Russia upgrading S-400 missile with larger warhead for strikes on ground - media

The aggressor state of the russian federation is modernizing the missile for the S-400 Triumph anti-aircraft missile system (SAM) to hit ground targets, increasing its range, accuracy and warhead. Tests of the upgraded missile took place at the russian military training ground Kapustin Yar.

This was reported by the Defense Express web portal, referring to the video of the missile test, which was published by Dmitry Medvedev, deputy secretary of the Security Council of the russian federation.

The video shows the SAM launchers themselves, as well as part of the slide. It depicts the flight diagram of the missile along a ballistic trajectory, while several excerpts of the report were also included in the video. According to them, the purpose of these tests is to "test the capability and feasibility," and the missile has radio command guidance.

The latter is confirmed by the fact that the slide shows a 92N6E radar station, which is part of the S-400 SAM and "leads" anti-aircraft missiles, and the slide header ends with the word "experiment." The video shows only 2 S-400 SAM launchers.

Medvedev described the missile as a new development, but noted that changes were made that affected the range, accuracy, as well as strengthening the warhead.

Given that we are talking about tests for "expediency," the missile is in the early stages of development. But if we are talking about the actual recycling of the 48N6 missile, the cycle of its creation and testing can be much shorter than work from scratch.

To clarify, the 48N6DM missile to S-400 has an estimated range in the case of launch on the ground from 230 km and a warhead of 180 kg. Due to the specifics of the control of anti-aircraft missiles of the S-300 and S-400 SAMs, a radio command radar cannot "lead" it after the missile has crossed the radio horizon, because of this its control is lost at an altitude of about 3 km and it falls near the target area.

As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, the U.S. military is actively studying and introducing combat experience of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

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