What Russia's Next-Gen Air Defense System Will Be Capable of

The advanced medium-range anti-aircraft missile system under development by Russian defense contractor Almaz-Antey will be outfitted with highly maneuverable and high-speed missiles capable of intercepting hypersonic and ballistic targets, defense analyst Vladimir Korovin asserted.

Korovin, an expert at the Center for Military and Political Studies of the Moscow State institute of International Relations (MGIMO), was referring to tactical weapons of a potential adversary.

Earlier, on Sunday, Yan Novikov, Almaz-Antey's CEO, announced that the company was working on a new generation system. It is expected to be a brand new product, not an upgrade of the Buk M3, the most advanced self-propelled, medium-range surface-to-air missile systems in service with the Russian Armed Forces at the moment.

Almaz-Antey has recently transferred a set of new Buk-M3s to the Russian Defense Ministry. But experts say that this system will have to be replaced in the next decade and a half.

Korovin told RBC news channel that the Buk-M3 is a "profound and qualitative upgrade" of a complex developed in the 1970s, but it could not be integrated into the emerging network-centric command systems responsible for Russia's air defense.

Military expert Victor Murakhovsky described the next generation system as "significantly more automated and robotic" compared to its predecessors. It will have an electronic warfare component in addition to its firepower potential, he added.