Viral video shows Russian S-400 missile hitting its own launcher.

 

A Russian S-400 launcher. Eurasian Times.

A viral video shows a Russian S-400 anti-air missile failing and hitting its own launcher. Eurasian Times. The video comes from Russia's Kavkaz 2020 exercise in Russia's southern military district. The video shows the launcher firing two missiles, the first of which works normally. The second missile did not, as its boost phase did not ignite, causing the missile to fall out of the air and hit its own launcher. Turkey, which has purchased several of the S-400 launchers, has claimed that several of their missiles have been defective as well. 

 My Comment:

I know I am late on this story but in my defense I just saw this today (on War News Updates FYI). I thought the video was funny enough to share regardless of how out of date I am with it. And it's not like it isn't a valid news story, Russia's effort to sell the S-400 has been a major foreign policy story and has caused friction between America and Turkey as one example. 

I do have to say that the Russian's attitude to the malfunction was pretty hilarious. Instead of screaming with terror as the missile falls, they laugh about it. They probably weren't in that much danger where they were filming but still, it was a scary situation and the Russians just didn't care. 

This video will probably hurt the sales of the S-400. Having viral video out there where a missile fails to launch is not going to help things. And it can't even be blamed on anybody but the Russians since they were the ones operating it. If it had been the Turks, they could blame it on them not fully understanding the weapon. But with the Russians being the ones that fired it? No excuse. 

Is that fair? Probably not. Air to air missiles are complex technology and as such they are occasionally going to fail. It's literally rocket science to build, design and operate these missiles, and it's not always going to work out right. To judge a weapons system on one failure isn't fair. But that's life I guess. 

More damaging to the S-400 is the reports that Turkey has been having problems with the missiles as well. The Eurasian Times report cited complaints about this but I haven't really seen those reports myself so it may or may not be true. Still, it's very possible that the S-400 really is a lemon and other countries should consider that before they buy them.