The Russian Palma close-in defensive shipborne air defense missile and gun system with 10,000 shots in a minute rate of fire will be integrated into a ship’s foreign-made weapons system of the undisclosed customer.
“For the first time in the history of military-technical cooperation between Russia and foreign countries, we have agreed to integrate Russia’s Palma shipborne gun/missile CIWS into a ship’s foreign-made weapons system”, – said during the ARMY-2021 expo Alexander Mikheev, Director General of Rosoboronexport.
The Palma air defense system, developed by the Nudelman Precision Engeneering Design Bureau (part of Almaz-Antey concern), was for the first time unveiled by the Almaz-Antey at its stall at the International Maritime Defense Show (IMDS) in St. Petersburg in June 2021.
Palma is the naval air defense missile and gun system at close-in defensive line. It provides protection against all types of aerial threats including anti-ship missiles flying at low and ultra low altitudes at close-in defensive line. The developer in the RIA Novosti news agency interview has stated, that the system could fire 10 000 shots in a minute, creating a ‘shield of iron’.
Palms’s combined armament consists of high-speed precision-guided laser beam riding missiles SOSNA-R and two rapid fire guns AO-18КD. This combination provides for a layered air defense against the adversary’s air attack weapons in the area of responsibility of the system.
According to the producer, the weapon’s effectiveness has been raised by increasing the weight of its separated warheads and by using a contact sensing-proximity laser fuze producing a continuous circular beam and featuring the adaptive initiation time.
The hard-core tracer bullets are made from TNI alloy providing for the assured initiation of the antiship missile warhead. The Palma is said to have high jamming immunity achieved due to the use of protected narrow-beam optronic channels to acquire and track the target, measure its range and guide the missile onto it.
