The Pantsir-M complex will help the Russian Navy’s Karakurt-class small ships become outstandingly powerful in terms of defense.

The Russian Navy is preparing to put into combat duty a small missile ship of Project 22800 named Odintsovo into combat at the end of this month, this is the first ship equipped with the extremely modern Pantsir-M complex.

Information on the delivery of the latest battleship to the Russian Navy was announced by Ak Bars Shipyard. Currently, Russia has 3 missile ships of Project 22800, but they are only equipped with 2 high-speed anti-aircraft guns AK-630M.

Shipyard leaders hope work on Project 22800 will not stop. They expect that in addition to Odintsovo, the next ships will also receive the Pantsir-M air defense system. According to Ak Bars director Mistakhov, another ship of the same class will be launched in 2023.

Russia has a tradition of converting some land weapons systems into naval versions. For example, many years ago, the Tatarstan ship of Project 11661 was equipped with the Kh-35 Uran anti-ship cruise missile based on the ground variant.

A few years later, one of Russia’s most famous supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles, the 3M53 Kalibr, was also selected to become the main weapon of the Dagestan – a modernized Project 11611 frigate.

According to the plan of the Ministry of Defense of Russia, Ak Bars company will build a total of 5 missile ships of Project 22800. The Odintsovo is the fourth ship to be mass-produced to serve the needs of the Russian Navy for combat forces. shore war.

In addition, other Russian shipyards will have to build 13 more Karakurt-class ships, Moskow plans to build a total of 18 ships of this type to gradually replace the aging Molniya or Nanuchka class.

The Karakurt-class battleship has a length of 67 m, a width of 11, a draft of 4 m, a full load displacement of 800 tons, a range of 2,500 nautical miles, 15 days of autonomy. Armament includes 8 Kalibr missiles, 1 76 mm AK-176MA cannon, 1 Pantsir-M complex, and two 14.5 mm or 12.7 mm MTPU machine guns.

The next problem to note is that the Pantsir-M is actually just a version of the Pantsir-S1, which is optimized for deployment on naval ships only, their features are hardly different.

The biggest difference compared to the Pantsir-S1 is that the Pantsir-M is optimized with the algorithm to determine the firing element to be more suitable for installation on naval ships when the coordinates of the launcher vary more than at the time of launch on the ground.

The next change is that two 30mm 2A38M cannons have been replaced by the AO-18KD type of the same caliber, but with a superior rate of fire to increase fire density, more suitable for intercepting cruise missiles and anti-ship missiles.

In addition, the 57E6 interceptor missile of Pantsir-S1 is still retained with a base of 8 rounds ready to launch, its maximum range is estimated at up to 20 km while the effective range is estimated at about 8 km.

In addition to being installed on new ships, it is expected that the Pantsir-M module will quickly replace the old-generation anti-ship missile and anti-aircraft artillery systems such as Kashtan or Palma in the combat component of the Russian Navy.

In addition to serving the needs of the Russian Navy, the Pantsir-M ship air defense complex also has high export potential when many customers have expressed interest. But in recent conflict with Ukraine, Russian armed forces lost many Pantsir air defence system. It was an easy target for Ukraine TB2 UAV. Many experts raised concerns about the Pantsir air defence system performance.