Igla-S

A shoulder-fired infrared missile that Russia now launches from helicopters to hunt Ukrainian long-range drones — and, in its successor form, bolts onto Shahed airframes so that a strike drone can shoot back at the aircraft sent to intercept it.

Overview

The 9K338 Igla-S ("Igla-Super"), designated SA-24 Grinch by NATO, is a Russian man-portable air-defence system developed by the KBM design bureau in Kolomna. It is a shoulder-fired, fire-and-forget missile with a passive infrared seeker, engaging targets between roughly 500 m and 6 km in range and 10 m to 3,500 m in altitude, ready to launch in about 5 seconds and deployable to a firing position in 12–13 seconds.

Its technical advance over the earlier Igla is seeker sophistication. The Igla-S uses a new two-channel optical seeker with a logic unit, which gives it higher immunity to decoy flares and jamming, along with a heavier warhead and an improved fuze.

What makes it current rather than merely present is how both its role and its mounting have changed. Russia fires Igla and Igla-S from Mi-28N and Ka-52 helicopters using the Strelets remote-launch kit to hunt Ukrainian long-range attack drones. And its successor, the 9K333 Verba, has been mounted on Geran/Shahed airframes as an anti-interceptor weapon — a strike drone carrying a surface-to-air missile.

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