Russian news outlet Izvestia reported that all-new missile was successfully tested from Russia’s S-500 Prometheus air defense system (ADS), the successor to the highly-successful-and-controversial S-400 ADS. The successful missile test quoting official source, but did not describe the characteristics of the missile. It is said to able to hit targets flying at supersonic speed and a range that gets close to near-earth orbit.
Trials were held at Sary-Shagan training ground in Kazakhstan. The missile precisely hit its target. The missile is designed to destroy hypersonic and ballistic targets. It has a sophisticated guidance system and will use the impact principle to destroy the warheads of ballistic missiles. Russia also recently tested its S-500 with interceptors capable of eliminating hypersonic targets. The system’s will enter service this year while its serial delivery is scheduled for 2025.
The S-500 Prometheus also known as 55R6M “Triumfator-M”, is a Russian surface-to-air missile/anti-ballistic missile system intended to replace the A-135 missile system currently in use, and supplement the S-400. The S-500 is under development by the Almaz-Antey Air Defence Concern. Initially planned to be in production by 2014, it is currently targeting 2021 for first delivery. It shares with the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system the trait.
The S-500 is a new-generation surface-to-air missile system. It is designed for intercepting and destroying intercontinental ballistic missiles, as well as hypersonic cruise missiles and aircraft, for air defense against Airborne Early Warning and Control and for jamming aircraft. With a planned range of 600 km (370 mi) for anti-ballistic missile (ABM) and 500 km for air defence, the S-500 would be able to detect and simultaneously engage up to 10 ballistic hypersonic targets flying at a speed of 5 kilometres per second to a limit of 7 km/s.
It also aims at destroying hypersonic cruise missiles and other aerial targets at speeds of higher than Mach 5, as well as spacecraft. The altitude of a target engaged can be as high as 180–200 km.It is effective against ballistic missiles with a launch range of 3,500 km (2,200 mi), the radar reaches a radius of 3,000 km. Other targets it has been announced to defend against include: unmanned aerial vehicles, low Earth orbit satellites, and space weapons launched from hypersonic aircraft, drones, and hypersonic orbital platforms.
The system will be highly mobile and will have rapid deployability. Experts believe that the system’s capabilities can affect enemy intercontinental ballistic missiles at the middle and end portions of flight, but reports by Almaz-Antey say that the external target-designation system will be capable of mid-early flight portion interceptions of enemy ballistic missiles, which is one of the final stages of the S-500 project. It is to have a response time of less than 4 seconds (Compared to the S-400’s less than 10).
