Dubai Airshow 2025 Spotlights Russia's Tor-E2 Air Defense System With 360-Degree Engagement.

Russia publicly displayed the Tor-E2 short-range air defense system abroad for the first time at Dubai Airshow 2025, presenting the full system to international buyers. The appearance signals Moscow's intent to reassert itself in the global SHORAD market at a time when Russian arms exports have sharply declined.

According to information gathered on X on November 21, 2025, the new-generation Tor-E2 short-range air defense system was exported abroad for the first time to be showcased at Dubai Airshow 2025, where Russia was exhibiting more than 850 weapon systems with air defense as a centerpiece of the national stand. For Almaz-Antey and its Izhevsk Electromechanical Plant Kupol, sending a full Tor-E2 system to the UAE is both a technical demonstration and a deliberate signal that Moscow wants back into the global SHORAD market.
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Tor-E2 is a mobile short-range air defense system with 16 vertical-launch missiles, designed to defeat UAVs, aircraft, and cruise missiles simultaneously in heavy EW (Picture source: social media).

Technically, Tor-E2 is the export derivative of the Tor-M2 family, integrating search radar, tracking radar, and vertical-launch missiles on a single combat vehicle. In Dubai, Russian officials highlighted wheeled, tracked, and modular configurations that can be adapted to different theatres and platforms. The system engages targets at up to 12 km, or 15 km when using 9M331D missiles, with a maximum intercept altitude of 10 km, four simultaneous target channels, and 16 ready-to-fire 9M338 missiles stored in sealed transport-launch containers. A minimum target radar cross section of 0.05 m² underlines its design focus on small UAVs and precision munitions.

Rosoboronexport data and independent analyses indicate that the newer 9M338KE missile provides engagement out to roughly 16 km and 12 km in altitude, with command guidance and a high-explosive fragmentation warhead optimized to shred small, fast, low-RCS threats. The vertical cold-launch system gives Tor-E2 true 360-degree coverage without slewing the launcher, compressing reaction time, and enabling very rapid follow-on shots. Kupol officials state the system can deploy from march to combat in about three minutes, then fire from short halts or limited movement, a critical feature for columns under drone and loitering-munition attack.

Tor-E2 is designed as a dedicated SHORAD asset for maneuver brigades and critical facilities. Rosoboronexport describes it as capable of destroying aircraft, helicopters, cruise and anti-radiation missiles, gliding and guided bombs, and UAVs by day or night in heavy fire and electronic countermeasures. A battery of four four-channel combat vehicles can simultaneously engage up to 16 targets approaching from any direction, with the system able to process dozens of tracks and automatically select the most dangerous ones. In a pair or “link” mode, one vehicle can operate in electronic silence, receiving tracks from a partner and launching only at the last moment, which is tailored for survival against anti-radiation missiles.

Beyond covering mobile brigades, Tor-E2 is being marketed for airbase and critical-infrastructure defense and for integration into layered architectures alongside Buk, S-350, and gun or MANPADS-based VSHORAD systems. Rosoboronexport has repeatedly emphasized that the Tor-E2 battery can plug into almost any existing air defense command system, including those built to NATO standards, via a dedicated command post. This interoperability pitch is aimed squarely at non-Western operators who run mixed fleets and want a modern counter-UAV and cruise-missile shield without tearing up their legacy C2 networks.

The project itself is the latest step in a line that begins with the Soviet 9K330 Tor accepted in the mid-1980s and later upgraded through Tor-M1 and Tor-M2. Tor-M2 deliveries to Russian forces began around 2016, and in 2018, Rosoboronexport formally brought Tor-E2 to the world market as a deeply modernized export version with double the missile load, improved phased-array radar, and enhanced automation. Since then, Tor-E2 has been a fixture at IDEX, Aero India, and other shows, where Almaz-Antey highlights that the system’s software and electronics have been stress-tested in combat through the broader Tor family’s employment in Syria and Ukraine.

On the commercial side, the Dubai showcase raises the obvious question: who is actually buying Tor-E2? Open sources show that as early as 2019, Russian officials acknowledged “several applications” from foreign customers, but consistently declined to name the states involved. Today, there is still no public announcement of a signed Tor-E2 export contract. Likely early customers will be drawn from existing Tor users in the Middle East, Asia, and the CIS, but that remains speculative.

Strategically, the timing matters: SIPRI’s latest figures show Russian arms exports falling by roughly 53% between 2014–18 and 2019–23, and by 64% between 2015–19 and 2020–24, pushing Russia into third place behind the United States and France. A follow-on fact sheet notes that Russia’s export volume in 2024 was around 47% lower than in 2022 alone. Rostec chief Sergey Chemezov, speaking at Dubai Airshow 2025, openly admitted that defense exports have roughly halved since 2022 as production was redirected to the war in Ukraine, while insisting that expanded capacity and a large backlog would soon allow exports to rebound.

Against that backdrop, Tor-E2’s first international export display is less a simple product launch than a test case for a wider Russian recovery in high-end land-based air defense exports. The signal from Dubai is that Moscow intends to compete hard in the SHORAD segment that Western forces are still hurriedly rebuilding. If Rosoboronexport can turn Tor-E2 show-floor interest into the system’s first named foreign operator, it will mark not only a tactical upgrade for that customer’s air defenses, but a tangible indicator that parts of Russia’s defense-industrial machine are shifting from pure wartime mobilization back toward a mixed domestic-export footing.