During the IDEX 2025 international defense exhibition, held in Abu Dhabi on February 17–21, the russian defense industry displayed the Pantsir-SMD-E air defense weapon, a stationary variant of the Pantsir family introducing a “distributed configuration” of the system.
For the first time, the russians showed the Pantsir-SMD-E during the propaganda event called the Armiya-2024 exhibition, and the international debut took place within at IDEX 2025, the Janes website reports.
The design of this system is as follows: the core is a weapon station equipped with launch tubes for surface-to-air missiles. The search for aerial threats is provided by the RLS-0-È stationary radar which can simultaneously track up to four targets and communicate with up to four combat modules simultaneously.
All these components are interconnected by fiber-optic cables, and it can supposedly be controlled by only one operator, whose workplace should be located 500 meters from the rest of the system.
It is also emphasized that, besides being stationary, Pantsir-SMD-E is also distinguished by the absence of the 30mm automatic anti-aircraft guns common for other air defense systems of the series. Instead, a new type of missile was integrated: the miniature TKB-1055, optimized for destroying unmanned aerial vehicles.
News Hub has already mentioned the key features of Pantsir-SMD-E in one of our previous posts, so let’s briefly recall some basic points.
When the system was first presented, the creator directly admitted that the main reason why the 30mm automatic cannons were removed was their low effectiveness in countering UAVs. The newly introduced TKB-1055 should show greater effectiveness in intercepting air threats in a very close range of 7 kilometers, at altitudes up to 5 km.
On a related note, earlier, News Hub also noticed that russia was trying to export Krona-È, a conceptual successor to the Strela-10 SAM specifically modified for better C-UAS performance.
