F. Giovagnorio Armory SA-22

SA-22 Greyhound is the NATO designation of Pantsyr-S1, a short range air defense system designed to protect strategic military and civil point targets; it is capable of engaging a wide variety of aerial targets, such as aircraft, helicopters, ballistic and cruise missiles, guided bombs. It is claimed that by 2014 more than 200 of these air defense systems were produced. It has also been exported to Algeria, Syria and United Arab Emirates (50 units) and recently ordered by Iraq. The Pantsyr-S1 saw action during the military conflict in Ukraine. The Pantsyr-S1 is based on a wheeled chassis. It carries up to 12 surface-to-air missiles in sealed containers and two dual 30-mm guns.
Packaging On opening the box, you find 7 large sprues in light grey plastic, 1 sprue in transparent plastic, 1 bag with 10 resing pieces, 3 groups of PE parts, 1 small piece of acetate and 1 set of decals.	The grand total says 299 plastic parts, 7 transparent parts, 13 resin parts and 28 PE parts, excluding windscreens in acetate and decals. Despite what you can read on the box, there are no rubber parts and the tyres are in resin.

The parts Nearly three hundred parts are not frequent to see in a kit nowadays. They are well distributed on the sprues so that nearly every possible space is filled.



Some preliminary observations Being a limited-run kit, you would expect lower quality of moulds, but this is not the case, because detail is plentiful everywhere, although a little soft in some places; however, there is some flash, which is neither excessive nor thick. Tyres are weel cast, with a nice thread pattern and a very welcome "weight effect". The engine is in resin too and is a good base on which to add all those little additional details which make an engine model complete. Glass parts in acetate and a small sprue of transparent parts complete the kit.


Instruction manual There is nothing like the instruction manual to give the idea of complexity and completeness of a kit. In this case, it looks impressive and a little intimidating, with 49 steps and the occasional request to the modeller to scratchbuild some very fine parts. Interiors are detailed and it will be very sad to cover everything when completing the model: there is also a complete control room, with computers and monitors (see step 28) !
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The decal sheet contains some numbering, although pictures of SA-22 do not show any tactical markings.

Conclusions A candidate for Model of the Year ? Judging for the number of parts, complexity of design and attention to detail, certainly yes: this kit reminds closely the Zvezda Topol, which is one of the most complex and complete kits in 1/72nd scale, and some recent kits from Modelcollect. Certainly, it is not conceived for the novice modeller, and will have quite a strong impact on your bank account, but it is a kit you should not miss if interested in modern Russian war machines.
Review sample provided by Armory

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Article Last Updated: 14 June 2017