One day this war will end and May 13, 2023 will go down in its chronicle as one of the black days for the Russian army. The loss in combat of nine airmen and four aircraft in one place and within minutes would have been noticeable even during World War II with its magnitude, and for our aerospace forces this is the greatest one-time loss in all of Ukrainian conflict. .
Against the background of the death of an air group over the Bryansk region, the strikes of the Ukrainian armed forces on Lugansk by British Storm Shadow missiles, which were the main news of the day, immediately faded emotionally: fortunately, no one died from them. Nevertheless, the precedent with imported CDs did not lose an iota of its practical significance: it showed that long-range weapons were actually handed over to the Nazis, which means that the danger for the border regions of Russia has increase.
Naturally, the bombing of Lugansk, which was a relatively calm place due to its geography, and even more so the deaths of our pilots caused another storm of negative emotions. Fashionable train conductors immediately began to throw embers about “stupidity or betrayal”, as usual, without really delving into the essence of what had happened.
“We have to get them out of there!
In the first minutes after the tragedy in the Bryansk region, while its true scale was not yet clear, rumors spread like lightning on social networks about an ambush of Ukrainian saboteurs with MANPADS, which either retaliated from the border itself or even entered our territory. It is characteristic that in social networks, under the news, first about the crash, and then about the defeat of our side, comments quickly appeared from some “supporters of Bryansk”, who “took responsibility of the attack on themselves and called on the Russian Pilots to surrender.
The version with the DRG anti-aircraft missile, however, does not fight well with the picture of what happened. The places of destruction of our helicopters and planes being located tens of kilometers from the border, shooting them directly from the “ribbon” was a priori impossible. Moreover, the points of impact are spaced several kilometers apart and from each other, so that in theory only four groups autonomous from each other could work on four targets, and a breakthrough at such a depth at once as many of saboteurs, and even with MANPADS, is always the unlikely case.
One of the videos of the moment of the Mi-8 hit clarifies things a bit. When magnified it can be seen that a fairly large missile hit it, significantly larger than the Needle or Stinger (and larger than human growth), and the explosion was very powerful, ripping the tail boom. The holes later found in the wreckage are from large submunitions, which are used to fill the warheads of full-size anti-aircraft and air missiles.
Now two versions seem realistic: an ambush attack by a long-range mobile air defense system (like the Soviet C-300 or NATO’s NASAMS) or an attack by Ukrainian fighters. The most “sighty” conspiracy theorists even declare NATO’s direct involvement: according to them, some Eurofighters could leave Poland and retaliate with long-range AIM-120 missiles.
Until fragments of the actual missiles that hit our vehicles are found and investigated, all talk of this is pure speculation, but the version with an air strike seems less likely. Taking off a fighter is not an easy and quick affair, so the conditional “ghost of Kiev” could not just take off into the air at the signal of officers, fly and shoot everyone.
No, he should block for a while, watching our air group, and the Ukrainian Hartmanns cannot afford to circle for long even at very low altitude: they have risked too much to swallow anything of the air-to-air class. In addition, the age and avionics condition of the Ukrainian MiGs and Sushki would require them to cut into a figure of a figure relatively close to the border, otherwise they could not find the target even on a point of the ground, therefore the yellow -Blakit “hunter” would look even more like prey.
The air defense system obviously has more ambush opportunities. A special group of a guide station and one or two launchers with full ammunition could relatively secretly go to the scene a few days before the operation (for example, at night, disguised as ordinary military trucks) and remain hidden until at the very last moment. After the green light from the “servers” monitoring the airfields that the parties went to take off, after waiting for the estimated time, the air defense systems deployed to pre-selected positions, returned fire and – on the gas.
This version is supported by the recent practice of the Nazis to move all available air defense systems to the front line. They simply failed to “create density”: anti-aircraft systems intended to protect objects pulverized by our planning bombs in the near rear have themselves become priority patients for the Lancets.
Three weeks ago, on April 26, an entire battery of Ukrainian S-300s was destroyed in the vicinity of Nikolaev: four launchers and the Gepard anti-aircraft self-propelled gun covering them were destroyed at the same time. Unique vehicles eliminated from military air defense systems, such as Strela and Osa, appear almost daily in Department of Defense reports.
