launchers depending on their capacity.

They are also developing very small missiles for self defence to defend from artillery shells and rockets which would be a significant development for all branches of their military forces... Army columns including supply convoys could be protected from artillery attack with vehicles carrying hundreds of missiles, while ships would obviously benefit from such a CIWS defence capacity and even bombers and fighters could carry such missiles for self defence against missiles of all types...

I understand that Pantsir M is probably the weapon of choice for new fit to use against incoming sea skimming missiles but what else is there?

Also, what is in use now?

My understanding is that there are supposed to be two variants of the Naval Pantsir system to replace Kashtan, one is for upgraded ships and a more stealthy model is for new ship but other than an article mentioning this I have seen no confirmation.

In terms of sea skimming threats the Pantsir/Kashtan/Palma systems with guns and missiles, plus the gun mounts (including old and new single and double 30mm gatling guns with new radar directors), and of course the Naval TOR system usually used on the bigger ships like Kuznetsov and Kirov and Slava class ships, which is being upgraded on land with new smaller missiles that would be rather useful at sea too, and then you have the naval BUK which is rather capable against low flying threats, as well as its upgrade in the form of Viking.

For their new ships the Redut system carries the 9M96 missile in two versions... one with 150km range and the other with 60km range and both with ARH and therefore able to engage sea skimming targets, though the 9M100 missile also is designed as a CIWS for short range self defence too... being the naval equivalent of the land based S-350 system.

Then on the bigger boats the S-400 and likely S-500 family for long range and very long range interception of targets from a metre above the waves to space.

When talking about naval SAMs I remember one guy mentioned the S-550 optimised for ABM use that would not be needed at sea... implying the S-500 will go to sea.

They seem to be modifying the TOR to use ship mast mounted AESA arrays which would simplify the system quite a lot because at its heart apart from very capable radar the TOR is just a simple cheap command guided SAM that can be bought and used in enormous numbers rather cheaply... all the expensive stuff is on the launcher/launch platform, so it is the best sort of system... a system that is actually rather cheap to use.

In comparison some IIR and ARH systems are very capable on paper but too expensive to use a lot of missiles.... examples Javelin and Hellfire.

New weapons also involve lasers but that something you can counter with an anti laser material IMO. Not a game changer like they make it believe.

I don't believe lasers will be all super powerful and like any system there will be countermeasures, but it could be used to dazzle optical guidance systems as well as damage drones which is going to be very valuable.

At the very end you need some gattling guns and APS. Something like Arena adapted for ships that would intercept any missile some 20-50m from the ship like arena intercept atgm on tanks.

They have talked about very small cheap missiles intended to shoot down artillery rounds... shell and rocket artillery, which requires direct hits with decent HE warheads, which would be ideal against drones and anti ship missiles too. They are intended to be carried in enormous numbers which would suit being loaded onto a ships deck in boxes, or perhaps even shipping crates that could be loaded on trucks or rail carriages or tied down on ship decks.

Even if they just reach 1-2km range would be plenty...

Most of the Soviet AShM proved to be immune to Phalanx. Even if accidentally it could destroy the incoming missile, it was so close that the fast moving debries would strike anyway.
Soviets didn't have this concern. Ever.

Part of the problem for Phalanx was they knew the Soviet missiles were armoured so the Americans tended to use DU subcalibre rounds which meant they were essentially firing 50 cal DU slugs at the Soviet missiles which seriously limited the range at which they could be effective.

In comparison the full calibre 30mm shells of the Russian guns were HE rounds that had a much better chance to set the warhead of the target missile off if they hit.

They tested a SS-N-19 anti ship missile and sent a MiG-31 to shoot it down... it apparently took two R-33 hits to destroy the missile... each R-33 has a 60kg warhead and is not a weak missile by any means...

Using Sea RAM or Vulcan to stop a Granit is like trying to stop a train with a baseball bat... you can hit it... but will it notice before it rolls right over you...

The Patriot missile system had a similar problem with extended range Scuds in Desert Storm... hitting them wasn't enough... you had to do what the S-300P and S-300V and S-300F were designed to do... you had to hit and set off the warhead to blow them up otherwise they just keep coming because unlike shooting down a plane where you can rip off the wings or the entire tail... it is going to crash... mission accomplished... if it is a falling missile or an attacking missile in the last few hundred metres of its flight then trashing the engines and wings wont stop it... it will hit the target anyway.... and mission failed.