President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in a post on Telegram, said Russia had used more than 800 glide bombs on Ukrainian targets in the past week. He issued a fresh plea in his nightly video address for better weapons systems. “The sooner the world helps us deal with the Russian combat aircraft launching these bombs, the sooner we can strike – justifiably strike – Russian military infrastructure … and the closer we will be to peace,” he said.
Well, I don’t know what kind of counter he’s aiming for. There are basically two that I can think of:
Long-range SAMs with sufficient range (and maybe mobility) to strike an aircraft launching glide bombs without being placed at risk. Ukraine’s has had some old long-range Warsaw Pact SAMs, but I don’t think that we’ve got more stores or production capacity. There are Patriots, but those are the only anti-ballistic-missile counter Ukraine presently has; using them as a counter for aircraft will cut into that. I suggested earlier that the SAMP/T systems that France sent, firing Aster missiles – which theoretically have an ABM capability, but at least earlier in the conflict, apparently weren’t intercepting them – might work, if the range is long enough.
Aircraft armed with long-range air-to-air missiles.
Russia’s newest glide bombs, according to this article, probably reach about 90 km.
To use it to directly support the front, that’s about how close they’re going to have to get. Maybe closer if they want to strike behind the front.
The US has the AIM-120. The latest version reaches 160–180 km according to WP. We have other long-range air-to-air missiles in development, but not in production today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-Range_Engagement_Weapon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-260_JATM
Europe has the Meteor:
Maximum range: 200 km (110 nmi)+[4] No Escape Zone: 60 km (32 nmi)+[5]
A Ukrainian aircraft firing those will need to do so at high altitude to leverage high range, use the aircraft’s fuel rather than the missile’s. That height will make it visible to Russian air defense, and the aircraft has to avoid getting hit by Russian SAMs.
The longest-range SAM that I’m aware of that Russia has is an S-400 variant:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-400_missile_system
That can reach out 400 km with the right missile according to WP.
Now, there are a number of ways one might measure range (from what height? Are these “minimum maximum” ranges or the actual limit? Is this a no-escape range or the furthest the missile can travel? What altitude can it reach at that point?) So I can’t say “this is the range that Ukraine’s going to need” exactly. But if Russia can legitimately reach out about twice as far as any air-to-air missile, it seems to me that that’s going to be a problem for air-to-air missile use unless countermeasures or stealth or similar can prevent Russia from making use of SAMs.
Ukraine has been hitting S-400s with ATACMS, so those are, in turn, under threat.
EDIT: Another twist is that Russia also has long-range air-to-air missiles, and any Ukrainian aircraft trying to hit a Russian attack aircraft with an air-to-air missile is going to have to worry about those coming back the other direction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-37_(missile)
150–400 km (93–249 mi) [1] Up to 200 kilometres (120 mi) (RVV-BD)
Given that the longest-range variant there can reach out 400 km, that’s a pretty big buffer for Russia to work with. I believe that those missiles are intended more for hitting “large” aircraft, like bombers or the like, so a fighter might be a little better off, but I’d assume that something like an F-16 remains vulnerable.
In a “Russia versus NATO” scenario, there are stealthy F-35s that that missile probably won’t do much good against. But Ukraine’s not using stealthy aircraft.
Long range atacms and maybe a few cruise missiles that can take out an airfield. In no way does Russia have any air defense put back that far behind the lines.
I’m just surprised Ukraine has not resorted to attacks from an ocean faring ship up north yet.
I don’t think that there’s any realistic chance that Ukraine can make use of ships in the Black Sea. Russia built their military to contest the US in the Pacific – they’ve got a lot of long-range anti-ship weapons. That surplus capacity is why they’ve been blowing anti-ship missiles on land attack. I’d be pretty confident that Russia can keep a Ukrainian warship from surviving in the Black Sea. Where Ukraine’s pulling off naval attacks, it’s using either small, very-low-profile boats or even-lower-profile, mostly-submerged USVs. Russia apparently doesn’t have the sensor capability to reliably pick those up (and I imagine that Ukrainian strikes on radars probably also complicate that).
I have wondered about maybe Ukraine using larger UUVs that surface to launch a weapon. Such a UUV would have to be something that could be transported on a trailer, so there are some size limitations. But it might permit for a more-capable platform than the small USVs that are currently being used.
I don’t know what kind of anti-submarine-warfare tools Russia has available in the Black Sea, but if they aren’t able to detect the existing USVs, I would assume that they aren’t going to be doing better with UUVs.
EDIT: There’s a reference to a Ukrainian UUV project in progress here; it says that Russia is improving their ability to detect the existing Ukrainian USVs, so UUVs are becoming more important.
I was more referring to using a containership in the northern ice sea to launch a single wave of UAVs to destroy the Russian strategic bombers parked north of st petersburg. You know a one time strike option.
Or use clandestine means to build Magura type drone boat in the Caspian sea and launch against a vessel. You know, even more asymmetric. Like what they do in Syria and Africa.
northern ice sea…north of st petersburg.
The Baltic Sea?
Arctic ocean. I did a literal translation from Dutch… which made sense but was wrong. Sry
Ah, okay, gotcha.
So, there are a couple issues:
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I’d guess that Russia is able to prevent a surface ship from approaching Russia in any ocean unless someone can fight an offensive air and naval war to get control of that ocean.
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I’m guessing (you said “container ship”) that the idea might be to use a concealed civilian vessel that then unloads some kind of surprise attack. While disguised military ships have been used to conduct armed warfare before, the last time I can think of an example was British Q-ships in World War I; I’m not sure that this is still legal.
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Turkey has closed the Turkish Straits to warships due to the conflict, so technically no warships are supposed to pass, from either side. I’m I believe that it violates the convention governing this to either tell Turkey that the warship isn’t actually a warship or if Turkey knows but preferentially lets warships through. That being said, I guess theoretically Ukraine could assemble such an attack using a ship somewhere far away from Ukraine.
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My guess is that if Ukraine had a lot of long-range cruise missiles, they’d probably be using them in their own theater of operations, as they’re pretty short on them.
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I don’t think that Russia is using strategic bombers for the glide bombing attacks, so whatever the benefits of hitting them, I’m not sure that it would be a counter to the glide bomb attacks. kagis Yeah, this has the (much more numerous) Su-34 being used:
On or just before Thursday, an air force Sukhoi Su-34 fighter-bomber lobbed a single FAB-3000 bomb with pop-out wings and satellite guidance at a multi-story building Russian intelligence had identified as a staging base for Ukrainian troops in Lyptsi, 10 miles north of Kharkiv in northern Ukraine.
Strategic bombers are used to launch the hypersonics at Ukraine. They are rarer so a high value target. If they can cut of kinzal at its roots.
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report
The original article contains 9 words, the summary contains 9 words. Saved 0%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Bot: “I’d like to thank Reuters, and The Associated Press, and that’s my time!”
Worst TLDR ever
I think that the problem is that the entire article, other than that sentence, consists of a list of bullet points. It’s conventional for articles to sometimes include a list of bullet points with an “executive summary” at the top, and then have the real article below, but this just omits that latter text.
