Moscow has said it plans to fulfill a contract to supply the S-300 to Iran. The Arctic Sea, bound for Bejaia, Algeria, has again disappeared from AIS systems coming out of the English Channel. This freighter was suspected last year of transporting arms destined for Iran. The S-300, known in the West as the SA-20, can shoot down cruise missiles and aircraft. The missiles have a range of 150 km (90 miles) or more and travel at over two km per second. Russia has delivered 15 S-300 batteries to China, Interfax news agency quoted Igor Ashurbeili, director general of Almaz Antei which makes the missiles. China, once the largest customer for Russian arms, has bought about 27 S-300 batteries from Russia beginning in the 1990s, the “bare minimum” for its arsenal The new contracts to deliver the S-300 to China were signed in the mid-2000s and each battery usually costs about $120-$150 million. That indicates the value of the Chinese contract was about $1.80-$2.25 billion. Russia has a more advanced air defense system, known as the S-400 "Triumph," and Ashurbeili said the country's armed forces were expected to receive the third battery of these "any day from now."
A senior Russian general said last year that Moscow was now developing a fifth-generation, surface-to-air missile, the S-500, which would be able to implement the tasks of both air and space defense.
Officials have said that the new system would be capable of engaging ballistic hypersonic targets flying at a speed of 5 km (3 miles) per second. here
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