An S-200 battery would need to be well forward of a Tu-22M3’s target city—as in, hundreds of miles—in order to get a clean shot at the bomber.
There’s no evidence Ukrainian forces shot down a Russian air force Tupolev Tu-22M3 bomber during Russia’s largest-ever mass air raid targeting Ukrainian civilians on Friday.
But Ukrainian sources have claimed one of the twin-engine, swing-wing bombers disappeared from Ukrainian radar scopes over Kursk, a hundred miles from the Russian border with Ukraine.
If the Ukrainians were to target Russia’s Tu-22s in the air, realistically there’s just one surface-to-air missile system that could do it. The old Soviet S-200.
But just barely, and not always.
Soviet industry developed the S-200 in the 1960s in order to defend cities and military bases against American high-altitude bombers. It’s a gargantuan weapon. The V-860 and V-880 missiles are more than 30 feet long and weigh eight tons on launch.
An S-200 battery’s launchers travel, slowly, along with Tall King and Square Pair radars on heavy tractor-trailers.
