In the evening of August 29, flights of drones were recorded over the Oryol, Kaluga, Bryansk, Ryazan, Pskov and Moscow regions. At the Kresty airfield near Pskov, four military transport aircraft Il-76MD of the 334th military transport Berlin Red Banner Aviation Regiment were damaged of varying severity.
Where did drones come from?
It is not yet clear where the attack on Kresty airport, located more than 600 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, might come from. In other words, the exact flight route of the Ukrainian UAVs has not been determined yet. In the discussions that followed, the Ukrainian Armed Forces is looking for take-off sites for drones on the territory of Estonia and Latvia, and even ally Belarus is mentioned among the options.
In fact, most likely the situation is as follows. For Ukrainian UAVs, a flight range of 600 kilometers or more is not critical. As before Wrote The same Iranian Shahed 136 UAV “Gazeta.ru” has a flight range of 1000 km and uses a clone of the German aircraft engine Limbach L550E as an engine. With the original power plant (just like the Austrian Rotax or the German Limbach Flugmotoren), the Ukrainian drone will fly further. And buying hundreds of engines for Ukraine from these companies is not a big deal at the moment.
APU has guidance systems for unmanned aerial vehicles. For these purposes, Starlink (a global satellite system deployed by SpaceX and used by the Armed Forces to guide UAVs since 2022) or NAVSTAR GPS (Navigation Satellite Time and Distance, Global Positioning System) can be used. Do not forget about the inertial guidance systems used in many modern UAVs. That is, the Ukrainian drones had no problems with the information of the coordinates and the accuracy of the output given to the object.
Now let’s answer the question of why the UAVs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were not detected by radar reconnaissance, and then a map of the radar cables of these air objects was not presented to the leadership of the country. The fact is that for the timely detection of Ukrainian drones and their subsequent wireless wiring, a radar field with a lower limit of 60-100 meters is needed. It’s quite possible that in some parts of Russia’s western border nothing like this has yet happened. In addition, there is no doubt that the enemy (with the help of US intelligence) was aware of the grouping of radio engineering troops of the Russian Aerospace Forces.
Therefore, the Ukrainian assault drones, taking advantage of the gaps in the radar field and bypassing the positions of the radar companies and battalions, reached the outskirts of Pskov without any hindrance. Due to the fact that the drones fly at night and the noise from the operation of the drone engines is not very loud, local residents on the path of the drones may not have noticed them.
Most likely, this is exactly what actually happened.
Why didn’t the drones hit before?
There is one more important situation. Small UAVs as radar reconnaissance objects characterized The EPR value (effective scattering surface) is around 0.05-0.5 square meters. m. In most cases, the RCS of small unmanned vehicles is only 0.1 square meters. m.And this is too little for the execution of RTV radar equipment and effective firing of air defense systems at such targets.
It is quite possible that in the near future we will receive an aircraft-type UAV with an RCS of about 0.01 square meters. This means that conventional airspace reconnaissance radars currently in service cannot effectively detect small-sized, low-speed air targets with the specified RCS values. As for air defense radar, the vast majority of them will not detect drones with RCS of 0.01 square meters. m or less.
In other words, the task of combating UAVs today is largely not solved by traditional methods and means.
It cannot be excluded that in addition to radar companies and battalions, visual observation points will soon have to be deployed on the outskirts of the most important facilities. Of course, not the same as during the Great Patriotic War, when the main equipment of the observer was binoculars and a telephone, but on a completely new technological basis.
The question arises: why was not used any active air defense systems, such as anti-aircraft missile systems or anti-aircraft machine guns (or MZA – small-caliber anti-aircraft artillery) to combat UAVs at the Kresty airfield?
To begin with, we note that the grouping of air defense forces and vehicles (combat and force) at the Kresty airfield is unknown to us. On August 29, eyewitnesses noted that 23 mm guns of the ZU-23-2 type were fired. But for this fire to be effective, timely notification, qualitatively different sighting devices and appropriate lighting equipment are required (since it is not entirely clear how to fire at air targets using conventional optical sight in the dark).
There is another major problem – very good weapons (with only excellent ballistics), developed by Gryazev, Shipunov and Grabin, require programmable burst ammunition (and in huge quantities). The use of such shells is one of the most effective ways to increase the probability of hitting an air target such as a UAV. Such ammunition is undermined at a certain point of the trajectory closest to the target, and the object is hit with the maximum possible number of submunitions.
Such shells, for example, are equipped with the promising anti-aircraft artillery system ZAK-57 “Diversion-Air Defense”. Again, it’s not really about “Derivation”. The problem is in the number of these ZAKs (and similar) found on the cover of the most important objects both in the NVO region and in the European part of the country.
What attacks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are expected in winter?
In the most general sense, the problem of combating UAVs looks like this at the moment. It remains to answer one of the main questions – what are the trends in the field of combat use of UAVs by the enemy?
There is no doubt (there is no doubt about it) that the scale of such attacks will only increase, and that with the onset of the winter period, the number of attacks by Ukrainian drones on the country’s critical infrastructure facilities will increase sharply. First of all, power plants, power lines, heating networks, substations, thermal power plants, etc.
There is no doubt that such plans are already being developed by the Ukrainian side. The task is to cause large-scale power cuts in the European part of the country, creating difficulties in the supply of heat, cold and hot water, thereby causing discontent among the widest segments of the population.
Therefore, it is necessary to prepare for such a development of events. Conduct appropriate exercises, create stocks of necessary material resources, make action plans in critical situations.
The author’s opinion may not coincide with the editors’ opinion.
Author biography:
Mikhail Mikhailovich Khodarenok is a military observer of socialbites.ca, a retired colonel.
Graduated from the Minsk Higher Engineering Anti-aircraft Missile School (1976),
Military Command Air Defense Academy (1986).
Commander of the S-75 anti-aircraft missile battalion (1980–1983).
Deputy commander of the anti-aircraft missile regiment (1986–1988).
Senior officer of the Air Defense Forces Main Staff (1988–1992).
Chief of the General Staff Main Operations Directorate (1992–2000).
Graduate of the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces (1998).
Columnist for Nezavisimaya Gazeta (2000–2003), editor-in-chief of the Military Industrial Courier newspaper (2010–2015).