Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) has announced a new tactical weapon named Mini Harpy.
Mini Harpy is latest in the line of loitering munition along with the Harop and Harpy.
It can lock on radiation-emitting threats like radar and home in on them with human-aided
electro-optical guidance.
Mini Harpy has a weight of 45 kg and has the capability to loiter in the sky.
It has a shaped charge warhead weighing approximately 8 kg.
Mini Harpy is designed to be launched from land, sea, and air platforms and has a range
of 100 km and an endurance of 120 minutes.
General manager and executive vice-president of IAI Systems, Boaz Levy stated that “fast-moving
targets that ‘blink’ for a few seconds at a time”.
He added, “Rather than relying on a precise reference point, the system we developed loiters
in the air waiting for the target to appear and then attacks and destroys the hostile
threat within seconds.
The Mini Harpy is unique in its beam detection and optical capabilities, a combination of
two of our loitering missile systems that sold thousands of units in Israel and abroad.”
In this video Defense Updates, analyses WHY ISRAEL’S MINI HARPY TOUTED TO BE S 300 & S
400 KILLER MAY NOT BE ABLE TO DEFEAT THEM?
Let's get started.
The relation between Russia & Israel has been tense because of the differences in stance
in Syria.
Things got further escalated after Russia decided to provide S 300 to the Syrian government.
It is to be noted that Russia has deployed S 400 to guards its own assets in Syria.
Israel Air force has been considerably successfully against Syrian short-range air defense systems
which includes Russian made Pantsir-S1 air defense system.
May 10 last year, Israeli fighter jets had taken out Pantsir-S1 for the first time.
On 21 January, the Israeli military stated that it has hit Iranian and Syrian targets
around Damascus, including the Russian made Pantsir-S1 air defense system.
But till now Israel has not tried to hit S 300 or S 400.
Let's see why Mini Harpy may not be a threat for S 300 & S 400.
Here are top 5 reasons.
S 300 & S 400 are long range systems.
The surveillance radar of S 300 tracks objects over a range of 300 km.
S 400 is equipped with radar that a range of 600 km.
It must be noted that both of these systems have additional target acquisition radars
67N6 Gamma De and 9N6 Protivnik Ge radars in L band, Nebo SVU in the Very High-Frequency
band and Nebo m & Zebu M in multiband to aid the main radar.
This means both S 300 & S 400 will be able to detect the Mini Harpy as soon as it take
to the sky.
Importantly even the launch platform of Mini Harpy will be detected as it will have to
get within 100 km being laughing the Mini Harpy.
So, it is highly likely that Mini Harpy will not have any surprise element against S 300 or S 400.
S 300 & S 400 deploy multiple missiles to cover their engagement envelop.
Here are the missiles:
1. Short-range 9M96E (40 km) with an active radar homing head, having the capability to intercept
targets having a speed up to Mach 2.6
2. Medium-range 9M96E2 (120 km) with an active radar homing head, having the capability to
intercept targets having a speed up to of Mach 3
3. Long-range 48N6 (250 km) with an active radar homing head, having the capability to intercept
targets having a speed up to of Mach 14
4. Very-long-range 40N6 (400 km) with an active radar homing head, having the capability to
intercept targets having a speed up to Mach 14.
This is available only with S 400.
The massive range means that S 300 & S 400 can not only target the Mini Harpy but also
its launch platform from long ranges.
The range also means that both S 300 & S 400 will be able to target the Mini Harpy from
the initial flight phase to the terminal stage, giving them multiple shots at it.
This makes the scenario tilted heavily against Mini Harpy.
S 300 & S 400 are designed to take on saturation attacks.
They do it by having immense firepower at their disposal.
Each S 300 & S 400 battery consists of a number of transporter erector launchers (TELs) and
each TEL has 4 launch tubes.
In a standard configuration, a single battery has 4 TELs, but there could be up to 16 TELs
per battery.
So, depending on the number of TELs commanded by the S 300 or S 400, they can simultaneously
launch up to 16* 4 that is 64 missiles.
This means that saturating S 300 & S 400 battery is very difficult.
One of the most effective ways to suppress an Air Defense system through Electronic Warfare
(EW).
But S 300 & S 400 has many features specifically designed to overcome these countermeasures.
For example, the powerful radar is resistant to jamming due to its ability to change the
frequency of its signals very rapidly.
S 300 & S 400 also can be equipped with Topaz Kolchuga m, Krtp-91 Tamara and 85v6 Orion
vega emitter locating systems.
These components are designed to engage emitting targets without emitting from the acquisition
radars, or if the acquisition radars have been jammed.
So, it will not be easy to disable S 300 & S 400 with EW.
Both S 300 & S 400 are protected by Pantsir-S1.
This makes it very difficult for any missile to go through as the incoming missiles will
have to deal with two independent systems.
Israel will have risk a huge amount of resources like a large number of fighter jets and Mini
Harpy to attempt a strike.
This will be disproportionately costly and hence may not a practical solution.