Tunguska-M

Tunguska-M

The premier advance anti aircraft weapon system of the eastern block, consist of 2 30mm cannons and missiles for the sole purpose of hunting aircarft and high speed assisted flight projectile. Proudly serving in the armed forces of India, Russia, Morocco, Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia, Peru, Algeria.

The system is based on the chassis of the GM-352M which is also used as the basis for the Buk-1M (NATO:SA-11 Gadfly) and Tor (NATO:SA-15). Overall the layout is similar to the German Gepard 35 mm anti-aircraft gun. A large central turret contains three of the crew: the commander, gunner, and radar operator. The driver sits in the front left of the hull, with a gas turbine APU to his right. The engine is at the rear of the hull.

The chassis has six road wheels with hydropneumatic suspension on each side, with a drive sprocket at the rear and three return rollers. An NBC system is also integrated into the chassis.

A large E-band search radar is mounted on the rear top of the turret that combined with a turret front mounted J-band tracking radar forms the 1RL144M (NATO:Hot Shot) radar system. The system has a detection range of around 18 km, and can detect targets flying as low as 15 m. A C/D-band IFF system is also fitted designated 1RL138.

The system is able to fire on the move using cannons, although it must be stationary to fire missiles. The system has two modes of operation, radar and optical, in radar mode the target tracking is fully automatic, with the guns aimed using data from the radar. In optical mode the gunner tracks the target through an 8 x magnification (8 degree field of view) stabilized sight, with the radar providing range data.
The 2A38M 30 mm cannons are built by the Tulamashzavod Joint Stock Company and are fired alternately. They have a combined rate of fire of between 4,000 and 5,000 rounds per minute, and have a muzzle velocity of 960 m/s. Bursts of between 83 and 250 rounds are fired as determined by the target type. HE-T and HE-I shells are used fitted with a A-670 time and impact fuze.

The system uses the same 9M311 (NATO: SA-19/SA-N-11) missile family as the naval CIWS Kashtan, which are fired in the optical mode, the tracking radar being used to send steering commands to the missiles.

The system is reported to have a kill probability of 0.6 with cannons and 0.65 with missiles.

The Tunguska-M is a cheap and affordable anti aircraft system with the high kill ration, it is realatively cheap at 8-10 million a piece. Thus, a piece of machine that can be considered a natural enemy of those who flew above.