It seems the system is at an early concept stage. The use of 4 small AESA radars for target acquisition instead of the higher rotating array is weird. I think AESAs are the fire control radars. The rotating array on top would be the target acquisition radar in that case. That would make a lot more sense for many reasons
Do you mean this ? Well the radar on top is Dedicated gunfire control radar not acquisition radar. You dont usually have circular radar for search as it produces pencil beamwidth, that is more suitable for the gunfire or missile tracking radar.
You dont need AESA or even phased array in that matter if you are just using it for gunnery. as to be a gun fire control radar you only need about 1 deg of beamwidth and accuracy of afaik 0.01 mrad which easily achievable and much lower in cost with simple reflector or inverse cassegrain antenna, thus why you see things like Skyshield nt going phased array.
You only go phased array if you desire :
-Rapid target update speed
-Multiple target tracking
-Multiple target engagement
and for that matter you go AESA if you desire reliability and if you hate tubes. Otherwise a PESA is fine and can do the same job much cheaper.
360 degree AESA tracking, BVRAAM, IIR guided MANPADS, AHEAD 35 mm make this a much higher end system than the Pantsir. Pantsir is crippled by low range and command guided missiles.
Since there are 2 concepts being presented. It shows the "Dilemma" or "Compromise" That the AA system designer faced when designing this thing. You may notice them
| The first Concept | The second |
| |
The first is the AESA concept and the 2nd is something more akin to the Pantsyr, or tunguska especially the 2nd Iteration that still using Roman/Shlem radar.
One thing about putting phased array and active guidance missile or even passive one in that matters are cost. AESA cost and lots of it. Adding the active radar homing missiles means putting additional cost of the missile which might not have range when it's instead being carried by airborne platform. The size and weight of the missile may also put constraint to the platform and as you see the First concept only carries like 4 missiles.
If one wish to maximize the number of targets being engaged and make use of the AESA's multi-target engagement capability, one can easily forego the gun part and instead making something like BukM3 Viking.
The second concept represent the "cheaper" options and puts the "more complicated" phased array only in the rotating one. The fire control radar is located the same way as Pantsyr/Tunguska and only. This concept might not only be cheaper but also easier to build. But then as you said it could suffer from lack of multiple target channels. Thus only single target engagement is possible.
You can't really blame command guidance as :
1.It produces the lowest cost missile you can get
2.It also produces light and small missile, thus you can carry more
3.For pantsyr case, the light and small missile easily be made Hypersonic and therefore long range variant can be produced
Which a case for pantsyr with its latest missile which being smaller but larger booster and it can reach 40 Km range.
The Pantsyr is the result of what's in mind of Russian designer after looking at Tunguska. The provided the multi-target engagement capability by having the PESA radar doing both target tracking and missile guidance and at the same time making the system does not cost an arm and a leg for just a Terminal defense and CRAM system.
There are still however limitations in number of target channels as it related to the number of frequencies available or timing resources of the radar, still it provided better options than the Tunguska baseline and some Western alternative like Roland but well Roland is more comparable to Osa.
