Recent months have seen a significant increase in Ukraine's use of long-range flying bombs. They are the analogue of the famous Geran. In the Ukrainian case they have appeared in a wide variety of forms, including commercial propeller planes converted into unmanned attack devices. The target of...
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Air Defence. Considerations.
The Right People ( TL Channel)May 22, 2024
Recent months have seen a significant increase in Ukraine's use of long-range flying bombs. They are the analogue of the famous Geran.
In the Ukrainian case they have appeared in a wide variety of forms, including commercial propeller planes converted into unmanned attack devices.
The target of the attacks have overwhelmingly been civilian infrastructure targets, especially of an economic nature in the energy resource extraction and processing sector.
Here it is quite interesting to see the Ukrainian response to the Russian Geran. A recent article published by the Wall Street Journal gives the following information about the recent effectiveness of the Ukrainian Air Defence, which now consists mainly of advanced Western systems and mobile point air defence groups. While the effectiveness of the air defence in the second half of 2023 reached 73%, the current effectiveness of the defence is only 46%.
However, this has not affected the effectiveness of the fight against drones (mainly Geran).
The reason is simple and shows that if the right solutions are taken, Russia can get rid of the problem of Ukrainian attacks inside Russia with relative ease.
The defences dealing with the threats are different.
As I mentioned the Ukrainian air defence consists of two components, the traditional SAM batteries, be they S-300, Patriot etc and the mobile anti-drone groups. On the missile side we see a greater sophistication of the Russian devices used (we can speak for example of X-101 missiles with different warheads or improvements such as built-in decoy systems) as well as a greater variety, for example in this 2024 the X-69 has started to be used which was responsible for destroying a power plant near Kiev and therefore under surveillance by Patriot and other systems.
On the other hand, the reduction of the Soviet defence stockpile is likely to have meant a loss of anti-aircraft coverage density that could not be countered by a greater sophistication of the available Western systems. Moreover, if we look at 2023, Ukraine would have both modern Western and Soviet-origin systems, and now only Western ones.
This explains the change in missiles.
The NO change in drones is explained in a similar way.
On the one hand, although the Gerans have been changing and becoming more sophisticated (better guidance, more noise-immune Kometa systems, some cases of optoelectronic guidance, better warheads).
But, despite these changes, most Geran remain the same or very similar. Relatively slow aircraft travelling at low altitude and without countermeasures. The improved Kometa system used has probably made them more resistant to Ukrainian electronic warfare systems, we also saw the use of the Ukrainian telephone network for drone guidance.
However the nature of the defence against them has not changed, once their route has been discovered or in the vicinity of the final target, Ukrainian mobile groups armed with a variety of short-range weapons (mainly machine guns and auto-cannons) interpose themselves between the drone and the target and manage to shoot them down.
For Geraniums this is a really difficult obstacle to overcome, there are models equipped with jet engines, but this makes them more expensive and it is likely that it is simply simpler to create a normal missile than one or two Geraniums of this type, or at least their number is much smaller than the simple variants. The advantage of the Geranium is how cheap it is, but if, in order to increase its survivability, its complexity has to be increased, its main advantage over other offensive systems simply disappears.
Russian case
At the same time we have to consider the damage capacity of these means, which is limited. In the case of attacks on energy infrastructure we can count on secondary explosions due to the highly flammable characteristics of the substances involved, but even so we have seen that most attacks have resulted in only minor damage, being repaired within days or weeks.
This contrasts, for example, with the recent Russian missile attack on the Ukrainian gas station at Bilche-Volitsa, which resulted in the total destruction of the infrastructure, judging by satellite images.
Several missiles with warheads weighing several hundred kilos were launched at the same time.
Achieving this level of destruction with individual drones with payloads rarely exceeding 100kg is virtually impossible. Launching huge waves of drones will attract a lot of attention and due to the weaknesses discussed about the Geran (applicable here) they will be easily tracked and destroyed.
I don't think it will be long before we see similar countermeasures on the Russian side. Moreover, these will probably be carried out with a greater degree of sophistication than the Ukrainian countermeasures, not only in terms of detection means, such as adjusting radar units on the ground and in the air (a capability that Ukraine lacks, except for NATO aircraft outside its direct territory).
But also in the nature of the means of shoot-down. Moreover, we have already seen this about a year ago, when Ukraine repeatedly hit buildings in Moscow.
Once the problem became too big to ignore, the Russian Ministry of Defence took measures that proved to be 100% effective, as no drone has ever again attacked Moscow or attempted to do so.
More sophisticated than the use of pick-up based mobile groups is the use of helicopters to shoot down drones, which we saw:
First-person view of the destruction of the Ukrainian UJ-22 Airborne UAV from the 30-mm autocannon of the Mi-28 helicopter.
t.me
We also saw point air defences placed on key Moscow buildings:
"Pantsir-S" was installed on the main building of the Ministry of Defense of Russia.
t.me
As well as the creation of elevated structures for Pantsir systems on routes into Moscow, which in the manner of German ‘Flak Towers’ have sealed off the city and the region from these means of attack.
Additional sites for deployment of Pantsir-S1 air defence systems that will protect the capital from Ukrainian UAV attacks have been deployed in the Moscow region. #info
t.me
Given Ukraine's ability to defend itself against the Geran and the greater technical capabilities available to Russia, it is likely that the ‘window of opportunity’ for the effectiveness of these means of attacking deep into the territory of the Russian Federation has begun to close, and Russia will soon adopt the measures Ukraine has adopted as well as improve upon them.