Russia's renowned Pantsir air defense system has not performed well on the battlefield and has proven itself vulnerable to drone strikes.

The Pantsir-S1 is part of Russia's layered air defense network, which includes ground-based systems, electronic warfare equipment, fighter jets and radars.

The Russian military touts the system as top tier, but it cannot defeat long-range drones or small UAVs, say analysts.

Videos on social media have shown Ukrainian drones freely bombing or directing artillery fire on Russian systems assigned to down the drones.

Among the failed systems is Pantsir-S1, which Russia has used since it invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

Ukrainian forces have destroyed, damaged or captured at least 20 Pantsir-S1s, according to Oryx, a Dutch open-source intelligence site.

The Pantsir-S1 mounts a short-range antiaircraft gun and missile defense system on an eight-wheel truck. It combines surface-to-air missiles and rapid-fire 30mm antiaircraft cannons. It is intended to protect front-line troops, military bases or weapon installations.

It is designed to down aircraft, cruise missiles and precision-guided munitions and to support other air defense units against larger strikes. The Pantsir has a passive electro-optical guidance channel and radar guidance.

The Russian state military exporter, Rosoboronexport, describes Pantsir as "able to effectively engage a wide class of air attack weapons."

But in practice, it often fails to engage drones.

Its weaknesses were highlighted in a 2020 Russian report that warned modern Russian air defense systems were poorly adapted to fight drones.

Claims of those systems' superiority are not proven, Prof. Sergey Makarenko of St. Petersburg Electrotechnical University said in the study.

"The results of field tests of the Pantsir-S1 air defense missile systems show that firing missile weapons at UAVs is practically impossible," the report said, according to a Forbes translation.

Pantsir has backups of twin rapid-fire cannons that theoretically could destroy the drones, however the smallness of these aircraft makes them harder to target. In a 2020 test, four Pantsirs opened fire on a slow drone but failed to destroy it.

Overall, Russia's planned air defense strategy, in place until 2030, fails to adequately address the growing threat of unmanned vehicle and drone strikes, according to analysts.

Russia is now looking for ways to fill in the gaps.

It moved a number of air defense systems nearer to the Ukrainian border, including the Pantsir-S1, but observers there have witnessed their ineffectiveness.