In the article itself, they state the following: "However Sky Saber has a much lower target detection and destruction range than the Russian design, however, the radar station of the British missile complex is said to be able to detect aerial targets sensitively, even effective detection of 5th generation fighters."
I think everyone knows that there is nothing in the West compared to the S-400. There is the SM-6 missile with 370 km against air targets and 60 km against MRBM level ballistic threats (4 km/s), but it is based on ships, although it will be used by the US Army from 2023 and will be launched by vehicles terrestrial.
Western joint operations doctrine does not envision surface-to-air surface missiles with such high performance against air threats.
The longest-range ground-launched sup-air system in the West today is probably the PAC-2 GEM with 160 km of horizontal range. Basically he draws with the Barak 8 ER (LRSAM) and with David's Sling, both from Israel, being the second, together with the USA. The Samp-T has a slightly shorter horizontal range, in the 120 km range.
A feature to be mentioned is the difference in weight of the respective missiles. Let's see:
40N6: 1900 kg / 380 km / Mach 4 / warhead ? / active-semiactive radar
PAC-2 GEM: 908 kg / 160 km / Mach 4 / 92 kg warhead / semi-active radar -TVM
Stunner: 200 kg / 150 km / ? / ? / active radar + IIR
Barak 8ER: 400 kg / 150 km / 60 kg warhead / Mach 3 / active radar
Samp-T: 450 kg / 120 km / 15 kg warhead / Mach 4.5 / active radar
Regarding the UK, Rapier is being replaced by CAMM. The UK does not have a high altitude system, only an average one. The CAMM is average. A curiosity is that they abandoned the anti-aircraft gun more than 50 years ago. They only use missiles. Simply put, the UK will only have Starstreak for low altitude (V-SHORAD) and CAMM for medium (HIMAD). And nothing else.
Only the ships had more options:
Phalanx, CAMM, Aster 15 and Aster 30. The VL Sea Wolf will be withdrawn from service shortly.
The problem with the Rapier (45 kg/8km range) is that despite being “all the time” its performance is not much better than that of the Starstreak system (14 kg/7 km), which is considered exceptional.
In a detailed look, the Rapier's mobility is inferior to that of the Starstreak, which even has the self-propelled version (SP HVM) and only the advantage of being “all the time” was not convincing considering that the conditions in which a missile like the Starstreak can being used corresponds to more than 98% of the climatic conditions in Europe.
The land CAMM (Sky Saber) has a range of 25 km and 99 kg, all-time capability, vertical launch and fire and forget (capable of engaging multiple simultaneous threats).
Fact is, the UK will be left with just two land-based AA defense systems, Starstreak and Sky Saber.
