 | Why Ukrainian air defense has not yet been destroyedVladislav Shurygin | July 11, 2022, 09:08 |
A discussion has begun on the Web about the actions of the domestic Aerospace Forces (VKS) to suppress the Ukrainian air defense and why the Ukrainian air defense still retains some of its combat capabilities.
Before proceeding to the presentation of my position, let me state a few basic points.
Now there will be a piece of scientific text from the collection “Tactics of RTV Air Force. Fundamentals of Combat Use of Forces and Means of Aerospace Attack”, developed by the teaching staff of the Military Engineering Institute of the Siberian Federal University. It is very important to read it for a better understanding of the issue. The topic of discussion almost entirely fits into the concept of the main forms of use of aerospace attack forces in offensive operations. These are:
- air campaign;
- air offensive operation (VNO);
- systematic military operations;
- air space operation (VKO).
At the same time, air campaigns and operations are the main forms of the operational-strategic use of large groupings of the Airborne Forces, and systematic combat operations are the main form of their operational-tactical use. The air campaign is a combination of the first and subsequent air offensive operations, united by a common concept and aimed at achieving the most important military-strategic goals in the theater of operations.
The duration of an air campaign in a theater of operations, including air offensive operations and systematic combat operations of air attack forces, can be up to 30 days. For the first time, the air campaign as a form of combat use of the Air Force was defined during the war of the coalition forces against Iraq. An air offensive operation (AOO) is the main form of using air attack means (AOS) in a war using only conventional weapons.
An air offensive operation is understood as a set of interrelated and coordinated in terms of purpose, place and time of hostilities carried out in the theater of operations by operational-tactical forces using only conventional weapons and a limited number of strategic aviation according to a single plan and plan. VNO is carried out with the aim of gaining air superiority by destroying enemy aircraft on the ground and in the air, suppressing its air defense system and disorganizing the work of control, communications and support systems.
The duration of the operation is from three to five days. After the first air offensive operation, the combined NATO air forces, as a rule, move on to systematic combat operations, solving particular tasks. One of them is the provision of constant fire impact on the enemy in order to disrupt command and control and demoralize the personnel. The conduct of the second and subsequent air operations is determined by the degree of achievement of the goals of the first air defense and was coordinated with the actions of land and sea groupings of troops.
The main method of using aviation and cruise missiles in defeating the enemy and gaining air superiority is the implementation of massive air and missile strikes (MARU) against airfields, centers and points of radar detection, guidance and control, and communications. For those wishing to explore the issue in more detail, I advise you to read here .
Everything according to the rules
And now about the actions of our VKS. During the first three days, we delivered massive strikes on the main and alternate airfields, on radar posts, on the control posts of the Air Force-Air Defense of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, on communication centers - and this fully fits into the strategy of the VNO outlined above.
In the first strike, our VKS destroyed the radar network, violating the unified radar field of Ukraine, thereby creating an information vacuum about the situation in the sky. These strikes decentralized the air defense system of Ukraine, deprived it of the ability to act as a single combat system and adequately respond to threats. At the same time, airfields were attacked. The runway, taxiing, weapons depots and fuel and lubricants were put out of action. Aircraft were destroyed in parking lots. Also, strikes were made on strategic stocks of fuel and lubricants, aviation weapons depots. There are at least four waves of such attacks. At the same time, massive strikes were carried out on the reconnoitered positions of the air defense system.
How can you evaluate the effectiveness of this stage? Our Aerospace Forces were able to disorganize the Ukrainian Air Force-Air Defense, destroy most of the radar and air defense command posts, disable most of the airfields and suppress up to 50% of Ukrainian air defense systems. The Air Force-Air Defense of Ukraine was unable to resist our actions as a whole, to carry out organized air defense of their military and industrial facilities, and from the third day they switched to single sorties of surviving combat aircraft and ambush operations of their air defense systems.
Until now, the actions of the Ukrainian Air Force have been episodic, without any significant impact on the course of hostilities.
Until mid-March, we were moving towards the conquest of complete air supremacy. There are three points associated with this term - more precisely, three states. The first is “air superiority”, in which the side that has achieved it has the initiative, suppresses the activity of the enemy and, as they say, dictates its own conditions. The enemy only "snarls" and defends himself, retaining certain opportunities to respond to blows and, in turn, also deliver episodic blows, at great risk to the forces involved in this.
The second is air supremacy in a certain area, when in a certain area where this or that operation is carried out, superiority is first created, and then air supremacy after the destruction of enemy aircraft operating here, the disabling of airfields and the suppression of ground air defense. Enemy air defense can retain separate systems, most often MANPADS, it is also possible to save air defense systems, but devoid of means of controlling the air situation, with the threat of immediate destruction when switched on to the active mode, they can no longer provide any effective counteraction to aviation. We achieved such air superiority over Mariupol by the end of April.
