The Almaz S-400 Triumf or SA-21 system is the most recent evolution of the S-300P family of SAM systems, initially trialled in 1999. The label S-400 is essentially marketing, since the system was previously reported under the speculative label of S-300PMU3. At least one report claims that funding for the development of the Triumf was provided in part by the PLA. The principal distinctions between the S-400 and its predecessor lie in further refinements to the radars and software, and the addition of four new missile types in addition to the legacy 48N6E/48N6E2 used in the S-300PMU2 Favorit.


As a result an S-400 battery could be armed with arbitrary mixes of these weapons to optimise its capability for a specific threat environment. The 30N6E2 further evolved into the more capable 92N6E Grave Stone, carried by a new 8 x 8 MZKT-7930 vehicle. The additional range required a significantly uprated transmitter tube to provide the higher power-aperture performance needed, in additional to an improved exciter and automatic frequency hopping capability. The 96L6  is offered as an 'all altitude' battery acquisition radar, also carried by a 8 x 8 MZKT-7930 vehicle. A new 3D phased array acquisition radar is employed, the 91N6E derived from the 64N6E2, and the 40V6M/MD mast is an available option. The 55K6E command post is employed, carried by an 8 x 8 Ural 532361 truck.

Optional acquisition radars cited for the S-400 include the 59N6 Protivnik GE and 67N6 Gamma DE in the L-band, but also the 1L119 Nebo SVU in the VHF band, and the multiband Nebo M. The Nebo SVU/M have a claimed capability against stealth aircraft. In addition to further acquisition radar types, the S-400 has been trialled with the Topaz Kolchuga M, KRTP-91 Tamara / Trash Can, and 85V6 Orion / Vega emitter locating systems, the aim being to engage  emitting targets without emitting from the acquisition radars, or if the acquisition radars have been jammed. In June, 2008, the manufacturer disclosed the integration of the 1RL220VE, 1L222 and 86V6 Orion emitter locating systems with the S-400.

TEL options include the baseline 5P85TE2 semitrailer, towed by a 6 x 6 BAZ-64022, the improved  5P90S self-propelled TEL, believed to be based on the BAZ-6909 series and intended to carry a heavier missile payload than the legacy MAZ-79100 series TELs, and a new heavyweight towed TEL to be designated the 5P90TMU.

S-400 Design Philosophy and Implementation

The most detailed technical paper to date covering the S-400 was produced by  Dr Alexander Lemanskiy, Chief Engineer on the S-400, Igor Ashurbeili, General Director, and Nikolai Nenartovich, Chief Engineer, of Almaz-Antey, published in the Russian language Vozdushno-Kosmicheskaya Oborona journal, No.3 (40), 2008¹. Unfortunately it lacks the detail of later Almaz-Antey disclosures on the S-300PMU2 Favorit, but does provide a good discussion of the rationale behind the S-400 design design, and its key design features.

Lemanskiy et al state that definition of the S-400 design was performed jointly by the designers and the Russian MoD, with specific capability foci in:

• Defeating threats at low and very low flight altitudes;
• Dealing with the overall reduction of target signatures resulting from the pervasive use of stealth technology;
• Dealing with the increase in target quantities resulting from the widspread use of UAVs;
• Applying all means to defeat advanced jammers employed by opponents;
• Surviving in an environment where PGMs are used widely;
• Accommodating an environment where an increasing number of nations are deploying TBMs and IRBMs.
  

Lemanskiy et al observed that several key imperatives were followed during the design process:

• An open system architecture with a high level of modularity, intended to permit follow-on capability growth in the design;
• Multirole capabilities and the capacity for integration with legacy IADS technologies;
• Suitability for the air defence of fixed infrastructure targets, as well as manoeuvre forces;
• Suitability for integration with naval surface combatants;
• The ability to exploit legacy missile rounds already in operational use;
• High operational mobility and deployability;
• High lethality and jam resistance;

There imperatives were applied to the design of configurations for the Russian Armed Forces and for export clients.

