o7
God speed little buddy.
It’s not that small of a target either. The AN-196 has a wingspan of 6.7m and carries a 50-75kg warhead.
I don’t know much about military… So was it deflected by some mechanism of the AN-196? Did Russia just failed at aiming? Is this manual aiming?
According to Wikipedia, the Pantsir shoots small missiles with radar or optical guidance. No idea why it missed.
I watch this one history yt channel that goes through the moment to moment details of various battles. One thing I learned from that is that things just go wrong all the time in wars. Missiles fail to launch, radars malfunction or aren’t properly calibrated, a manufacturing defect turns a potent weapon into a dud, etc.
Yes SAMs miss, even the 90% hit rate RIM-116 (?) Miss at times, hence you shoot two missiles if you want a target dead
