Russia test-fires S-500 air defence missile systems

Editor1 Aug 11 2021 Current Affairs

Russia has recently released what is thought to be the first footage of its advanced new S-500 surface-to-air missile system in action, a weapon it hopes will consolidate its own defences and one day become an export best seller.

Its predecessor, the S-400 system, has become a source of geopolitical tension with the United States actively discouraging countries to buy it, and, in the case of Turkey, unsuccessfully trying to persuade Ankara to return it.

Footage released by the defence ministry showed the giant truck-based system's launch tubes firing a missile at high speed into the sky at a testing ground in southern Russia.

Russia's state RIA news agency said it was the first time that the defence ministry had shown the S-500 system undergoing a live fire test.

 

Parts of the footage had been deliberately blurred to make it harder to examine the system in detail.

The ministry said the missile had successfully hit a "high-speed ballistic target".

"The S-500 anti-aircraft missile system has no analogues in the world and is designed to defeat the entire spectrum of existing and promising aerospace attack weapons of a potential enemy in the entire range of altitudes and speeds," the ministry said in a statement.

 

The S-500 system, called Prometheus, is capable of destroying ballistic and cruise missiles, as well as planes and helicopters, and has an interception radius of around 600 km (373 miles), RIA reported.

Citing Deputy Defence Minister Alexei Krivoruchko last year, RIA said the S-500 system was expected to be delivered and inducted by 2025.

The afore-mentioned launch took place in the southern Astrakhan region at the Kapustin Yar training range, the defence ministry said.

The test comes a day after Russia tested a Tsirkon (Zircon) hypersonic cruise missile, a weapon President Vladimir Putin has touted as part of a new generation of missile systems nonpareil in the world. 

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