Export variants of the S-400 Triumf are intended to destroy opposing stand-off jammer aircraft, AWACS/AEW&C aircraft, reconnaissance and armed reconnaissance aircraft, cruise missile armed strategic bombers, cruise missiles, Tactical, Theatre and Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles, and any other atmospheric threats, all in an intensive Electronic Counter Measures environment.

Lemanskiy et al describe the system composition as four core components:

1. The 30K6E battle management system, comprising the 55K6E Command Post and 91N6E Big Bird acquisition radar;
2. Up to six 98Zh6E Fire Units, each comprising a 92N6E Grave Stone “multimode” engagement radar, up to twelve 5P85SE2 / 5P85TE2 TELs, each TEL armed with up to four 48N6E2/E3 missiles;
3. A complement of SAM rounds, comprising arbitrary mixes of the 48N6E, 48N6E2 and 48N6E3;
4. The 30Ts6E logistical support system, comprising missile storage, test and maintenance equipments.

All system components are carried by self-propelled wheeled all-terrain chassis, and have  autonomous power supplies, navigation and geo-location systems, communications and life support equipment. Mains power grid converters are installed for fixed site operations.

The design permits all equipment vans to be separated from the vehicle chassis for installation and operation in hardened shelters.

S-400 System Integration

The communications and networking systems are designed with interfaces for operation over radio-frequency, and landline links, including analogue telephone cables. The 98Zh6E Fire Units can be located up to 100 km from the 55K6E Command Post. The 91N6E Grave Stone can be installed on the 40V6MR mobile mast system for operation in complex or heavily forested terrain.

The 30K6E battle management system exploits much of the potential in a fully digital system, and can control:

• S-300PMU1 / SA-20A and S-300PMU2 / SA-20B fire units directly;
• S-300PMU1 / SA-20A and S-300PMU2 / SA-20B fire units via the respective 83M6E2 and 83M6E1 battle management systems;
• 9K330/331 Tor / Tor M/M1/M2E / SA-15 point defence SAMs via the Ranzhir-M ADCP;
• 96K6 Pantsir S1 SPAAGM via the lead battery vehicle or battery ADCP where used.

Interfaces and software are also provided to permit data stream feeds or exchanges with:

• Redundant 91N6E Big Bird acquisition radars;
• 96L6E acquisition radars;
• 67N6 Gamma DE acquisition radars;
• 59N6 Protivnik GE acquisition radars;
• 83M6E2 and 83M6E1 battle management systems;
• 9S52M1 Polyana D4M1 Command Posts;
• 73N6 Baikal E Command Posts;
  
• Other 30K6E systems;
• Other Russian ADCP designs.
  

In addition software development was under way to provide the capability to network pairs of 30K6E battle management systems.  For export clientele, Almaz-Antey offer integration with arbitrary new or legacy non-Russian IADS components.

55K6E Command Post

An S-400 55K6 Command Post with deployed antenna mast. This design is visually indistinguishable from the S-300PMU2 54K6E2 Command Post (image © Miroslav Gyűrösi).

The 55K6E is employed to control all components in the group of batteries, and can collect and present status information from all components. It can also control the operating modes of the 91N6E Big Bird acquisition radar, including its IFF/SSR functions. A comprehensive C3 /datalink package is installed, and an Elbrus-90 mikro central processor is used to execute the dataprocessing and system management code. Sharing hardware with the S-300PMU2 54K6E 2 CP, the 55K6E uses 18 inch LCD panels for all crew stations.

Five common consoles are installed, with unique software driven presentation for the five person crew of the CP, the latter comprising:

• 1 x Air Defence Unit Commander
• 1 x Air Situation Management Officer
• 2 x Fire Control Officers
• 1 x Engineering Officer

While Lemanskiy et al did not detail the 55K6E any further, the high level of commonality suggests that more recent Almaz-Antey disclosures on the 54K6E2 CP also apply to the 55K6E2.

91N6E Big Bird Acquisition Radar

The design changes to the 91N6E were not detailed by Lemanskiy et al, other than to disclose its intended ABM acquisition role. The radar is tasked with acquiring and tracking aerial and ballistic targets, identifying targets, and performing angle measurements on standoff jamming aircraft.

