The steppes of Donbass, the barren coasts of Snake Island, the muddy terrain of Kherson - what do they have in common? They were destroyed in these very different places, many hundreds of kilometers away from each other, but above all all equally subjected, at the time, to the Russian occupation of the Pantsir-1S in service for the Moscow forces. And with a few well-aimed blows - as well as a bit of luck that the military has come to appreciate since Napoleon - weapons systems worth 15 million dollars were destroyed. In the opening frame one of these "deadly encounters", more precisely from a video taken in Donbass.
The missile system Pantsir (Russian: Панцирь, literally '"carapace"') is a family of anti-aircraft artillery systems and medium-range self-propelled surface-to-air missiles. From Pantsir-S1 (Russian: Панцирь-С1, NATO codename SA-22 Greyhound) as the first version, is produced by the KBP Instrument Design Bureau in Tula, Russia
Il Pantsir-S1 it is designed to provide air defense of military, industrial and administrative installations against aircraft, helicopters, precision ammunition, cruise missiles and UAVs; and to provide additional protection for air defense units against enemy air strikes using precision ammunition, especially at low to extremely low altitudes.
But how is it possible to annihilate an air defense system? Apart from the Turks' declaration of having destroyed one in 2020, up to now the interesting case is that of a Pantsir hit by Jerusalem, also in Syria, two years earlier. In 2018 in Syria the Israeli forces (IDF) succeeded in the enterprise by taking advantage of the fact that the Pantsir in question, supplied by the armed forces of Damascus, had run out of ammunition and was about to be rearmed. So, the IDF did bingo! Who knows that the same has not happened in Ukraine at least three times?
It does not seem impossible, even in light of what happened in Libya before the pandemic, when the Tripoli offensive by Khalifa Haftar's forces against the Ankara-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) began to collapse. Provided to the Cyrenaica strongman with the mediation of his Arab sponsors, the Russian system was to be used as a trump card against Turkey's unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) aerial interdiction operations. However, after a major GNA counter-offensive, the Libyan warlord was defeated. The Libyan propaganda, meanwhile, spoke of 9-10 Pantsir destroyed in the weeks of conflict.
To add insult to injury, a system Pantsir, captured by the forces of the GNA, paraded through Tripoli as a war trophy and then handed over to the Americans to study it thoroughly.