And there is the concept of complete air supremacy, when the enemy's air defense system is completely disorganized and destroyed at all its levels - from the Air Force to the object and military air defense. Separate systems such as MANPADS can be preserved, but this is no longer any factor influencing the course of hostilities.
An example of air supremacy is the two Iraqi wars, during which Iraq's backward air defense was completely suppressed and ceased to exist in an organized manner. In Afghanistan and Libya, air superiority was simply a factor - due to the enemy's complete lack of air defense systems. But already during the war in Yugoslavia (1999), the combined air forces were only able to achieve air superiority, but they never received air supremacy - until the last day of the war, the Yugoslav air defense retained strength and combat capabilities, snapped, which forced the Americans and their allies to work from altitudes of 6000 meters and above.
Ukrainian-American air defense
What is the situation in the NWO sky today? Let me remind you: after the first three days of the operation to actively destroy the air defense infrastructure, we destroyed most of the radar stations, disabled most of the military airfields, destroyed at least half of Ukrainian aviation on the ground and in the air, and defeated the main air defense command posts and the main combat control centers , guidance points, and other objects. Accordingly, the hunt for anti-aircraft missile systems began and was constantly conducted. In the first few days, most of the SAM was destroyed, at least definitely more than half.
At first, the Armed Forces of Ukraine still tried to cover their military, rear, industrial and political facilities and daily lost anti-aircraft missile systems, lost aircraft, because the predictable appearance of Ukrainian aircraft in the areas of the covered objects, the operation of their air defense systems in the conditions of our complete control of the air situation made them enough reachable targets. But two months later, the Armed Forces of Ukraine changed their tactics and moved to a qualitatively different level of confrontation. This was due to the fact that the NATO coalition led by the United States joined the military operation.
Instead of the destroyed radar stations, communication centers and command posts of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, American means of airspace control took over their role.
- AWACS aircraft, which are on combat duty around the clock in the air along the border with Ukraine, heavy reconnaissance drones, reconnaissance satellites, radio interception tools with which the Americans opened our air defense system, the actions of our aviation, and these data, after processing, were transmitted in real time to command APU points.
In fact, Ukraine received from the Americans a stable and powerful air defense information system. It was enough for our plane to tear off the front pillar, as the American AWACS, American drones, American satellites were already transmitting information to the US command centers about the take-off of Russian aircraft, from where they immediately appeared at the Ukrainians via automated systems. Today, this unity of NATO information capabilities and Ukrainian command centers is the basis of the combat work of Ukrainian air defense.
I must say that Ukraine carefully prepared for the war. This training was facilitated by the fact that the Ukrainian air defense was armed with the same weapon systems and detection equipment as the Russian one, had the same combat work algorithms, the same tactics. The same military school of anti-aircraft warfare. Therefore, the Ukrainian command knew both the strengths and weaknesses of the Russian Aerospace Forces. They were supplemented by US military advisers who had been preparing for a confrontation with our Aerospace Forces for many years.
As part of the preparations for the war, the Armed Forces of Ukraine secretly transferred part of their aviation to the territory of other countries - to Bulgaria, Romania and Poland. In total, up to 100 aircraft and helicopters were deployed there, guaranteed to take them out from under the blows.
In addition, Ukraine conducted an audit of its vast fleet (more than 1,000 pieces) of obsolete and out-of-service aircraft that it has in storage. During November-February, the most maintainable aircraft were secretly transported to aircraft repair enterprises in Poland and Bulgaria, where local flight specialists began to repair and restore them with the help of Soviet aircraft repair kits available there, left over from the time of the Warsaw Pact. In total, up to 30 MiG-29 and Su-25 aircraft and the same number of helicopters were restored in this way.
New tactics of Ukraine
The anti-aircraft missile systems of Ukraine, after heavy losses in the first weeks, switched to the ambush mode. Let me explain right away: ambush actions and guerrilla actions are completely different concepts. Guerrilla actions differ from ambush ones in that during guerrilla actions, air defense systems that are in ambush or simply disguised in positions do not have proactive information about the appearance of the enemy. And the enemy is detected either visually, when VNOS observers report about him, who simply observe the sky with the help of optics, or receive information from radio interception equipment and even agents that, say, some kind of aircraft is flying from point A to point B , and in this case, the SAM crews try to turn on and catch this target at the moment of approach, after which they immediately turn off and change their location. This is partisanship.
In Yugoslavia in 1999, at the last stage, when most of the radar stations were disabled, information about NATO overflights was received from air surveillance posts and agents, which also played the role of Russian military intelligence deployed there.
