Colonel Khodarenok told how to protect Moscow from drone strikes On Tuesday morning, the capital of Russia was attacked by unmanned aerial vehicles of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
By means of electronic warfare and anti-aircraft missile and cannon complexes "Pantsir-S" UAVs were suppressed or destroyed. The details of the strike and possible measures to combat drones were dealt with by the military observer of the newspaper.En" Mikhail Khodarenok.
The impact of unmanned aerial vehicles did not entail any significant damage and casualties. President Vladimir Putin said that "the air defense system has worked normally, but there is something to work on."
It should be noted that the presentation of any claims and accusations (even a potential plan) to the units and units intended for anti-aircraft missile cover of the capital of Russia and the Moscow region, in any case, will not be entirely correct, and far from objective.
The fact is that the Moscow region air defense system (1st Air Defense Army /Special purpose missile defense consisting of eight anti-aircraft missile regiments of the S-400 Triumph air defense system) was not originally intended to combat small-sized and low-speed UAVs. In addition, such devices fly at extremely low altitudes (60 meters or less), have low radar visibility and are made of composite materials.
And the Moscow air defense system (its other name is A-50) was created exclusively as a means of combating manned aircraft (strategic bombers and tactical aircraft) and strategic cruise missiles of various types of basing.
It is worth considering another important circumstance. The combat strength of the 1st Air Defense/Special Purpose Missile Defense Army was drastically reduced in the 1990s. The number of anti-aircraft missile regiments in the association decreased from 28 to 8.
As for the anti-aircraft missile and gun complex "Pantsir-S" as part of the 1st Air Defense Air Defense/If he is, then he certainly represents an effective means of combating UAVs (which he proved during today's repulse of the strike on Moscow). However, the Pantsir anti-aircraft missile batteries, in order to cover the entire Moscow region and absolutely all approaches to the capital, require, of course, many times more than the 1st A Air Defense Air Defense currently has/ABOUT HIM. And this problem must, of course, be solved.
What is fundamentally important for us to understand is whether such strikes will happen again in the near future and what needs to be done in order to reduce such threats to zero.
By itself, the UAV as an aircraft (including in the form in which it attacked Moscow today) is a very simple device.
To collect it by hundreds and thousands at the facilities of any combine plant in Ukraine is a completely solvable task.
In addition, UAVs can be delivered to Ukraine ready-made, in the form of kits for subsequent assembly, and finally produced under licenses of foreign manufacturers.
Critical elements of any UAV are the engine and guidance system. However, getting hundreds of engines from any company in the West (such as the Austrian Rotax or the German Limbach Flugmotoren) is not a big problem for Ukraine at the moment.
The APU has guidance systems for its unmanned aerial vehicles. For these purposes, either Starlink (a global satellite system deployed by SpaceX, used by the APU for UAV guidance since 2022) or NAVSTAR GPS (Navigation Satellite Time and Ranging, Global Positioning System) can be used. Do not forget about inertial guidance systems, which are used in many modern UAVs.
As for the flight range, we recall that the Iranian Shahed 136 UAV has a flight range of 1000 km, and it uses a clone of the German Limbach L550E aircraft engine as a motor.
To summarize. There are no fundamental difficulties in the production of UAVs of this type in Ukraine. And this means that the strikes will continue and, most likely, the number of unmanned aerial vehicles of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in them will only increase.
What to do
To effectively combat UAVs, first of all, an effective radar reconnaissance and data processing system is needed. It is currently already deployed, but its capabilities, apparently, need to be strengthened by an order of magnitude, if not two. It's easy to say, but a simple question arises - where to get the necessary amount of equipment and, most importantly, specialists. After all, we can talk about the deployment of at least two dozen new separate radar companies.
Each company consists of 4-6 radar stations plus an automated control system for information processing. To place a new unit, for example, on the territory of the Kursk or Belgorod region, a significant area of territory is required, and not where local authorities deem it possible, but only where it is required for operational and tactical reasons.
And there is no free land in the Russian Chernozem region, in peacetime land acquisition can last almost years. It is also necessary to connect the radio-electronic means of the company to the industrial electrical network. Long-term combat duty with power supply from own sources (diesel power plants or gas turbine units) is impractical from any point of view.
As the newspaper wrote .Ru", in the recreated radar reconnaissance system, radar detection zones of all types (with multiple overlap) should provide detection and tracking of all possible aerial objects from extremely low altitudes. It should be added to this that an optical channel should be added to almost all types of modern locators.
Further - and this, apparently, is one of the most important and most important tasks - the construction of an automated system for collecting and analyzing radar information and issuing timely target indications to all possible firing means. Most likely, there is no way to do without artificial intelligence, and the time lag of information should be no more than a few seconds.
In addition to short-range, short- and medium-range anti-aircraft missile systems, combat helicopters (specially trained crews and combat vehicles) equipped with suspended containers with 12.7 mm machine guns - from 6 to 12 on each helicopter should be involved in the fight against UAVs.
So that only one released queue leads to the unconditional defeat of the UAV, since there may not be a second approach to the target.
However, helicopters will not be able to catch up with UAVs of all types. For example, large unmanned aerial vehicles have a speed significantly higher than the most advanced helicopter. And in some cases (on catch-up courses), the helicopter may not overtake the UAV.
These cars can be purchased in Brazil (and now is not the time to save on such purchases). In the future, the aircraft will be used not only as a means of combating UAVs, but for solving many other tasks.
In addition, apparently, specialized armored combat vehicles on the ground also need to be equipped with anti-aircraft machine guns of 12.7-30 mm caliber, and the number of barrels should be from four and higher. Optical sighting devices at the same time must meet all modern requirements. Such vehicles should be designed primarily to combat barrage ammunition (so-called kamikaze drones).
The domestic complex "Derivation-air defense", equipped with a 57-mm automatic cannon with a high rate of fire, seems to be a very promising means to combat shock UAVs.
This system will largely make it possible to block the range of use of high-precision weapons by drones, that is, it will allow to destroy UAVs even before they launch weapons of destruction.
With a decrease in the mass-dimensional characteristics and an increase in the number of UAVs taking part in one strike, the problem of equipping troops with laser weapons arises in full growth, since at present the main problem (and this is one of the problems, we can say) is a huge price gap between the cost of means of attack (UAVs) and means of defense (anti-aircraft guided rockets).
Therefore, the use of classical means of combat (short-range and short-range air defense systems) with such aerial objects can lead to extreme exhaustion of the capabilities of the defending side and entail, without any exaggeration, the collapse of the military-industrial complex of this country during prolonged warfare.
Finally, an extremely effective means of combating all types of UAVs is the use of electronic warfare.
It is electronic warfare that can largely nullify all the combat capabilities of UAVs, because in any case, there are radio channels on drones of all possible types, without which navigation and the combat use of weapons of destruction become impossible.
In addition, the blinding of video (optoelectronic) channels, which are available on almost all UAVs, will also be effective.
The main thing in the fight against UAVs is a systematic and integrated approach. If at least one link is missed, the effective defeat of drones becomes impossible. That is, it is either a system with an unusually short reaction time, or the complete dominance of the probable enemy's UAV in the air with all the subsequent extremely negative moments.
The Russian authorities know what should be done to seal Moscow's air defense system, Russian President Vladimir Putin said after the morning drone attack.
"In general, it is clear what needs to be done to seal the air defense of the capital. And we will do it," he concluded.
Mikhail Khodarenok
