Mobile Phone Led Israelis to Destory Pantsir-S Air Defence Battery in Syria

Valery Slugin, the chief designer of the Design Bureau of Instrument Engineering which developed the Pantsir system, said in an January 29 interview with TASS detailed how the ADS came to be exposed itself to detection. The Pantsir-S battery had run out of missiles and had called for re-supply. The operators were waiting a little distance away from the system and one of them had left his mobile phone in the operator’s chair which was sufficient for Israeli intelligence to track the system.

The standard operating procedure for such a system is that all forms of ground communications (mobiles, radios) should be switched off during an operation and that the battery should move away from the last spot it fired a missile from, he said.