In Ukraine, the situation is qualitatively different. Here, the air defense systems operate in ambush mode. As I said, the entire American military machine is working for Ukraine, and above all, a very powerful airspace control system. That is, American air surveillance systems track the movements of our aircraft and UAVs, and as soon as these aircraft are over areas where certain Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile systems are on alert, they simply give them target designation: azimuth, altitude, speed, range to the target, and almost always the target type. And then they give the command to turn on at the moment when the target, that is, our aircraft, appears directly in the zone of reaching the air defense system. In the minimum time, the radar search is turned on, the target is detected and the missiles are launched, after which the calculation is immediately curtailed and leaves the area, from where it was launched. It is almost impossible to detect such air defense systems until they are turned on. At the same time, the positions of such "ambushes" are carefully camouflaged and protected by cover units. All this has sharply reduced the ability to detect Ukrainian air defense systems.
There are simply no Ukrainian air defense systems, especially serious ones (such as Buk or the same S-300), at a distance where our artillery can reach them. The Ukrainian command is not fools to be substituted under our artillery strikes. Since they have complete information about our movements in the air, it is not at all necessary for them to all be deployed in the Donbass, as someone wrote. On the contrary, they are dispersed throughout the territory of Ukraine and are located in places where they can intercept our attack aircraft over their strategic targets. More precisely, on the approaches to them: in the area of bridges, crossings, industrial facilities of the military-industrial complex and other strategically important objects, which, as they are sure, sooner or later Russia will try to hit. Directly above the battlefield, where our attack aircraft and our helicopters work,
The main reason for the protracted fight against Ukrainian air defense is that here we are fighting not against brigades and battalions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, but against the Aerospace Forces of the most powerful military power - the United States,
which supports the Ukrainian Air Force-Air Defense with all the resources at its disposal, realizing how important their role is.
The fight against air defense is a complex task
So how do we deal with Ukrainian air defense? Someone wrote that this is the main task of the "special forces" of the GRU and the Airborne Forces - to identify and destroy such targets. Even sniper weapons were mentioned as an effective means of dealing with these dimensional and weakly protected targets.
Such tasks are really set before the special forces and the rifles are really capable of hitting such targets, disabling equipment and even causing the detonation of missiles. But you need to understand that in the conditions of the Ukrainian theater of operations (sparse, narrow forest belts, steppes, density of Ukrainian defense, often disloyal population) such deep (and Ukrainian air defense systems are definitely not located in the reach of our artillery) objects can easily become a one-way road for any the most prepared group. Therefore, a successful fight against air defense systems for special forces is from the section of random luck. Of course, there are also Hurricanes and Iskanders to combat enemy air defenses, but their use also requires accurate target designation.
The fight against the Ukrainian, or rather the integrated Ukrainian-American air defense is a complex task that can only be solved by a whole range of tools:
aviation reconnaissance from electronic warfare aircraft and UAVs, satellite reconnaissance, undercover reconnaissance (including from the field from residents), multiplied by very painstaking analytical work. For example, by analyzing the statistics of Ukrainian missile launches, when we roughly know that, for example, two Buk-M1 or S-300s are operating in the Izyum region, and then we try to track them down and destroy them. And, of course, the highest professionalism of our pilots, missilemen, special forces and gunners.
The combat algorithm from detecting a Ukrainian air defense system to striking it should take a few minutes, and not turn into a multi-stage system for transmitting information across all levels of combat control. Here, the work of an automated control system integrated with means of reconnaissance and destruction of precision-guided munitions is necessary. Only by outstripping and anticipating the enemy, we will be able to defeat him. Chasing and simply reacting to his attacks means giving him the initiative.
And the last. Of course, this has already been written and said, I will only repeat. We have relatively compact Aerospace Forces, and our combat aircraft, which can be used as front-line aviation, are spread over a front of 1,500 km. Unfortunately, they simply cannot physically become today the decisive element in suppressing the enemy, which we would like. Now this role is unconditionally performed by our artillery and missile forces.
The fight against air defense is ongoing, but we must understand that we are dealing with an enemy who is aware of our tactics, because he fights with the same weapons, studied from the same textbooks, understands our vulnerabilities and our advantages. But most importantly, it relies on the huge information and technical support of our opponents in the face of the United States, Britain and others.
We are fighting Ukrainian air defense, we are hunting for air defense systems, aircraft, UAVs. This is a complex task, and in talking about it, we should not oversimplify and profane the challenges we face. CBO is a severe test, and we must find accurate answers to all questions. This is the only way we can defeat the enemy. And this is by no means a clown in Kyiv.
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