Any publicity is good publicity, said Andy Warhol. The Russian company Almaz-Antei, which manufactures the Pantsir S1 anti-aircraft close protection system, hardly shares this opinion in recent days. Indeed, according to the Turkish authorities, and videos ostensibly published on the internet , Turkish armed drones would have destroyed eight of these systems around the city of Idlib, the focus of an armed confrontation between Syrian forces loyal to Bashar al Assad and pro-Turkish Islamist militias supported by Ankara's armed forces.
These videos, and the mediocre results they present for the Syrian Pantsir S1, are all the more damaging as the system is designed precisely to eliminate this type of threat, and its performance has been praised by many by the Russian forces, who use it in particular to protect the Russian air base of Hmeimim.
If several Pantsir S1s were apparently destroyed while they were moving, certain sequences show a system stopped, radar rotating, therefore visibly operational. Note that, on the Syrian side, we claim the destruction of several Turkish drones, and we deny the destruction of the Pantsir.
So, does this mean that the Pantsir S1 is ineffective? It's unlikely. Indeed, it appears from videos published by Turkey, also showing Syrian S-125 and Tor M1 systems, that the problem is not in the equipment, but in the training of the operators of this equipment, as well as the tactics used by the Syrian army.
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