Major Shaitan Singh
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Fully deployed 72V6 SPAAGM prototype on BAZ-6909 chassis. This variant incorporates a new VNIIRT designed 1RS2-1E agile beam phased array engagement radar. The primary design aim for this system was the interception of PGMs, especially the AGM-88 HARM and GBUs (Sergei Kuznetsov via Strizhi.ru).
2S6M Tunguska M at the Berezina 2002 exercise. Most of the Soviet inventory of these capable SPAAGMs ended up in the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarus Army inventories. The most notable export client has been India (© Miroslav Gyűrösi).
Background
The 2K22 Tunguska / 96K6 Pantsir / SA-19 Grison / SA-22 Greyhound family of SPAAGMs owes its earliest origins to a 1970 directive for the replacement of the ubiquitous ZSU-23-4P SPAAG. The ZSU-23-4P was considered both lethal and effective by its Western opponents, but Soviet analysts were unimpressed with the lethality and the engagement envelope of the 23 mm weapons. Analysis indicated that a 30 mm gun would be much more lethal. Soviet operational analysis also indicated that the performance of the acquisition radar on the SPAAG was critical to combat effectiveness. The defeat of anti-tank helicopters in pop-up engagement geometries became an additional requirement after the 1972 debut of these weapons in Vietnam. Trials of the prototype 2S6 / 2K22 Tunguska SPAAGM commenced in 1980. The prototypes introduced several innovations, including a 30 mm gun derivative aircraft cannon, the 9K311 missile and a digital computer for controlling the system.
The earliest production variant, the 2K22 / 2S6 Tunguska / SA-19 Grison, achieved IOC in 1982.
The immediate operational imperative for the PVO-SV was to defeat the then new A-10A Thunderbolt, and US Army helicopters firing anti-armour missiles, such as the TOW equipped AH-1S and Hellfire equipped AH-64A Apache. From the Soviet perspective, both of these threats would pop up briefly above the radar/visual horizon, fire at Soviet tanks or SPAAGs, and then disappear below the horizon before the ZSU-23-4P or 9K33 Osa / SA-8 systems could respond with defensive weapon fire.
The Soviets needed a weapon system which could win in a 'high noon' shootout with the A-10 or a nap-of-ther-earth pop-up rotary wing threat. This drove the design requirements for the Tunguska, and led to the development of the high speed 9M311 SAM, intended to cross the distance between the Tunguska and the target before the latter could hide below the horizon line. This capability would be supplemented by a 30 mm gun system, the Soviets clearly coveting the BundesWehr's Krauss-Maffei Wegmann FLAKPanzer Gepard SPAAG.
The missile requirement led to the unusual two stage 9M311 design, in which the first stage boosted the round to 900 m/s at burnout, the sustainer in the terminal stage burning to impact and maintaining a 600 m/s velocity. The missile employs command link guidance, with an automatic Command to Line Of Sight (CLOS) control loop for the terminal phase to impact, with an 18G capability. The engagement radar component of the 1RL144M Hot Shot system is claimed to operate in the millimetric band, using jam resistant monopulse angle tracking; a 1A29M optical sight is boresighted with the radar. A 1RL138 IFF system is included. Conceptually the 2S6 missile package has its closest Western equivalents in the Franco-German Roland system, and the UK Rapier Blindfire and Seawold systems.
The gun requirement led to the adaptation of the 30 mm GSh-30 aircraft cannon, carried by Russian fighters: the 2A38 series liquid cooled 30 mm gun delivers a rate of fire of 1950-2500 rds/min, a muzzle velocity of 960 m/s, using the 2A42 cartridge and 0.39 kg projectile.
The initial 1982 2K22 2S6 Tunguska variant was superceded by the 2K22M/2S6M Tunguska M in 1990, and the 2K22M1/2S6M1 Tunguska M1 in 2003. The product line has been further developed as the Pantsir S, primarily in a road mobile configuration.
The 9M113-M1 SAM has a higher impulse booster, and radio rather than laser fusing to improve effect against cruise missiles and Precision Guided Munitions. Defeating the latter has become one of the primary requirements for late variants of the 2S6 and the newer Pantsir S/S1 series.
Early configuration 2S6M1 Tunguska M1 system, note the Hot Shot radar system with the paraboloid section search antenna and gimballed monopulse tracking antenna (© Miroslav Gyűrösi).
2S6M Tunguska M SPAAGM, stowed, at MAKS 1993 (© Miroslav Gyűrösi).
Late configuration 2S6M1 Tunguska M1 (Said Aminov, Vestnik PVO).
A BundesWehr Gepard SPAAG. The Gepard was a German response to the highly effective ZSU-23-4P SPAAG, and clearly became a major influence on the design of the Tunguska system, intended to replace the ZSU-23-4P.
Tunguska batteries are typically deployed with the PU-12M, PPRU-1M or Ranzhir series of battery command posts.
The operational requirement for the weapon system which became the 96K6 Pantsir system was fundamentally different to that defined by the PVO-SV for the 2K22 / 2S6 Tunguska - the PVO required a point defence weapon system to protect its S-300P / SA-10A/B Grumble fixed and self-propelled SAM batteries from attack by defence suppression aircraft, and to protect airfields and other critical strategic or industrial facilities from massed guided weapon attack. Development was launched in 1990, the intent being an adaptation of the PVO-SV system for carriage on a wheeled vehicle compatible with the transit speeds of the PVO's S-300P / SA-10A/B Grumble missile batteries.
This new V-PVO operational requirement partly arose due to the different regime in which the new S-300PS/PM / SA-10/20 batteries were deployed, as these replaced the semi-mobile S-25 / SA-1 Guild, S-75 / SA2 Guideline, and the S-200 / SA-5 Gammon. All of these legacy systems were built for redeployment, but mostly operated as static batteries, more than often from well hardened sites with bunkers and revetments for most battery components. The move to “shoot and scoot” operations improved survivability of the S-300P series batteries by reducing opportunities for attacking aircraft to target the site, but once found, the highly mobile SAM battery was usually well exposed and thus susceptible to attack by smart munitions. The use of hardened static sites was not possible for Army PVO-SV systems, which by then had evolved a large number of highly mobile point defence weapons to protect their longer ranging SAM batteries. The evolution of the Tunguska into the Pantsir thus reflects the convergence of the V-PVO SAM battery deployment regime with that of the PVO-SV's SAM regiments.
The effectiveness of the US AGM-88 HARM and UK ALARM in 1991, deployed against Iraq's legacy Soviet PVO SAM systems added urgency to the requirement. Iraq's SAM batteries collapsed in the first few days of Desert Storm under a rain of anti-radiation missiles, which destroyed their engagement radars without hindrance. If the anti-radiation missile armed fighter could get close enough to take a shot, the SAM battery was likely to be lost.