The increasing intensity of NATO arms support to Ukraine has been anticipated by Russia. Although the air space has been controlled by Russia, however, drone and cruise missile attacks are still a troublesome scourge for the Red Bear military. For this reason, a capable hanud system is inevitably needed as an umbrella in this increasingly complicated military operation.
According to a video published on Telegram on April 30, 2022, the Russian armed forces have deployed the latest generation of mobile air defense missile system in Ukraine, called the BUK-M3.
Quoting from armyrecognition.com (1/5/2022), in order to protect advancing fighter jets in the four designated areas, Russian forces deployed two anti-aircraft missile divisions armed with Buk-M2 (NATO reporting name SA-17 Grizzly), Tor- The M1 (NATO reporting name SA-15 Gauntlet) and most recently the use of the Buk-M3 which is the latest generation of mobile air defense systems in the BUK family.
The Buk-M3 is a medium-range guided missile system which is a modernized version of the Buk-M2 system. The Buk-M3 is equipped with advanced electronic components and a new, lethal missile, and can be considered a completely new system.
The Buk-M3 system offers a new digital computer, a high-speed data exchange system and a tele-thermal imaging target marker instead of the tele-optical tracker used in previous models.
The Buk-M3 missile battery can track and strike up to 36 targets simultaneously, while the 9R31M missile is claimed to be capable of downing all available flying objects, including high-maneuvering moving targets, even during active electronic jamming.
The Buk-3M's target destruction probability is said to be 0.9999 and its maximum destruction range has been increased by 25 kilometers and is now up to 70 kilometers. The Buk-M3 is capable of destroying all types of aerial targets from a distance of 2.5 to 70 km, at a speed of 3,000 meters per second at an altitude of 15 meters to 35 km. The Buk-M3 missile has been optimized to intercept low-flying cruise missiles but can also strike land and sea targets.
The main point of the Buk-M3 is that it has 5 times better combat capability than the previous variant, plus no additional personnel is required to man it. In general, the Buk-M3 system has a reaction time of 10-12 seconds from the moment the target is identified. This hanud system can operate in temperatures of -50 to 50 degrees Celsius and humidity of up to 98 percent.
Its export variant, the Buk-M3 Viking, was first introduced at the DefExpo 2020 event in Lucknow, India in February 2020. One of the differences between the Russian standard variant and the export variant is its 65 km range of action.
One Buk-M3 battery consists of two 9A317M TELAR (Transporter Erector LAuncher and Radar) units and one 9A316M TEL (Transporter Erector Launcher). TELAR is based on the GM-569 tracked, and each TELAR unit is equipped with six 9R31M missile launchers that have a speed of Mach 4.
