It has to do with the system’s physical architecture, not the guidance mode. For one, it doesn’t use SARH guidance. Secondly, that matters not for a SARH system anyway on this scale, as the missile flys way downrange before terminal guidance kicks in. Were it a SARH system guided that way from the outset you’d have a point.

It’s not on the road continually, after all it’s got to stop and set up if it wants to be useful for anything other than a parade. As for the forests it isn’t going to be able to see much buried in trees (regardless of Big Bird on a pole).

They can stop driving and be ready to fire in 5 minutes (all variants except the S-300PT and it’s bass-ackwards TELs). That increases to 45-90 minutes if you use the mast assemblies for the radars, with the taller mast requiring closer to 90 minutes.

What do you mean specifically “the radars have sufficient capability to target those weapons”?

The 5N63 and 30N6 radars have enough resolving power to engage PGMs. How many receiver elements have to be used to get that resolution, I don’t know, but if they need to use a large percentage then it could theoretically affect the ability to also guide multiple other missiles to targets. That of course implies that they farm out array sections to perform different guidance tasks, they could use a more agile setup where the whole array is time shared throughout the engagement processes. Want me to figure that out, you’ll have to find me a radar to screw with 😀

Now what COULD be very interesting is if they laid a bunch of fiber optic lines out there in the forest and had them plugged into a local network with launchers five or ten miles apart.

Launchers can only be up to 100 meters from the radar. Each group of lanuchers (1 master, 2 slave) must be close together, about 5 meters.

there were not S-300 in Eastern Germany

Yes, there were, in DDR service. I’ve also found locations where Soviet S-300P series batteries may have been based.

may be Russians have already fielded High Power Microwave or EMP warhead into their S-300/S-400 system

I believe they are working on an HPM system. EMP warheads? Not on the S-300/400 series, they primarily use directional HE warheads on the latest 48N6 models.

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Mach 3.12 with an 11,000lb, 42 foot long drone strapped to it’s back. Incredible.

The Mach 3 bit isn’t really that big of a deal, they had uprated engines and used the D-21’s ramjet to aid acceleration. Overcoming everything and getting it to work right was more of an accomplishment. They even had to deal with a launch pylon that was purposely designed too short; a little bigger and separation would’ve been far easier, but it would’ve been next to impossible structurally.

As it was, it worked right three times, until they decided to change the launch maneuvers…

Flight profile at separation for the M-21 was Mach 3.12, 72,000 feet. Pull-up and nose-over to maintain 0.9g through separation.

9M96 has a series of nozzles around the mid section for inflight correction. The 48N6 uses vanes in the engine nozzle. The 9M96 system is basically an enlarged version of the system used to make initial course corrections in the Tor’s 9M330. It’s this second series of nozzles that the Russians are often referring to as “gas dynamic control”. I’m curious to know at what altitude a 48N6 motor would burn out, it does loft initially so it’s highest point of altitude is going to pretty much always be higher than the intended target. I wonder how much power it has behind it.

I still say the “big missile” is either a hoax or a misidentification by Western sources; Fakel had tested the 48N6 to 400 kilometers in the mid-80’s. No sense reinventing the wheel. I can just picture Russian S-400 battery commanders reading Western media reports on their new toys and laughing to themselves: “Sure, we can only hit targets at 250 km right now, riiiiight!”

An S-400-class missile engaging a target at an altitude approaching 170 kilometers or so isn’t completely out of the question, both the 9M96 and 48N6 missiles use TVC so they’d be able to have a degree of control in the upper reaches of the atmosphere. Now, I find that figure to be unlikely, because then you’re getting into the realm of low earth orbit platforms and an ASAT capability, and that’s what the S-500 is supposed to bring to the table. Maybe the 40N6 is really the S-500’s interceptor and not the S-400’s “big stick”?

You damn near need a map the keep all the flavors of S-300/300V/400 straight

Pfft! http://geimint.blogspot.com/2008/07/s-300p-detailed-analysis.html 😀

They may not reveal it until after its made its first flight and been transferred to Zhukovskiy for trials (if it’s transferred there at all).