RT by @mikenov: RT by @mikenov: 🇷🇺🇺🇦 Russia built one of the most sophisticated air defense systems on earth, and Ukraine is picking it apart with cheap drones. The Pantsir-S1 was designed to protect high-value assets from cruise missiles and aircraft. But its radars struggle to track small, low-flying UAVs, a problem Russian defense experts flagged as far back as 2018 after what it experienced in Syria. Ukraine’s coordinated swarms often contain hundreds of drones approaching from multiple directions, designed to overwhelm Russia’s systems. The Moscow oil refinery at Kapotnya has been struck repeatedly despite multiple Pantsir systems deployed specifically to protect it after earlier at

🇷🇺🇺🇦 Russia built one of the most sophisticated air defense systems on earth, and Ukraine is picking it apart with cheap drones.

The Pantsir-S1 was designed to protect high-value assets from cruise missiles and aircraft.

But its radars struggle to track small, low-flying UAVs, a problem Russian defense experts flagged as far back as 2018 after what it experienced in Syria.

Ukraine’s coordinated swarms often contain hundreds of drones approaching from multiple directions, designed to overwhelm Russia’s systems.

The Moscow oil refinery at Kapotnya has been struck repeatedly despite multiple Pantsir systems deployed specifically to protect it after earlier attacks.

The deeper problem for Russia is geography: its territory is simply too vast and its critical infrastructure too dispersed to concentrate short-range air defense everywhere simultaneously, so gaps are inevitable.

And Ukraine has become very good at finding them.

The global arms market is watching, as the Pantsir had been one of Russia’s most commercially successful defense exports for decades, and potential buyers now have to consider the reality of today’s battlefield.

Drones are rendering obsolete systems that took decades and billions of dollars to build, and no military on earth has fully figured out what to do about it.

Source: Defense Updates (YT) / Writer: Michael

— @MarioNawfal Jul 13, 2026