For several months now, Ukraine has been under Russian drone attack every night. The Air Defence Forces manage to destroy 80 % of UAVs, but Russia will increase the number of air attacks to pressure on Ukraine's energy system.
Source: "Telegraf".
In 2023, Russia increased Iranian UAVs for strikes on Ukraine in six times. According to the Ukrainian Air Force Command, in the first two months of autumn, Russia launched 865 Shahed-136 type drones, most of them were shot down by Ukrainian Air Defence, but 151 drones still reached the target.
According to military analyst Dmitry Snegirev, the enemy has changed its terror tactics to save money. One drone costs 30-40 thousand dollars, while a cruise missile would cost 6-7 million. Thus, even the most massive UAV strike on Ukrainian territory (500 drones in September 2023) cost Russia's budget a maximum of $15 million, which is equal to the cost of two cruise missiles.
"A cruise missile carries a warhead of 300-500kg, while a drone only 25kg. However, even that was enough to cause us damage. Now Russians have modified the drones, almost doubling the weight of the warhead to 40kg. They use composite materials to reduce the level of detection by radars, and cover drones with black paint, making them impossible to be detected," the expert said.
According to him, it was mobile groups that used to shoot down the main part of the drones. Now the effectiveness of the Shaheds has become even higher, so the occupants have decided to terrorise the civilian population and Ukraine's energy system by launching about a hundred UAVs at once to overload our Air Defence System. The drone launching method has also changed. Now they enter our airspace in two "swarms" from different directions, meet in one place and strike in mass. Considering that the damage rate of drones is about 80 %, if 200 drones attack at once, 40 of them will still reach their targets.
But AFU Air Force has not been sitting and waiting either. Compared to last year, we have more opportunities to defend ourselves. German Gepard SAM has repeatedly demonstrated good work. At the same time there's not that many systems that is needed."Gepards" were previously decommissioned by the Bundeswehr and modernised before being sent to Ukraine.
"Why in the second year of the war the national MIC can't launch serial production of a copy or analogue of this to AFU? Why do we still have mobile groups equipped with machine guns doing this? Meanwhile, the energy terror has already started. Russians are probing our Air Defence system, launching 20 drones a day instead of 100. Their goal at this stage is still to destroy our power system and demonstrate that there are no safe places in Ukraine to demoralise the population. That is why recently strikes have been launched across the entire territory of our country," Snegirev said.
According to the Speaker of the AFU Air Force, Yuriy Ignat, compared to last year, Ukraine has more Western weapons to repel air attacks. Until 11 September 2022 we had only Soviet equipment (S-125, "Osa", "Shilka", ZU-23-2).
Later we were provided with Stinger MANPADS, Polish Piorun, French Mistral and British Starstreak, but all of them have a short operating range, both in terms of height and distance. Enemy missiles and drones have been destroyed mainly by missiles from Buk-M and S-300 systems.
"If the US provide 60 Gepard units for us, it will significantly strengthen our defence against Russian drones. We will be able to shoot them down without wasting anti-aircraft missiles. Another thing is that the range of these systems is up to 5 kilometres. Ukraine is 603 thousand square kilometres. The length of the front line is 2.5 thousand kilometres. Today, there is no such number of air defence systems in the whole world, because no one was ready for such challenges," Ignat said.
