During the livestream, Gaijin stated that, based on big data analysis, the BUK-M3 is the weakest anti-aircraft system at 12.7. This conclusion is entirely based on flawed statistical methods. According to data from the StatShark StatShark for January 2026, among all 12.7 SAMs, the BUK-M3 has a K/D (kills per death) of only 0.65, while its K/R (kills per spawn) is 0.74. This is logically impossible—how can the number of deaths exceed the number of spawns? The only plausible explanation is that for SAMs with autonomous combat capabilities, when the TADS vehicle is destroyed and the player switches to the TELAR to continue playing and eventually dies, the death is counted twice.
Therefore, to resolve this issue, we should abandon K/D as a performance metric and instead use K/R as the standard. Based on this, we can see that among 12.7 SAMs, ranked by K/R from lowest to highest, the lowest is the Type 03 (K/R 0.58), followed by the SPYDER (K/R 0.62), and only then the BUK-M3 (K/R 0.74). Thus, the BUK-M3 is by no means the weakest 12.7 SAM.
Well, knowing how most play on them (they don’t know about tracking radar feature) and how easily fox-3 missiles can be notched this is no wonder.
Pantchir on the other hand can hit more reliably and ability to engage helicopters. It carries smaller missiles but also has autocannons for close combat while BUK can’t defend himself.
Apart from these its a really BIG, like REALLY BIG SAM system if we combine all vehicles, they are pretty vulnerable to enemy fire even on spawn (especially radar plate).
Sadly i didn’t unlocked BUK yet so there’s still some misunderstanding on my part.
Gaijin dose not use Statshark for their analytics. Gaijin has full access to their server data and statistics, not just what they can “scrape” off the data transfers or however Statshark gets their data.
you know, this feels a lot like the time that gaijin said 2s6 was under preforming (mainly because people were using it as a TD), before in one update nerfing it and every other AA along with adding the pantsir
Using player statistics to balance BRs or to calculate effectiveness has been an issue since forever. Sometimes it’s because big nations have a bigger share of players, so the sample size is larger with more variance, or it’s because premiums that vehicles have worse statistics than others that are actually worse to play. This is how you end up with vehicles that are comically overtiered or undertiered, or additions that end up breaking the game because it ends up being too powerful and no contemporaries for other nations are added.
Gaijin needs to consider more input from people who actually play at the BR environment.
Considering their actual kit, the EldE 98 and the Spyder AIO are 100% worse than the Buk-M3, so the statement that it is the worst top tier SPAA in terms of performance is wrong.
Just 3 years ago, developers relied on specific objective performance metrics to compare SAMs and their missiles and demonstrated their case to the public with graphics and factual explanations which you can find here:
Now? They have relegated to using server statistics to justify their decisions to the public on their streams. If they had tried to re-use performance metrics comparing all of the missiles, they would have seen that the BUK outperforms all other top-tier radar SAMs.
In fact, it is looking like the BUK-M3 is going to outperform even the future Patriot SAM MIM-104B while outclassing other top-tier radar SAMs. (Credit to @legocubed)
But comparing the performance graphics of all the missiles would not have served well to suit the narrative that the Buk-M3 is the worst performing top-tier radar SAM objectively.
