A discussion unfolded on the Web about the actions of the domestic Aerospace Forces (VKS) to suppress the Ukrainian air defense and why the Ukrainian air defense still retains part of its combat capabilities.
Before proceeding to the presentation of my position, I will allow myself to state a few basic points.
Now there will be a piece of scientific text from the collection "Tactics of the RTV Air Force. Fundamentals of the combat use of forces and means of aerospace attack", developed by the teaching staff of the Military Engineering Institute of the Siberian Federal University. It is very important to read it for a better understanding of the issue. The topic of discussion almost entirely fits into the concept of the main forms of the use of aerospace attack forces in offensive actions. These are:
– air campaign;
– air offensive operation (EIT);
– systematic fighting;
– air space operation (EKO).
At the same time, air campaigns and operations are the main forms of operational and strategic use of large groups of SVKN, and systematic combat operations are the main form of their operational and tactical use. The air campaign is a combination of the first and subsequent air offensive operations, united by a common plan and aimed at achieving the most important military-strategic goals in the Theater of operations.
The duration of an air campaign in the Theater of operations, including air offensive operations and systematic combat operations of air attack forces, can be up to 30 days. For the first time, the air campaign as a form of combat use of the Air Force was defined during the war of the coalition forces against Iraq. An air offensive operation (EIT) is the main form of the use of air attack means (SVN) in a war using only conventional weapons.
An air offensive operation is understood as a set of interrelated and coordinated by purpose, place and time of combat operations conducted at the Theater of operations by tactical forces using only conventional weapons and a limited number of strategic aircraft according to a single plan and plan. The EIT is carried out with the aim of gaining air superiority by destroying enemy aircraft on the ground and in the air, suppressing its air defense system and disorganizing the operation of control, communication and support systems.
The duration of the operation is from three to five days. After the first air offensive operation, the combined NATO Air Forces, as a rule, move on to systematic combat operations, solving particular tasks. One of them is the provision of constant fire impact on the enemy in order to disorganize management and demoralize personnel. The conduct of the second and subsequent air operations is determined by the degree of achievement of the goals of the first EIT and was coordinated with the actions of land and sea groups of troops.
The main method of using aviation and cruise missiles in defeating the enemy and gaining air superiority is the implementation of massive air and missile strikes (MARU) on airfields, centers and points of radar detection, guidance and control, communications. If you want to study the issue in more detail, I advise you to read here.
Everything is according to the rules
And now about the actions of our VKS. During the first three days, we carried out massive strikes on the main and reserve airfields, on radar posts, on Air Force–air defense control points of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, communication nodes – and this fully fits into the strategy of the EIT outlined above.
In the first strike, our VKS destroyed the radar network, violating the unified radar field of Ukraine, thereby creating an information vacuum about the situation in the sky. These strikes decentralized the air defense system of Ukraine, deprived it of the ability to act as a single combat system and adequately respond to threats. At the same time, airstrikes were carried out on airfields. The runway, taxiways, armament depots and fuel were put out of order. Aviation was destroyed in parking lots. There were also strikes on strategic stocks of fuel and lubricants, warehouses of aviation weapons. At least four waves of such impacts can be distinguished. At the same time, massive strikes were inflicted on the scouted positions of the SAM.
How can we evaluate the effectiveness of this stage? Our VKS were able to disorganize the Ukrainian Air Force–air defense, destroy most of the radar and air defense command posts, disable most of the airfields and suppress up to 50% of Ukrainian air defense systems. The Air Force–Air Defense of Ukraine could not resist our actions as a whole, carry out organized air defense of their military and industrial facilities, and from the third day they switched to single sorties of the surviving combat aircraft and ambush actions of their air defense systems.
So far, the actions of the Ukrainian Air Force have been episodic, without having any significant impact on the course of hostilities.
Until mid-March, we were moving towards gaining complete air supremacy. There are three points associated with this term – more precisely, three states. The first is "air superiority", in which the side that has achieved it has the initiative, suppresses the activity of the enemy and, as they say, dictates its own conditions. The enemy only "snaps" and defends himself, retaining certain opportunities to respond to blows and, in turn, also to deliver episodic blows, with great risk to the forces involved in this.
The second is air supremacy in a certain area, when in a certain area where this or that operation is being carried out, superiority is created first, and then air supremacy after the destruction of enemy aircraft operating here, the disabling of airfields and the suppression of ground air defense. The enemy's air defense can maintain separate systems, most often MANPADS, it is possible to preserve the SAM, but deprived of means of controlling the air situation, with the threat of immediate destruction when activated, they can no longer provide any effective counteraction to the work of aviation. We achieved such air supremacy over Mariupol by the end of April.