The 91N6E is a Janus-faced symmetrical transmissive space fed passive phased array, with a range of conventional circular scan modes, and a number of fixed sector scan modes, using electronic beam steering in elevation and azimuth. In the latter modes, the antenna boresight can be mechanically tilted upward to extend achievable electronic beamsteering elevation coverage. The radar is a pulse-to-pulse agile frequency hopper, to maximise countermeasures resistance. Unique high duty cycle transmit waveforms are available for fixed sector electronically beamsteered search modes.

98Zh6E Fire Unit

The individual fire units in the battery are designated the 98Zh6E, and comprise a single 92N6E Grave Stone multirole engagement radar and a group of subordinate TELs.

92N6E Grave Stone Multimode Engagement Radar

The 92N6 Grave Stone multimode engagement radar is a significant redesign of the Flap Lid / Tomb Stone series with fully digital processing and increased power-aperture performance (image © Miroslav Gyűrösi).

The 92N6E departs from the specialised engagement and fire control functionality of earlier radars in the Flap Lid family, exploiting abundant computing power no differently than Western AESAs. It is intended to provide autonomous manual and automatic sector searchs, target acquisition and tracking, in adverse weather, Electronic Counter Measures, chaff and low altitude clutter environments. The radar is equipped with an IFF capability.

The 92N6E Grave Stone will automatically prioritise targets, compute Launch Acceptable Regions for missile launches, launch missiles, capture missiles, and provide midcourse guidance commands to missiles while tracking the target and missile. Missile guidance modes include pure command link, semi-active homing, and Track via Missile (TVM) / Seeker Aided Ground Guidance (SAGG), where missile semi-active seeker outputs are downlinked to the Grave Stone to support the computation of missile uplink steering commands.

The radar can track 100 targets in Track While Scan mode, and perform precision tracking of six targets concurrently for missile engagements. data exchanges between the 92N6E Grave Stone and 30K6E battle management system are fully automatic.

The 92N6E Grave Stone data processing subsystem is designed around the Elbrus-90 mikro SPARC multiprocessor system, like the S-300PMU2 30N6E2 Tomb Stone variant. Computing power is exploited to support a diverse range of modes and waveforms. These including:

• Sniffing waveforms at varying power levels to establish the presence of interfering emitters at a given angle and frequency;
• Adaptive beam control reflecting immediate operational conditions;
• Variable PRFs and scan rates for missile and target tracking;
• Defeat of high power active noise jammers by the use of “radical measures” in the design.

New Electronic Counter Counter Measures technology was employed in the design of the 92N6E Grave Stone, but was neither described nor named.

Lemanskiy et al described the 48N6E3 missile in some detail, but did not include any disclosures beyond what is already public knowledge.

The authors did state that increased radar power-aperture product performance in both the 92N6E Grave Stone and 91N6E Big Bird increases the capability of the S-400 Triumf to engage low signature or stealth targets, but their cryptic claim of 50 percent of the engagement range remains difficult to interpret.

What is evident is that the fully digital S-400 Triumf displays most  if not all of the typical capability gains seen in the latest generation of fully digital systems of Western design.

S-400 48N6E2/E3 SAM specifications.

9M96E and 9M96E2. 9M96E test shot image[ Click here ...] (Almaz-Antey).

The smaller size of these weapons permits four to be loaded into the volume of a single 48N6E/5V55K/R launch tube container - a form fit four tube launcher container is used. A single 5P85S/T TEL can thus deploy up to 16 of these missiles, or mixes of 3 x 48N6 / 4 x 9M96E/E2, 2 x 48N6 / 8 x 9M96E/E2 or 1 x 48N6 / 12 x 9M96E/E2. The stated aim of this approach was to permit repeated launches against saturation attacks with precision guided munitions - in effect trading 9M96 rounds for incoming guided weapons. Fakel claim a single shot kill probability of 70% against a Harpoon class missile, and 90% against a manned aircraft.

