Expert: Russian Military to Get New Pantsir-SM Air Defense Systems No Sooner Than 2018

8 October 2016 12:54 Rubric: Russia, Industry

Production of the first batch of the new Pantsir-SM antiaircraft missile/artillery systems will start approximately in two years, reported TASS on Friday, October 7, referring to Vladimir Popov, director general of Scheglovsky Val (member of the High Precision Systems holding).

"The engineering design phase is over. We’re going to kick off production of pilot samples either this or early next year", he said.

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According to him, wheeled chassis KAMAZ for the prospective system is almost completed. Besides, one of the Pantsir versions will be mounted on tracked chassis.

Just before, head designer of the central design bureau of apparatus engineering, Alexander Khomyakov, said Pantsir-SM would be armed with new high-velocity missiles, detection and killing range would be somewhat twice longer. The new system will be capable to lock a target at the distance up to 75 km and hit it at 40 km. These parameters of the original version, Pantsir-S1, make 40 and 20 km respectively.

As a reminder, Russian defense ministry’s spokesmen said in August that Pantsir-SM would be commissioned "very soon" though.