“Another barbaric attack by the enemy. I will not write about revenge – this is my personal painful topic, as everyone knows. Let’s talk about air defense. We have no choice: either we will create the best protective dome in the world, or we will have to go underground – build underground cities, power plants, factories. They write that there is already a solution for neutralizing Shaheds with Starlink. Enough”, — write on: ua.news
Another barbaric attack by the enemy.
I will not write about revenge – this is my personal painful topic, as everyone knows. Let’s talk about air defense.
We have no choice: either we will create the best protective dome in the world, or we will have to go underground – build underground cities, power plants, factories.
They write that there is already a solution for neutralizing Shaheds with Starlink. It was enough to call Elon Musk. And now they have also launched a register of starlinks with mandatory registration.
However, other problems of our air defense cannot be solved so quickly.
The weather has been fine and clear for several days now, and here, at the front, the enemy’s reconnaissance wings are at full strength. They fly in at 50-60 km, hunt primarily in the rear, a number of them, of course, are shot down by interceptor drones, but then the KABs and ordinary Shaheds without Starlinks arrive.
In January, the enemy used more than 6,000 Shaheds, 5,500 KABs and 158 rockets.
It is most difficult to resist missiles and anti-aircraft missiles, because only anti-aircraft missile complexes (SAMS), including portable (MANPADS), the number of which we have is limited, and the number of anti-aircraft missiles for them is also limited. And it is impossible to create a stockpile of anti-aircraft missiles adequate to the threat – the enemy produces significantly more missiles and anti-aircraft missiles per month than the production of anti-aircraft missiles of all our partners combined.
All post-war years – after the Second World War – air defense developed in the direction of countering manned aircraft, helicopters and cruise missiles. The number of aircraft, helicopters, and cruise missiles has always been limited, and therefore a finite number of anti-aircraft missiles were needed to counter these threats.
Aircraft and cruise missiles became more complex, and anti-aircraft missile systems became more complex and expensive. How did Shaheds and KABs suddenly appear – cheap and massive weapons.
Everyone probably remembers how, at the beginning of 2022, the Russian aviation stopped its raids on our territory, after suffering painful losses from our air defense. And stocks of cruise missiles, which cannot be produced quickly in large quantities, then the enemy also ran out.
From the spring of 2022 until the end of the year, air attacks ceased to be massive. However, the enemy quickly found a solution – Iranian “Shahedi” and modified aerial bombs (KABs).
Initially, mobile fire groups and means of radio-electronic warfare (EW) were effective against the Shaheds. In response, the Shaheds began to fly higher, and anti-aircraft machine guns became less effective, and to overcome EW, “Comets” – protected from interference CRPA satellite navigation antennas – were installed on the Shaheds and KABs.
However, the most effective way to overcome our anti-aircraft defense and the continuation of air terror was a sharp increase in the production of Shaheds and KABs. The enemy quickly realized that it is much easier, cheaper, and faster to mass-produce strike drones and universal correction modules for aerial bombs than to build an increasingly complex electronic warfare system, increase the number of mobile fire groups, and wait for partners to supply anti-aircraft missiles.
We began to consider interceptor drones as a universal and inexpensive means of air defense. Indeed, an experienced pilot can shoot down dozens of enemy drones in a day, and on the front, where it is difficult to maintain and maintain air defense systems, interceptor drones have generally become an indispensable means of air defense.
However, interceptor drones have not become a panacea, because their use is strongly limited by weather conditions, depends on the human factor – there simply aren’t enough pilots and mobile groups equipped with interceptors to cover the entire airspace.
And when the Shaheds learned to fly low, in the mode of bypassing the terrain, the effectiveness of the interceptors decreased even more, because communication is lost behind the folds of the terrain, and the use of repeater drones, although possible, complicates and makes the entire air defense system more expensive. Well, jet drones turned out to be a difficult target for interceptor drones.
Airplanes and helicopters did not become a panacea in the fight against the Shaheds. First, the use of jet fighters with scarce air-to-air missiles is unprofitable and leads to the rapid depletion of missile stocks. Using cannon weapons at close range is dangerous. Light aircraft and helicopters have proven their effectiveness, but there are few of them, few pilots, and piloted aviation also depends on the weather. In addition, it is dangerous to use aviation against drones flying at extremely low altitudes in densely populated areas, because bullets fly not only in Shaheds.
There is no panacea. As there is no relatively cheap domestic anti-aircraft missile complex in our air defense system.
Since the time of Kuchma, there have been state programs to create such an air defense system. However, at that time, no one knew about Shaheds, did not use the KAB en masse, so they were going to develop and produce complexes similar to the “Buk” or even “Patriot” – against manned aircraft and cruise missiles. Such air defense systems are complex and expensive, their anti-aircraft missiles are equipped with complex and expensive homing heads. Even manual MANPADS like “Stinger” or “Needles” are too complex and expensive against Shahid and KAB, because they use expensive missiles.
We need domestic air defense systems to close the gap between the capabilities of mobile fire groups, interceptor drones and manned aircraft used against the Shahed. The anti-aircraft missile complex with radar detection and guidance can work in any weather, react almost instantly to a threat and do it almost automatically. The air defense system can shoot down air defense systems, jet drones, low-flying drones and even cruise missiles.
Air defense system is definitely not a panacea, but we need it to build a reliable, effective and stable – that is, not dependent on weather conditions – air defense system.
The task is to make as cheap as possible an anti-aircraft missile without a homing head for a range of 6-10 km and up to 4 km in height, and a control (guidance) radar associated with it. There is nothing new here – such systems were widely developed, built and were in service from the forties of the last century until the beginning of this century. They were gradually replaced by new, more effective air defense systems against manned aircraft and even against ballistic missiles.
Our task is simpler – we need to shoot down automatic drones flying along the route and non-maneuverable UAVs. For this, “old” technologies are sufficient, on which, by the way, the Soviet “Tunguska”, the Russian “Pantsir”, the Ukrainian RK-10 missile, the British “Blowpipe”, the Swedish RBS 70, and a number of other anti-aircraft missile systems with radio command guidance, laser beam guidance or guidance using the “saddle beam” radar technology are built.
Sometimes it is necessary to correct errors that are bypassed is very expensive.
Yuriy Kasyanov
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