The addition of the 9M96E/E2 missiles, which amount to a combined ABM and point defence weapon designs, is part of a broader Russian strategy of deploying air defence weapons capable of defeating PGM attacks, including the AGM-88 HARM family, and follow-on defence suppression weapons, the latter types intended to disable the S-400 battery acquisition and engagement radars. The advantage in using the 9M96E/E2 for this purpose is that it avoids the additional technical and operational complexity of directing other "counter-PGM" point defence weapons such as the Tor M1/M2, Tunguska M and Pantsir S/S1 series.

Some sources have credited the 9M96E/9M96E2 missiles to the S-300PMU1 and S-300PMU2 Favorit, which appears to have been the demonstration platform for prototypes of these missiles. Integration of these missiles on either of these systems will not present any challenges. To date there have been no disclosures on domestic production or export sales of the 9M96 series.

S-400 and Legacy Surface to Air Missile System Hybridisation

Some sources also credit the S-400 with the capability first demonstrated in the S-300PMU2 Favorit, of controlling S-200/SA-5 Gammon batteries and directing the 5N62VE Square Pair FMCW guidance and illumination radar. Given that the Russian S-200 inventory and missile warstock has been decommissioned and exported, if this capability is retained, it is for export clientele.

If software and datalink modems are supplied in production S-400 systems to support the S-200 / SA-5, this raises the question of potential hybridisation with other legacy SAM types. With most potential export clientele already operating legacy SAM systems such as the S-75M/SA-2 Guideline, S-125/SA-3 Goa and 3M9/9M9/SA-6 Gainful, this could prove to be an attractive marketing tool. The model claimed for the S-200/SA-5 would likely be applied, using the SNR-75 Fan Song, SNR-125 Low Blow or 1S91 Straight Flush to guide the missiles to an aimpoint produced by the 92N6E Grave Stone tracking the target, and in the latter instance, provide terminal phase illumination. The key issue of reconciling location errors between the various system components can be addressed by satellite navigation, with dual mode GPS/Glonass receivers already widely used in Russian equipment. The use of the NK Orientir precision geolocation and angular alignment system in the S-300PMU2 and S-400 presents a good example.

The 2008 VKO paper by Lemanskiy et al of Almaz-Antey described the capability to control a range of S-300P variant batteries, and other contemporary IADS elements, but did not elaborate on legacy SAM system integration.

Production and Exports, Further Development

The first S-400 battery achieved IOC status during the 2007-2008 period, and further batteries were being delivered to Russian PVO units since. Russian media reports indicate delays in delivery against initially planned schedules, which is not unusual for new designs.

The S-400 is being actively marketed for export. The first export client for the S-400 will be Belarus, with reports emerging early in 2009 that a delivery of multiple batteries had been negotiated.

Recently claims have emerged in Russia of a follow-on derivative of the S-400 Triumf, designated the 40N6M Triumfator M, including claims that the 5P90S and 5P90TMU TELs would be used. To date there have been no formal disclosures detailing this variant.

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Common S-300PMU2/S-400 22T6-2/22T6E2 transloader based on the 8 x 8 Ural 532361-1012 chassis (Ural).

5T58-2 Missile Transporter

The 5T58-2 missile transporters used with S-400 systems are towed by the BAZ-6402 tractor (image © Miroslav Gyűrösi).

Legacy 5T58 S-300PS/PMU transporter towed by legacy KrAZ-260B (image © Miroslav Gyűrösi).

Almaz 92N6E Grave Stone Engagement Radar

Almaz 1T12 Site Survey Vehicle

In February, 2010, Missiles.ru editor Yevgeniy Yerokhin visited the former S-25/SA-1 Guild base at Elektrostal outside Moscow, at the invitation of the Russian MoD. This site is now home to the 3rd Surface to Air Missile Battalion of  PVO Unit 61996, equipped with early variants of the S-400 SAM system. Portions of the extensive photo-essay are reproduced with permission.

Above, below: S-400 battery components.

Above, below: 92N6 Grave Stone and 96L6 radars deployed.

Above: new 5P85TM TEL design common to S-400 and S-300PMU2. Note the stowed datalink mast and antenna.

Above, below: stowed 92N6E Grave Stone.

Above, below: 96L6 acquisition radar deployed and stowed.

Technical Report APA-TR-2009-0503

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