Russia’s new mobile SAM had a bad combat debut in Syria

Harold C. Hutchison
Sep 12, 2019 2:52 AM PDT
1 minute read
Technology photo

SUMMARY

The Syrian Civil War has been a testing ground for some of Russia’s latest weapons. Russia even sent their piece-of-crap carrier, the Admiral Flo…

The Syrian Civil War has been a testing ground for some of Russia's latest weapons. Russia even sent their piece-of-crap carrier, the Admiral Flota Sovetskogo Soyuza Kuznetsov, to do a "combat deployment" in Syria (though the carrier's planes operated from land). Russia made a big deal about the deployment but, as is typical of much of Russia's arsenal, there wasn't much behind the hype.


Now, it looks like the new Pantsir mobile air-defense system may join that list of weapons that fail to meet expectations. The Pantsir is a combined gun-missile system armed with enough SA-22 Greyhound missiles to, theoretically, shoot down an entire squadron of fighters.

As it turns out, the Pantsir made its combat debut as a result of the recent contretemps between Iran and Israel after President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the 2015 nuclear deal. Unfortunately for the Russians, this debut was less than stellar. The video above, released by the Israeli Defense Forces, shows the last seconds of a Pantsir's existence, right up to the moment of impact.

According to an IDF release, the Israeli Air Force carried out an attack in response to rocket-launcher fire from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force. Israeli defense systems, like Iron Dome, destroyed four of the Iranian rockets, preventing any casualties and damages.

During the IDF's response, Syrian air-defense systems fired on Israeli planes. All IDF aircraft returned home safely. Conversely, Israel claims that it destroyed several Syrian aerial interception systems, including the Pantsir.

A Pantsir air-defense system takes part in a 2016 live-fire demonstration.

(Photo by Sergey Bobylev, Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation)

This isn't the only time that Syria has taken the latest gear from Russia into battle only to see it perform poorly. In the 1982 Lebanon War, Syria sent T-72 main battle tanks into combat with the Israelis. The T-72s lost in action against Israel's home-grown Merkava in what would prove to be a preview of that tank's abysmal performance in Operation Desert Storm.

To see more on the Israeli Defense Forces' recent operations in Syria, check out the video below.

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