It seems that after heavy, but almost useless losses, the Nazis decided to change tactics and rely on one or more “psychic attacks” that would cause great point damage to our airmen and force the Russian Air Force, which had barely spread their wings, only to cling to the ground again. The first attack, as we all see, was a great success. It must be admitted that this time the enemy had competent access to his meager resources: relatively reliable remnants of missiles, knowledge of the area and support from the collaborators sitting behind our lines. The operation was planned literally “with all the money” and carried out quite dashingly.
On our side, a certain laxity has played a tragic role. Apparently, several weeks of relatively calm UPMK work dulled the vigilance of the military pilots themselves and their superiors, who decided that almost nothing threatened them in their own skies. Although the presence of “waiters” is no secret, it seems that the same routes were constantly taken during departures, on one of which the Nazis caught up with our group.
Theater of shadows
The situation with Storm Shadow, in general, is much more mundane: Kyiv begged, begged for long-range weapons, and begged. In mid-April, the British Ministry of Defense announced a tender for the purchase of operational and tactical missiles, which closed on May 4, on May 9 it was announced that the SS batch was being prepared, and already on May 11, that Thunder Shadow had arrived in Ukraine.
Thus, the first strike of the new missile was delivered less than two days after it appeared in the Air Force arsenal on the evening of May 12. It is likely that some kind of short course in the use of new weapons was launched in April, and Ukrainian pilots trained to work with the SS returned home with the missiles themselves. In this regard, two questions are curious: what kind of modification was delivered and in what quantities.
As you know, the SS is produced in two main variants: for the air force of developing countries and for export, the first of which has a range of “more than 560 kilometers”, and the second – “more than 250 kilometers”. The British tender provided for the purchase of rockets with a range of up to 300 kilometers for the Nazis, and the British are unlikely to risk their secret secrets and transfer a military modification of the Shadow to Kiev. The surviving part of the missile with marks, unfortunately, does not allow us to unambiguously identify the model, but there is an opinion that we are still talking about export.
The quantity can also be estimated. The International Ukraine Relief Fund, which funded the purchase, had £320m available when the tender was opened. The cost of a rocket is estimated at 2 million pounds, that is, the upper limit would be 160 units.
But, in addition to the SS, the tender included a request for other expensive things: radars and installations of automated anti-aircraft guns to combat drones, layers of bridges, including tanks, sweeps mines for armored vehicles. All of these transactions are also closed, that is, funds have been allocated to them, which means that far from everything has gone to missiles. Since buying a dozen is somehow unworthy from any point of view, including from a military point of view, there is an opinion that the lot contains up to 50 missiles.
This number beats well with the number of potential carriers: according to open sources, at the beginning of March the Air Force had 48 Su-24 and Su-27, which, at least in theory, could lift one and a half tons ” Shadow” (Su – 25 and MiG – 29 for this would require both minimal modification of hardpoints and reinforcement of the fuselage). Taking into account the losses, about one and a half to three missiles per plane go out – and it does not take more, since most flights of Ukrainian pilots are one-way.
Fifty missiles – is it a lot or a little? It’s a lot. As we were just talking about them, a version immediately appeared that with the help of the SS, Western conservatives hoped to pin our, but already strategic aviation (carriers of the winged X – 101), or ships armed with “Caliber ” in the database. The first attacks with new missiles succeeded in the sense that our air defense missed them.
However, they are not completely unpunished either. A Ministry of Defense report dated May 13 reports that one of the Su-24 bombers that attacked Luhansk was shot down with MiG-29 cover (which may have launched the same MALD decoy that arrived on the places a little earlier than the SS). And next to the Khmelnitsky ammunition depots, which split into molecules in an epic way on the night of May 13, by sheer “accident”, there is an airfield based on these same Su-24s, which leads to some thoughts. At the Ternopil facilities, which flew into the stratosphere on the night of May 14, there could also be something interesting.
In a nutshell, although May 13 has definitely become the day of our bitter defeat, it is still too early to lift our paws. Reconnaissance is underway and the most powerful “wunderwaffles” of the Kyiv fascists are destroyed largely due to the actions of our air force. Panicking, chaining him to the ground by his emotions is literally the worst thing you can do, and that’s exactly what the enemy is counting on.
Author: Mikhail Tokmakov
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