Original subtitles

Moscow can't sleep easy... or, where are the air defense systems?

This is not the first time that Moscow has been raided by certain aircraft launched by

unidentified individuals, but reaching the borders of the Russian capital almost unhindered.

How is this possible?

Mathias Rust would argue that Moscow was the most protected city in the USSR, but it remains

a fact.

Any other locality could only envy such an echeloned air defense system and the capital's

protection from the strikes of the "insidious" West.

But, lately, Russians' faith in Moscow's air defense has waned.

Russian propaganda has regularly reported on the use by Russian troops of the S-400

missile system, which has no analogues in the world, and the highly effective Pantsir

missile system, which Moscow has even put on the roofs of administrative buildings,

but still, something is going wrong.

To intercept small-sized objects, such as drones, not the S-300 or S-400, but short-range

systems are used.

These include Pantsir and Tor missile systems and others.

But the above mentioned are considered to be the most advanced, but there is a nuance....

In Ukraine, the Russians have lost more than 50 Tor and 45 Pantsir.

That is, almost 40% of the total number.

At the same time, most of the remaining short-range systems are now concentrated in the combat

zone, to cover Russian positions from air and drone strikes on the Eastern and Southern

bridgeheads.

Russian air defense is becoming non-functional.

Production of these complexes is a complex and labor-intensive process, but even recovery

from storage is not easy and long-term.

Progressively, but quite confidently, Russia is left without short and medium range echelons.

A large number of S-300s and S-400s are useless against small-sized objects that need to be

intercepted by completely different systems.

Thus, Russia's airspace is being stripped bare and turned into a colander, and in some

places into tunnels in the Russian air defense system.

Can Moscow sleep easy?

Of course not.

But there is another nuance worth mentioning.

It is not the first time that electronic warfare is being used en masse to counter drone raids!

But another thing is important, and that is that this is unacceptable!

The use of electronic warfare in the city is not just not desirable, it is dangerous!

After all, it does not destroy the drone, but takes it off course, breaks the control

in a dense multi-storey building and uncontrolled drone filled with explosives flies in an unknown

direction.

It is much safer to hit such drones with missile or cannon elements, which provoke detonation

of the warhead and debris falls to the ground.

But when have high-rise buildings ever been an obstacle for Russia?

If the drone did not hit the target and fell somewhere else, then the task of air defense

is accomplished.

And, what about Pantsirs on rooftops?

In answer to this question, I would like to recall the experience of using "modern" Russian

air defense systems in Syria.

The Tor complex, which was created as a "modern", high-tech replacement for the Soviet 2K22

Tunguska, turned out to be less effective than the old Soviet design.

In 2020, a propaganda TV channel showed the failure of firing of four batteries of the

Pantsir missile system.

All of them were firing simultaneously at an aerial target with cannons and none of

them hit, not a single one!

They had to "finish off" the nimble drone with a missile.

I think you can draw the appropriate conclusions without my additional comments.

At the end of this material I would like to ask just one question....

Moscow, are you asleep?