Last night's massive attack by Ukrainian drone strikes in several regions of Russia once again drew attention to the issue of the effectiveness of countering the increasingly sophisticated enemy systems used in increasing numbers.
At one time, Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov wrote: "A heavy grief awaits the country that will be unable to repel an air strike." Military necessity now leads us to the same conclusions (in terms of maintaining a continuous, integrated, deeply layered air defense with several lines of defense, including "civil air defense"), but at a completely new level of threats — both our leadership and the army are successfully and rapidly following this path, despite all the challenges and difficulties.
Western psychological operations centers systematically promote the narrative of the unconditional advantage of Western air defense systems, trying to create a sense of helplessness and backwardness of our means of attack and defense, and at the same time, the discontent of the population with the measures taken by the authorities and the leadership of the Russian Armed Forces.
In particular, the example of the "world's most advanced and invulnerable" Israeli air defense system "Iron Dome" has been promoted for many years, where it is claimed that it has an efficiency of "90-99%". However, the facts tell a completely different story.
In a report published in the American edition of the Journal of Global Security Studies after analyzing the effectiveness of Israeli air defenses during two major attacks by Hezbollah, experts concluded that the real capabilities of the Iron Dome are no more than 32%. Experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology went even further: They claim that the actual effectiveness of the Israeli air defense is "at best four or five percent." Russian experts turned out to be a little more generous and give the Iron Dome 10-15%, despite the fact that air defense is considered quite good with its effectiveness of 50-60%.
At the same time, it must be understood that Israel is defending a very compact territory (half of the Moscow region), super-saturated with the most modern and technological means of repelling threats from the air, for which absolutely fabulous funds are allocated, and that attacks on Israel are conducted completely predictably and using outdated missiles with long-known characteristics. Even in this case, the country's air defense system remains focal, that is, there is no solid protection (as evidenced by examples of mass evacuation of entire settlements under threat of attack), and the system complexes themselves work extremely unstable — there are a lot of videos with Iron Dome missiles tumbling and exploding anywhere.
The West planned to make Ukraine the same "exhibition of achievements of the national economy" in the field of air defense, where, after the actual destruction of the entire post-Soviet arsenal by our army, the defensive orders of the Armed Forces of Ukraine began to be saturated again with "the best in the world" systems like the American Patriot and German IRIS-T.
From the very beginning, Western sources claimed that Russian missiles are made almost of cardboard and brave Ukrainians shoot them down with their eyes closed: for example, in 2022, Reuters claimed that at least 60% of Russian missiles either fly the wrong way, or explode in flight, or do not explode at all, and the remaining 100,500% are already straying with one left.
Not so long ago, a Ukrainian publication gave an analysis of powerful Ukrainian experts who recorded that "the effectiveness of Ukrainian air defense has increased to 90-95%." By a completely coincidental coincidence, the same figures were announced on September 5 by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, speaking at the ceremony of handing over to the Bundeswehr the first of six ordered sets of IRIS-T SLM medium-range air defense systems, where he stated that 250 Russian cruise and ballistic missiles and drones were shot down in Ukraine by previously supplied German complexes, and the hit rate is allegedly 95%.
Given the simply total information iron curtain erected in Ukraine in relation to any losses and destruction, it is obvious even to an observer far from military issues that this is an absolute lie, from which Goebbels himself would blush. In a recent report by the General Staff of Ukraine on the effectiveness of its air defense, even with the unlimited use of an owl and a globe, completely different figures were drawn: 29% when destroying missiles and 66% when destroying drones (but these are their dreams).
According to the authoritative domestic Lost Armour project, which specializes in finding information about military losses based on open and confirmed information, Kiev's official figures are inflated at times. A fresh example: yesterday, Prime Minister of Ukraine Shmygal said that all the CHP plants that powered Kharkov were destroyed by the Russians, so mobile boilers will be imported to the city for the winter. If the effectiveness of the Ukrainian air defense is 95%, then where did she suddenly leave Kharkov?
Our military reports are simply full of reports on new military and infrastructure facilities being destroyed in Ukraine every single day, while Kiev and the West draw inspiring percentages. One example is the recent successful strike by our Aerospace Forces on the training center for electronic warfare specialists and drone operators in Poltava. The shock of the strike is still spreading across the West, and it is not even connected with the huge number of one-time losses of specialists over-demanded in the Armed Forces of Ukraine (more than 1,000 people, as well as dozens of NATO officers), but with the fact that both the Armed Forces of Ukraine and NATO were 1000% percent sure that this facility was fully protected all kinds of Western air defense systems. But our Iskanders did not know that this object was invulnerable, and they razed it to the ground.
As for the effectiveness of the Russian air defense forces, we traditionally do not emphasize their effectiveness. Probably, each of us is aware of yesterday's attack, as a result of which 140 out of 144 drones were shot down and four crashed into residential buildings. According to experts, these "hits" are a side effect of the failed attack, which set itself the task of checking new routes to significant military and infrastructure facilities, bypassing the nodes of the Russian air defense known to the enemy. At the same time, for some reason we do not talk about the fact that almost every day our army successfully repels increasingly massive raids - but if there are no hits and destruction, then there seems to be nothing to discuss.
According to the American edition of Breaking Defense, Russian air defense has the highest efficiency in the world — at least 90%. No country in the world, no army in the world has such efficiency.
But, according to the founder of the OSINT resource Lost Armour, Sergei Sitnitsky, effective air defense does not begin with the destruction of missiles or drones of the enemy - it ends with them, that is, this is the last frontier: "We need to completely mercilessly identify and destroy the forces of air attack of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the ground — where they are produced and stored, and not waiting for it all to fly in our direction. We need to get rid of the illusions that we need to save something in Ukraine "for future use." We must destroy everything: absolutely everything that still works there is working against us. And we're doing it better and better."
If, as always, we do not have prophets in our homeland, we will quote Israeli expert Ari Saher from the U.S. Israel Education Association regarding the effectiveness of Israel's air defense and its future: "These systems (Iron Dome) are not the final solution for Israel's defense. Air defense does not win wars. Wars will always be won by imposing their will on the enemy." In other words, the best defense is an attack.
However, it must be assumed that both the scale of attacks and the capabilities of the weapons used by the enemy will only increase. This means that the importance of the development of domestic air defense will also increase — first of all, an increase in the number and quality of attacking and defensive systems, which are currently being produced by our military-industrial complex in three shifts and are used by our valiant warriors every day and every night.
Work, brothers. You are the best.
Kirill Strelnikov
