Storm Shadow Killer: What We Know About Russian Warships' Pantsir-M Air Defense Shield

Russian Defense holding company High-Precision Systems director Oleg Ryazantsev has confirmed the first-ever use of the Pantsir-M naval air defense system.

The stealthy Storm Shadow cruise missile is one of several classes of weaponry being used by Ukrainian forces, and the Pantsir is designed specifically “to combat this kind of threat,” the director said.

Ryazantsev did not elaborate on the details of the incident, including when it took place or which Russian warship was involved.

However, according to open sources, the Tsiklon (lit. ‘Cyclone’) Project 22800 small missile ship is presently the only ship in Russia’s Black Sea Fleet armed with the Pantsir-M. In 2020, the Tsiklon’s Project 22800 sister ship, the Odintsovo, became the first warship in the Russian Navy to receive the new air defense system.

Developed by the Tula-based Shipunov Instrument Engineering Design Bureau in 2017, the Pantsir-M is the naval variant of the ground-based Pantsir (literally ‘Carapace’ or ‘Shell’) series of self-propelled combined surface-to-air missile and anti-aircraft artillery systems.

Ground-based Pantsirs, by comparison, come armed with twin 2A38M 30 mm autocannons, developed for the system’s "granddaddy" – the 2K22 Tunguska, and has different missiles than the naval variant: including 95Ya6 series and 23Ya6 series SAMs. The latter typically come attached to vehicles in a 6x2 configuration (although a Pantsir-SA variant features a 9x2 arrangement attached to a trailer vehicle).

The Pantsir-M can engage up to four targets simultaneously, and is for the moment the only ship-based air defense system in the world using a combat module that combines CIWS, SAMs and a radar-optical control system – including automated target search, selection and firing capability in a single piece of equipment. The complex has a reaction time of between three and five seconds, and can hit targets flying up to 1,000 meters per second. The onboard phased array radar has an estimated target detection range of up to 75 km.

The system weighs about 7,100 kg (ammunition included), making it suitable to deploy on small and large vessels alike (the Project 22800 series of Russian corvettes, for example, displace 870 tons).

The Russian Navy plans to equip all new warships, from missile corvettes to cruisers, with the Pantsir-M, and to upgrade existing vessels with the system over the course of modernization. With time, the Pantsir-M is expected to phase out the Kortik (lit ‘Dirk’) – a Soviet combined SAM/autocannon system, which features a similar AO-18K rotary gun, but whose 9M311-1 SAMs have a shorter range, up to 10 km.