Video Shows Inside of Russian Air-Defense System as It Is Blown Up

New footage circulating online appears to show the inside of a Russian mobile surface-to-air missile vehicle just seconds before and during a strike hits the air-defense system.

In the clip, posted to social media, a control panel is visible, with an unknown operator occasionally spotted pressing buttons on the console. An explosion then rattles the camera, which continues to swing in the aftermath of the blast until the footage ends.

Although it is impossible to know for sure which system appears in the clip, it looks to be Russia's TOR system, according to military expert David Hambling. Also known by its NATO reporting name, the Sa-15 Gauntlet, the late Soviet-era system and its later variants have been widely deployed in Ukraine.

The clip looks to show two missile launches with a 10-second gap between them, Hambling told Newsweek.

"Then the operator hastily starts hitting buttons and appears to be going through a reset process, so there may have been a problem of some sort," such as the missile not launching, he added. The operator can then be seen evacuating the vehicle, with a small explosion later, he said.

Newsweek could not independently verify when or where this footage was filmed, nor affirm that it shows the inside of an air-defense system operated by Moscow's forces. The Russian Defense Ministry has been contacted for comment via email.

"The simplest narrative would be that the crew detected incoming threats and launched missiles at them, but they could see on their radar that one or more threats were still incoming and they were the target," Hambling said.

"So they abandoned their vehicle which was then hit by a small warhead" that was not large enough to completely take out the system, he added.

Primarily used to fend off attacks from enemy aircraft, missiles and drones, "vehicles like this are extremely high-value targets," Hambling continued. It is possible the one in the video was taken out by small drones within a handful of miles of the current front line, he said.

The multi-million-dollar tracking systems have some "difficulty against large numbers of small, cheap drones: if you have eight missiles, the ninth drone will get you," he added.

Air defenses are a staple for both Russian and Ukrainian troops in the now 18-month-old war. Ukraine has campaigned for more air-defense systems from its Western backers, while Russia frequently says its defenses have intercepted incoming Ukrainian drone strikes.

In the early hours of Tuesday, Russia's Defense Ministry said it had destroyed two Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles over Moscow, and a further two drones over the border Bryansk region.

As Ukraine's counteroffensive against Russian troops in eastern and southern Ukraine entered its third month, Kyiv upped its requests for advanced systems from the West to boost its ability to intercept incoming Russian strikes on infrastructure and cities.

Ukraine has campaigned for both more air-defense systems and modern, Western-made fighter jets to balance out Russia's command of the skies as the counteroffensive appears to be stalling.

"Every day, every week, we work to ensure that our defenders of the sky have more air-defense systems and missiles," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said earlier this month. Ukraine needs many "more air-defense systems than we have now," he added.

On August 6, Zelensky said the Ukrainian Air Force had shot down more than 5,500 Russia air targets heading for the war-torn country since the outbreak of full-scale war in February 2022.

Figures from Germany's Defense Ministry, updated in mid-August, showed that Berlin had delivered an additional two Patriot air-defense systems to Ukraine, which have been lauded as a gamechanger against even Russia's hypersonic Kinzhal missile, which Moscow had touted as unstoppable.