Analysis: The new Russian-made S-550 air defense missile system

The latest S-550 air defense system is a mobile development of the strategic A-135 Amur and A-235 Nudol air defense and will operate by kinetic interception instead of a nuclear blast, TASS military writer Dmitry Litovkin said.

“Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu recalled that the supreme commander-in-chief held another series of meetings in Sochi on November 1-3 with the leadership of the Defense Ministry and defense enterprises. They considered adequate response to the changing situation close to Russian borders. Much attention was paid to the improvement of the national aerospace defense. The head of state focused on the significance of accelerated development of national air and missile defense systems and the supplies of S-350, S-500 and S-550 to the troops,” the Defense Ministry said.

Commenting on Shoigu’s statement, a source close to the Defense Ministry said the Russian army would receive the first S-550 by 2025, as is envisaged by the arms program up to 2027. A brigade set is to be initially delivered. S-550 will have a mobile launcher.

There is no official confirmation of the information and it will hardly appear soon. However, one can think about the designs of the Russian defense industry in the sphere of strategic missile defense.

Almaz-Antey disclosed S-500 in a company calendar. Its combat capabilities are made public only by the leadership of the company. So far, it is clear that Almaz-Antey has designed S-400 Triumf, S-500, strategic A-135 Amur missile defense and its successor A-235.

Open sources said S-550 was developed in Soviet times by Almaz Central Design Bureau under the leadership of designers general Boris Bunkin and Alexander Lemansky. They created a close-range interception of strategic targets, such as reentry vehicles of intercontinental ballistic missiles. In contrast to stationary A-135 deployed around Moscow and protecting the Central industrial region (13 regions of a space of 486 thousand square kilometers and a population of over 32 million people), the new system has to be mobile for redeployment to dangerous directions similar to S-300/400/500.

The complex was practically ready in the early 1990s, however, the Soviet collapse stopped the project. Open sources said the project documentation and full-size prototypes were destroyed.

In 2014, Almaz-Antey Designer General Pavel Sozinov said Russia was creating analogs of US missile defense systems to intercept intermediate-range ballistic missiles and reentry vehicles of intercontinental missiles. The talk was about the S-500, which had to be united with the A-135 missile defense of Moscow.

“An analog of the system (US GMD) in a mobile option is also being created in the Russian Federation. It has different characteristics. The Defense Ministry told us to ensure better interception effectiveness than the Americans provide,” Sozinov said adding prototypes of the complexes will be provided to the Russian army in the near future.