And there is the concept of complete air supremacy when the enemy's air defense system is completely disorganized and destroyed at all its levels – from the Air Force to the object and military air defense. Individual MANPADS-type systems may remain, but this is no longer a factor affecting the course of hostilities.
An example of air supremacy is the two Iraqi wars, during which the backward air defense of Iraq was completely suppressed and ceased its organized existence. In Afghanistan and Libya, air supremacy was simply a factor – due to the complete absence of air defense equipment from the enemy. But already during the war in Yugoslavia (1999), the united Air Forces were able to achieve only air superiority, but they did not gain air supremacy – until the last day of the war, the Yugoslav air defense retained its strength and combat capabilities, snarled, which forced the Americans and their allies to work from heights of 6000 meters and above.
Ukrainian-American air defense
What is the situation in the sky today? Let me remind you: after the first three days of the operation to actively destroy the air defense infrastructure, we destroyed most of the radar stations, disabled most of the military airfields, destroyed at least half of the Ukrainian aviation on the ground and in the air and defeated the main air defense command posts and the main combat control centers, guidance points and other objects. Accordingly, the hunt for anti-aircraft missile systems began and was constantly conducted. In the first few days, most of the air defense systems were destroyed, at least more than half.
At first, the Ukrainian Armed Forces still tried to cover their military, rear, industrial and political facilities and daily lost anti-aircraft missile systems, lost aircraft, because the predictable appearance of Ukrainian aircraft in the areas of the covered objects, the work of their air defense systems in the conditions of our full control of the air situation made them quite achievable targets. But two months later, the APU changed tactics and moved to a qualitatively different level of confrontation. This was due to the fact that the NATO coalition led by the United States joined the military operation.
Instead of destroyed radar stations, communication centers and command posts of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, their role was assumed by American means of airspace control
– AWACS AWACS aircraft, which are on combat duty in the air around the clock along the border with Ukraine, heavy reconnaissance drones, reconnaissance satellites, radio interception means, with the help of which our air defense system was opened by the Americans, the actions of our aviation, and these data were transmitted to the AFU command posts after processing in real time.
In fact, Ukraine received a stable and powerful air defense information system from the Americans. It was enough for our plane to tear off the front rack, as American AWACS, American drones, American satellites were already transmitting information to US command centers about the take-off of Russian aircraft, from where they immediately appeared on automated systems from the Ukrainians. Today, this unity of NATO information capabilities and Ukrainian command centers is the basis of the combat work of the Ukrainian air defense.
I must say that Ukraine was carefully preparing for war. This training was facilitated by the fact that the Ukrainian air defense was armed with the same complexes of weapons and detection means as the Russian one, had the same algorithms of combat work, the same tactics. The same military school of conducting anti-aircraft warfare. Therefore, the Ukrainian command knew both the strengths and weaknesses of the Russian Aerospace Forces. They were supplemented by US military advisers who had been preparing for a confrontation with our VKS for many years.
As part of preparations for war, the AFU secretly transferred part of its aircraft to the territory of other countries – to Bulgaria, Romania and Poland. In total, up to 100 planes and helicopters were deployed there, ensuring that they were out of the way of strikes.
In addition, Ukraine has conducted an audit of its vast fleet (more than 1000 pieces) of expired and faulty aircraft in storage. During November – February, the most maintainable aircraft were secretly transported to aircraft repair plants in Poland and Bulgaria, where local flight specialists engaged in their repair and restoration with the help of Soviet aircraft repair kits available there, left over from the Warsaw Pact. In total, up to 30 MiG-29 and Su-25 aircraft and the same number of helicopters were restored.
New tactics of Ukraine
Anti-aircraft missile systems of Ukraine, after heavy losses in the first weeks, went into ambush mode. Let me explain right away: ambush actions and guerrilla actions are completely different concepts. Guerrilla actions differ from ambush actions in that during guerrilla actions, SAMs that are in ambushes or simply disguised in positions do not have proactive information about the appearance of the enemy. And the enemy is detected either by visual means, when it is reported by VNOS observers who simply observe the sky with the help of optics, or receive information from radio interception means and even agents that, say, some plane is flying from point A to point B, and in this case the calculations of the SAM are trying to turn on and to catch this target at the moment of approach, after which they immediately fold up and change their dislocation. This is partisanship.
In 1999, in Yugoslavia, at the last stage, when most of the radar stations were disabled, information about the flights of NATO aircraft was received from air surveillance posts and agents, in the role of which the Russian military intelligence deployed there also acted.
