The Russian-made S300 is one of the best-selling long-range air defense systems after the Cold War, not only equipped by the Russian Air Defense Force, but also exported to many countries and regions, and even China has spent $3 billion to import many sets of S300 to enhance the country's air defense capability.
The S300 has always had a good reputation in the international arms trade market, but after the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, another voice began to appear.
[S300 wreckage on the battlefield]
Due to the "resume" of the S300 being destroyed and intercepting several times on the battlefield, some people began to advocate that the S300 was useless, saying that it was not as useful as the FIM-92 Stinger missile operated by a single soldier, and that the shooting down rate of the Stinger could be significantly higher than that of the S300, and based on this, it was suggested that China should abandon the S300 as soon as possible.
The cliché that Stinger is omnipotent
After the end of the Cold War, the European and American armies began to abandon the development of field air defense weapons and handed over field air defense to individual air defense weapons such as Stingers.
【Stinger Missile】
The reason why Europe and the United States dared to do this was because the Western countries had quite obvious air superiority at that time, and since the air supremacy was in their own hands, there was naturally no need to spend more effort on air defense.
In fact, in addition to the common individual version, the stinger also has a vehicle-mounted version, which is also equipped in Taiwan, China. This vehicle-mounted air defense system carries a total of 8 Stinger missiles and is named the Avenger.
The reason for such a name is that the US military found after actual tests that when weapons such as Stingers attacked, the enemy planes had actually completed the bombing action and caused damage to the target.
The Stinger does not intercept the enemy's ground strike first, but launches a counterattack after the fact, hence the name of the Avenger.
【Avenger Air Defense System】
It can be seen that the Stinger is actually an air defense weapon with a very single application scenario, and it is not capable of such a key task as ground air defense, after all, air defense and air defense are to prevent attacks from the air to protect ground targets.
The Stinger simply does not possess such capabilities, and it is obviously contrary to the facts to claim that this missile can handle a wide range of war scenarios.
[The Ukrainian army uses a stinger]
The reason why Stinger has performed so well in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict is largely due to the rigidity of the Russian Aerospace Forces' own tactics. For a long time after the start of the war between Russia and Ukraine, the Russian Aerospace Forces used FAB high-resistance bombs as the main means of ground strike.
The FAB high-resistance bomb is a product of the World War II period, which has long been outdated and can no longer be outdated, not only has high flight resistance, but also has no ability to strike accurately.
【FAB High Resistance Bomb】
In many cases, in order to improve the accuracy of bombing, Russian pilots can only constantly reduce the flight altitude and launch low-altitude bombs, and this action gives the Stinger a lot of room to play, and this weapon was originally designed to hit low-altitude targets.
What is even more "amazing" is that the Russian Aerospace Forces not only let low-speed attack aircraft such as the Su-25 carry out low-altitude bomb delivery missions, but even the expensive Su-35S and Su-34 fighter-bombers actually use the same bomb-dropping tactics, which has achieved the Stinger's outstanding achievements in the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield.
[Downed Su-34]
Moreover, as a Western weapon, once the Stinger achieves results on the battlefield, it will inevitably be hyped and publicized by the entire Western media, just like the Ukrainian army's Seahorse, creating an illusion that Western weapons are far stronger than Russian-made weapons.
In fact, the Stinger and S300 are air defense equipment with different uses and different positioning, and the two are completely incomparable, and there is no question of who is inferior to whom.
Why did the S300 fail Ukraine
But then again, it is also an objective fact that the S300 did not perform well in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, with a low success rate in intercepting long-range missile strikes in Ukraine and a very slow response to air threats.
[S300 air defense system]
Several times when Ukraine attacked Russian targets in depth, the S300, which was responsible for the air defense of the important ground, did not react at all, does this mean that the reputation of the S300 in the past was far greater than the strength?
In fact, the Russian army has performed poorly in air defense operations, and it is not the S300 that is really to blame, but the Russian Aerospace Forces, and the Russian army's territorial air defense and key air defense do not have a unified air defense coordination system.
That is to say, whether it is the deployed S300 or the more advanced S400, they are fighting on their own, and they cannot achieve regionalized air defense operations at all, which is also the main reason why the Russian air defense network has repeatedly broken defenses.
【Destroyed S300】
Not to mention the S300, after the Ukrainian fighter used the Western-aided Storm Shadow stealth cruise missile to hit the home port of the Black Sea Fleet, the S400, which had been deployed in advance, still failed to respond, which has shown that the man-made disaster of the Russian air defense is the main responsibility, and the fault cannot be completely blamed on the equipment.
As for those who persuaded China to abandon the S300, they were even more uneasy. There are two models of the S300 introduced by China, namely the S300PMU1 and the S300PMU2, both of which are models of the S300 after deep modernization and improvement, and have anti-missile capabilities and greatly enhanced interception capabilities.
So will the same thing happen to the S300 that was defeated on the battlefield in Ukraine in the hands of the PLA, the answer is no, air defense operations are essentially the embodiment of the level of systematic operations.
【PLA S300】
The air defense system is only one point, and only by connecting these points can a complete air defense network be formed, and the PLA happens to be one of the most systematic armies in the world at present.
Even if it is the same S300 model, the combat capability under the PLA air defense system will be completely different from that in the hands of the Russian army, using modern battlefield data links, the air situational awareness of a single set of S300 will be multiplied, and the success rate of interception will also be greatly increased.
You must know that the mainland has purchased S300 from Russia a total of three times in the past 20 years, which shows that our army is satisfied with the performance of this air defense system in use, otherwise it will never spend a huge amount of money to introduce it.
【PLA S300】
Nowadays, many propaganda calibers always like to use a single standard to evaluate a weapon system that is not an ecological positioning at all, for example, because drones destroy more armored targets on the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield, so helicopter gunships are useless.
This is an extremely one-sided and stupid view, and the United States is currently deeply poisoned by this kind of thinking in its military development, which has caused it to spend a lot of money on military expenditure, only to end up with a bunch of new weapons that are embarrassing and useful.
Sources:
[1] The world's largest production scale and the widest range of individual anti-aircraft missiles?FIM-92 Stinger.中国军TV.2020-04-17 [Citation date:2022-03-03]
【2】Chinese:S300P/SA10.Global Network [cited 2018-08-14]【