Russia's S-400 air defense systems are being cut to shreds (2024)

Ukraine is cutting away at Russia's "premier" S-400s, as Kyiv's forces increasingly target Moscow's expensive long-range air defense systems in Crimea.

At the start of 2023, Russia had around 96 S-400 mobile surface-to-air missile systems, also known by their NATO moniker, SA-21 Growlers, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

It is difficult to get an accurate picture of Russian losses in mainland Ukraine and on the annexed Crimean peninsula, but according to Dutch open-source intelligence outlet, Oryx, Russia has lost key components of its S-400 batteries on at least five separate occasions, including command posts, launchers and radars.

There may be other losses to Moscow's S-400 stocks, and some reports indicate unspecified damage to S-400 systems inside Russia. Newsweek has reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for comment via email.

The S-400 is considered broadly equivalent to the U.S. military's Patriot air defense system, and the gold-standard of Russian air defense. It is the upgraded version of Moscow's Cold War S-300, which has also been used in Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Experts say the S-400, which had initially performed well in Ukraine and has hampered Kyiv's ability to fly at altitude, is now increasingly the target of Ukrainian attacks that it is failing to fend off.

The loss of an S-400 system, though still relatively rare, will be a painful and expensive and humiliating hit to Russia's air defenses. Each S-400 battery comes with a price tag of around $200 million, Sidharth Kaushal, of the London-based Royal United Services Institute think tank, told Newsweek on Tuesday.

"Of course, the system can be replaced but it is still not a trivial loss," said Kaushal.

Two of Russia's recorded losses have come in the past 30 days. Ukrainian forces struck an S-400 near Yevpatoria, on the Russian-controlled Crimean peninsula, on Thursday. Drones initially attacked the radar and antennas, with missiles then taking out the remainder of the S-400 system, a Ukrainian security service source told Ukrainska Pravda.

Kyiv also took out another S-400 system in western Crimea on August 23, in an attack which a Ukrainian official said involved a "new, completely modern" missile. This is thought to allude to a land-attack version of Ukraine's Neptune anti-ship missiles, and before the outbreak of all-out war in Ukraine in February 2022, Russia had five S-400 batteries in Crimea, according to Forbes.

The S-400 is Russia's "premier" air defense system, yet Russia losing several S-400s in recent months is significant for several reasons, according to military expert David Hambling.

The first is that the S-400 "appeared to have performed well previously but now appears vulnerable," he told Newsweek.

"Secondly, knocking out S-400s punched holes in the air defense network that are then exploited," Hambling added.

The S-400 system is linked to other Russian systems like variants of Moscow's Buk missile system, meaning that if an S-400 is taken out, it "undercuts the functionality of the local air defense systems as a whole," Kaushal said.

"The S-400s have performed nominally," commented Ian Williams, deputy director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "They seem to have struggled against Storm Shadows, but without better insight into intercepts, it's hard to assess with certainty."

The loss of S-400s had made Russian targets in Crimea more vulnerable to Ukrainian-fired Storm Shadow cruise missile attacks, Hambling added.

On September 13, Ukraine damaged a Russian warship and submarine docked at Russia's Black Sea naval base at Sevastopol, with what are understood to be Storm Shadow missiles. Satellite images shared with Newsweek then showed the aftermath of the strikes on the Crimean dry dock.

Following the second attack last week, the Washington-based think tank, the Institute for the Study of War, said Russia likely had "tactical failures" that could "reflect a wider systemic issue with Russian air defenses in occupied Crimea."

"We may now be seeing the start of a trend where S-400s are increasingly targeted," Hambling said. Ukraine's complex strike operations taking out the S-400 systems show they are likely "of some concern" to Kyiv, Williams added.

Yet Russia is likely working on beefing up its defenses around its S-400s, Hambling suggested. "This type of conflict tends to be a battle of successive improvements on both sides," he argued.