Chinese CPMIEC offered HQ-16 and HQ-9 ADS to Syrian regime: reports Sina

HQ-9 SAM, a reverse engineered copy of S-300PMU sold to Morocco.

Chinese conmunist party aligned media outlet Sina.com reported that after several Israeli and Turkish air-to-ground missile strikes, Russian S-300, S-200, SA11 (Buk), Tor and Pantsir-S1 systems, which are part of the Syrian air defense forces, proved “completely useless”, CPMIEC offered Chinese missile defense systems to Syrian regime.

The Israeli Kamikaze Drones and Delilah cruise missile reportedly destroyed Russian-made SA11 and Pantsir-s1 missiles while S-300 observed and failed to intercept any of the cruise missiles. Recent campaign against the Kurds, Turkey destroyed Syrian regime’s SA11 and Pantsir-s1 using Turkish Aerospace Industries Anka-S and Anka-2 MALE Drones.

This is because the US has obtained complete performance details and lock-on codes of the S-300 after it bought key parts of the system from Belarus since 1994. Besides, countries with which the US shares defence relationship such as Cyprus, Ukraine, Greece and Egypt also have the S-300 which the US have studied against its F-16 and F-35 fighters and shared the information with Israel.

“Syria should replace its ‘failed’ Russian S-300, SA-11 and Pantsir air defence systems (ADS) with the China-made such as the HQ-16 and Hongqi 9, the export version of FD-2000 land-based ADS.” reported Sina.com citing officials source of manufacturer of the HQ-9 air defense system.

The HQ-9 (simplified Chinese: 红旗-9; traditional Chinese: 紅旗-9; pinyin: Hóng Qí-9; literally: ‘Red Banner-9’) is a medium- to long-range, active radar homing surface-to-air missile. The HQ-9 is a copy of original S-300 system, reverse engineered from Russian S-300 air defense system with some assistance from Almaz-Antey and Israeli Elta Systems during the early 1990s.

In addition, the Syrian military has summarized several fatal problems of Russian-made anti-aircraft missiles: the backwardness of the electronic system leads to poor anti-jamming capabilities, the effective range is far short from what is claimed, and the system’s degree of automation is low.

Recently Turkey has disclosed many capability gap of Russian-made S-400 which failed to detect fourth generation F-16 fighter jets at an altitude under 5km.

To change the situation, the (Syrian) national defense air system must be upgraded. There are many deficiencies in the Russian-made air defense missiles. The Chinese red flag series of air defense missiles should be preferred, the report said.

However, the Syrian Army’s Russian supplied Pantsir S-1, Buk and  S-300 air defence systems (ADS) may not be the most modern versions, does not posses solid-state electronics which makes for an unfair comparison with the Chinese Hongqi 9.

Meanwhile, Russia has developed an upgrade of the S-300 designated as S-300PMU-2 which is claimed to be have a target range of 250 km against the Hongqi 9’s 200 km and also has larger detection range. The Hongqi 9 itself was developed on the basis of S-300 ADS family and is said to suffer from reliability and target acquisition issues. Chinese target acquisition radar reportedly has very poor MTBF hours, sometimes less than 250hrs which makes it highly vulnerable to enemy anti-radiation missiles.

The Hongqi 9 is equipped with search and fire control radar electronic equipment, and has some degree of automation. The maximum search distance is more than 120km, and the tracking distance of the fighter target is 90km. 120 degrees, 65 degrees vertical, can be connected to the brigade-level command center, can track up to about 100 air targets at the same time, and assign 50 of the missiles.

The Hongqi 9 series has strong technical confidentiality, and the Israeli Air Force has not mastered the parameters of the Hongqi 9 which is superior to the S-300, Sina.com stressed.

The Hongqi 9 (FD 2000) was in contention for sale to Turkey but the deal was jettisoned at the last minute as according to the Turkish military it did not meet its requirements. However, the US had put pressure on Turkey to abandon the deal and buy the Patriot Missile Defense Systems instead.

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