In Ukraine, the situation is qualitatively different. Here the SAMs work in ambush mode. As I have already said, the entire American military machine is working for Ukraine, and first of all, a very powerful airspace control system. That is, American air surveillance means track the movements of our aircraft and UAVs, and as soon as these aircraft are over areas where certain Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile systems are on alert, they simply give them target designation: azimuth, altitude, speed, range to the target and almost always the type of target. And then they give the command to turn on at the moment when the target, that is, our aircraft, appears directly in the zone of reaching the air defense system. In the shortest possible time, the radar search is turned on, the target is detected and the missiles are launched, after which the calculation immediately collapses and leaves the area from where the launch was made. It is almost impossible to detect such SAMs before switching on. At the same time, the positions of such "ambushes" are carefully masked and protected by cover units. All this dramatically reduced the ability to detect Ukrainian air defense systems.
There are simply no Ukrainian air defense systems, especially serious ones (such as "Buks" or the same S-300), at a range where our artillery can reach them. The Ukrainian command are not fools to substitute them for our artillery strikes. Since they have full information about our movements in the air, it is absolutely not necessary for them to all be deployed in the Donbass, as someone wrote. On the contrary, they are dispersed across the territory of Ukraine and are located in places where they can intercept our strike aircraft over their strategic facilities. More precisely, on the approaches to them: in the area of bridges, crossings, industrial facilities of the military-industrial complex and other strategically important facilities, which, as they are sure, sooner or later Russia will try to hit. Directly above the battlefield, where our attack aircraft and our helicopters work, military air defense systems and portable anti-aircraft missile systems are used.
The main reason for the protracted struggle with the Ukrainian air defense is that here we are fighting not against the brigades and battalions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, but against the VKS of the most powerful military power – the United States,
which supports the Ukrainian Air Force–air defense with all the resources at its disposal, realizing how important their role is.
The fight against air defense is a complex task
So how do we fight the Ukrainian air defense? Someone wrote that this is the main task of the "special forces" of the GRU and Airborne Forces – the identification and destruction of such targets. Even sniper weapons were mentioned as an effective means of combating these dimensional and weakly protected targets.
Such tasks are really set before the special forces and rifles are really capable of hitting such targets, disabling equipment and even causing the detonation of missiles. But you need to understand that in the conditions of the Ukrainian theater of operations (rare, narrow forest belts, steppes, the density of Ukrainian defense, often disloyal population) such deep (and Ukrainian air defense systems are not exactly located in the zone of reaching our artillery) objects can easily become a one-way road for any most prepared group. Therefore, a successful fight against the SAM for special forces is from the section of random luck. Of course, there are still "Hurricanes" and "Iskanders" to fight the enemy's air defense, but accurate targeting is also necessary for their use.
The fight against the Ukrainian, or rather with the integrated Ukrainian-American air defense, is a complex task that can only be solved by a whole set of tools:
aerial reconnaissance from electronic warfare and UAV aircraft, satellite reconnaissance, intelligence (including from the local residents), multiplied by very painstaking analytical work. For example, according to the analysis of statistics of launches of Ukrainian missiles, when we roughly know that, for example, two Buk-M1 or S-300 are operating in the Raisin area, and then we try to track them down and destroy them. And, of course, the highest professionalism of our pilots, rocket scientists, special forces and gunners.
The combat algorithm from detecting the Ukrainian air defense system to striking it should take a few minutes, and not turn into a multi-stage information transmission system for all floors of combat control. This requires the work of an automated control system integrated with the means of reconnaissance and destruction with high-precision ammunition. Only by outpacing and anticipating the enemy, we will be able to defeat him. To chase and just react to his attacks means to give him the initiative.
And the last. Of course, this has already been written and said, I will only repeat. We have a relatively compact VKS, and our combat aircraft, which can be used as front-line aviation, are stretched along the front of 1500 km. Unfortunately, they simply cannot physically become today the defining element of the suppression of the enemy that we would like. Now this role is unconditionally performed by our artillery and missile troops.
The fight against air defense is constantly being conducted, but we must understand that we are dealing with an enemy who is aware of our tactics, because he is fighting with the same weapons, studied according to the same textbooks, understands our vulnerabilities and our advantages. But most importantly, it relies on the huge information and technical support of our opponents in the face of the United States, Britain and others.
We are fighting the Ukrainian air defense, hunting for SAMs, planes, UAVs. This is a difficult task and, talking about it, we cannot simplify and profane the challenges we face. The CBO is a harsh exam, and we must find accurate answers to all questions. Only in this way we can defeat the enemy. And this is not a clown in Kiev.
Vladislav Shurygin
