Chinese SAM

Doesn't Cypress operate the S-300? One would have to assume both the Americans and Israelis have had ample opportunity to inspect these by now. They are certainly well understood. The Chinese equivalent is going to be a bit of a mystery still until it's radars and such are recorded by their ELINT platforms and the results analyzed by their engineers.

Ambivalent said:

Doesn't Cypress operate the S-300? One would have to assume both the Americans and Israelis have had ample opportunity to inspect these by now. They are certainly well understood. The Chinese equivalent is going to be a bit of a mystery still until it's radars and such are recorded by their ELINT platforms and the results analyzed by their engineers.

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the exported version certainly aren't going to be the same as what pla uses. And the domestic versions are protected by the air force from elint platforms.

tphuang said:

the exported version certainly aren't going to be the same as what pla uses. And the domestic versions are protected by the air force from elint platforms.

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How's that? Something like a Rivet Joint can study them from well outside Russia's, or China's airspace. The naval version would be vulnerable to ELINT whenever it is at sea. This is why navies shadow other navy's exercises. I'm certain that is a consideration in China's strong opposition to US recce flights and naval surveillance ships inside 200 nm. This was all routine stuff during the Cold War. You might be surprised how good they are. Here is a photo of a formerly classified site in the California desert. On this ridge you will see locally produced high fidelity copies of major Soviet naval radars. These are not stolen radars but copies made by the USN. This site was built in the late 1970's through the 1980's. On the ridge are Headlights FC radar for SA-N-3, Peel Group FC radar for SA-N-1, Head-Net C air search radar, Bass Tilt FC radar and even a Top Steer 3D radar.



These were the fruits of ELINT, other intel sources and the engineers at China Lake. It was built to give USN and allied pilots a realistic threat environment to fly against. These radars work like their Soviet counterparts, same wave forms and such. You can assume such facilities exist to simulate the latest threats.

S-300PMU-2 deployed across the Straights near ZhangZhou

How many launchers are there in that batter? I cound seven... Am i wrong? Weren't the news reports back in the day (sinodefence.com mentioned that) saying there were just 4 launchers per battery?

yeah looks like 7 to me also. 8 is normal for S-300 I think so looks like one is in maintenance or driving practice

That does seem logical and is closer to number of launchers soviets and later russians used with their s300 batteries. Yet, can we safely assume 8 is the average number of launchers per s300 battery in PLA forces? (that still goes contrary to some older media writings, though, granted, 4 does sound a bit too low)

As for HQ9, do we know how many launchers per battery is that usually configured with? How many sites (batteries) have been found in service so far?

On 24th April, Chinese Central TV showed some video clips of HQ9 intercepting a missile target in its terminal phase. The pictures indicate HQ9 used a kinetic kill vehicle to destroy the target.

If this is true, then the "HQ-9" is really more of a system with multiple missile variants.