2S6M Tunguska

Tunguska
Faction	Russian Armed Forces
Type	Self-Propelled Anti-Aircraft Vehicle
Seats	3 seats: 1× Driver 1× Gunner 1× Commander
Item capacity	Max: 10× Weapons 100× Magazines
Top speed	~ 65 km/h
Fuel capacity	500 L
Primary armament	Main: 8× Tunguska 9M311 AAM
Secondary armament	Secondary: 2× 2A38M 30 mm
Variants	None
Games

The 2S6M Tunguska is a tracked anti-aircraft vehicle that is operated exclusively by the Russian Armed Forces in ArmA 2.

Overview

• Role:
  • Low altitude anti-aircraft defence

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The 2S6M Tunguska (NATO reporting name is SA-19 Grison) is an Russian self-propelled anti-aircraft tracked vehicle with a surface-to-air gun and missile system. It is designed to provide day and night protection for infantry and tank regiments against low-flying aircraft helicopters and cruise missile. Armoury Description

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Design

Developed to replace the outdated Soviet-era ZSU-23-4 self-propelled anti-aircraft gun vehicle, the 2S6M is the latest low-level air defence gun/missile system in use by the Russian military. The 2S6M retains a conventional layout, with the hull and turret being made of all-welded steel armour that provides protection from small arms fire and fragmentation.

Armament
It is primarily armed with long-range, infrared/radar-guided surface-to-air missiles that are optimised to take out low-medium altitude aircraft. On the other hand, its secondary armament consists of dual 30 mm autocannons for short-range air defence purposes. The autocannons have a maximum zeroing range of 1,000 metres.

The standard loadout of the 2S6M gives it 1904 rounds of high-explosive (HE) shells for the dual autocannons and up to 8 SAMs, with four fitted on each side of the turret.

Careless helicopter pilots generally don't last long against the Tunguska...

Features
Heavily armed and well-protected against most small arms and light anti-tank weapons, the 2S6M is a powerful medium/short-range anti-air asset that can shred helicopters and fixed-wing jets alike. The 2S6M's missiles can put a stop to any helicopter assault with ease, and those that manage to somehow survive the initial barrage of missiles will have to deal with the hail of cannon fire that follows after it.

The 2S6M itself has no direct counterpart on BLUFOR, with perhaps the U.S. Army's M6 Linebacker being the only AA vehicle that can come close to the 2S6M in terms of armament and even then, the Linebacker isn't directly comparable performance-wise since both its Stinger missiles and radar have significantly less range.

...nor do fixed-wing jets for that matter.

Drawbacks
Nonetheless, for all its strengths the 2S6M does have some downsides. Its main weakness stems from its relatively poor optics which have minimal zoom and cannot switch to thermal, both of which limit the overall usefulness of the autocannons. It also cannot be used effectively at nighttime or low-light conditions either, since both the commander and the gunner's optics lack the ability to toggle night vision.

Subsequently, this also means that once it runs out of missiles it becomes nothing more than heavily-armoured gun truck, completely helpless against CAS aircraft with long-range air-to-ground missiles (albeit still a tough one).

Crew Capacity
The 2S6M has a seating capacity of three personnel for a crew consisting of the driver, gunner and the commander.

Trivia

• Like most Russian vehicles, neither the 2S6M's gunner nor commander positions were "upgraded" with the ability to use thermal optics even after the release of the Operation Arrowhead expansion pack.
  • The 2S6M was also not given the ability to launch defensive smoke grenades as a countermeasure against infrared-guided ATGMs.

Gallery

External links

• Wikipedia: 2K22 Tunguska

See also

Vehicles of comparable role and configuration

• ZSU-39 Tigris (CSAT successor, ArmA 3 only)