(Newswire.net— October 17, 2018) — Although never officially used in combat operations, the Russian S-400 missile system is the cause of political strife across the globe, Blumberg reports.
Russia is strongly lobbying for the sale of its defense system in a market dominated mainly by US weapons which is causing tremendous political and economical quakes for those countries which dare to buy defense systems from Russia rather than the US. For months, some of the US senators and congressional representatives have been trying to block the sale of the F-35A combat aircraft to its NATO partner Turkey only because that state announced that they will buy the S-400 ignoring warnings from Washington. Some military experts claims that the main reason is a fear that mixing F-35 with S-400 could reveal the vulnerabilities of Pentagon’s supreme warbird and disrupt the sales plans.
There is a wide market for defense systems in the world and countries are spending hundreds of billions of dollars each year on weapons. The US dominates the market mainly thanks to Saudi Arabia, Israel and NATO partners. However, the Russian air defense system S-400 outmarks the US’s Patriot and it is the most wanted ground-to-air defense system in history of arms selling.
At the beginning of the year, China already received the shipment of the first units, and it is assumed that they were also bought by Algeria and Belarus. As for future orders, except for Turkey, India and Saudi Arabia (each of these contracts is supposedly worth between $ 2 billion and $ 3 billion) which have already been negotiated, Iran and Vietnam are also interested.
According to the Moscow Defense Brief, a leading source for military information in Russia, Moscow could earn up to $30 billion from the sale of the S-400 system in the next 12 to 15 years.
The S-400 system was never used in combat so its references are mainly in the domain of trust that Moscow wouldn’t lie about their defense systems. However, the S-200 and S-300 systems have already proved their worth and it is easy to believe that the S-400 has total domination as a new improved system.
Here are some comparisons offered by Moscow:
The Russian system can detect airborne targets at a range of 600 km, and hit them at 400 km, whereas for the Patriot those ranges are 180 km and 130 km respectively.
Both have a minimum range, too, after which a target can no longer be intercepted. For the S-400 it is two km against the Patriot’s 10 km.
The S-400 can hit a mark that is moving at speeds up to 17,280 km/h, while the Patriot can only manage a top target speed of 7,920 km/h.
Both systems have similar reaction speeds of less than 10 seconds, however, the S-400 is faster to deploy, going from travel to combat mode in about five minutes, while the Patriot requires 25 minutes.
Also, the S-400 is a bit cheaper than the Patriot – according to IHS data, the Patriot costs between $550 and $700 million, while the S-400 costs between $475 and $625 million.
Earlier this year the head of Russia’s strategic defense industry corporation Rostec said Moscow is ready to sell S-400 air defense systems to any nation including the US.
“The S-400 is not an offensive system; it is a defensive system. We can sell it to Americans if they want,” Chemizov told the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) when asked about the strategic reasoning behind the S-400 sale to Turkey.