Russian Air Defenses Are Working Better

That’s bad news for Ukraine’s drone campaign

Russian S-300 launchers. Via Wikimedia Commons

• Russian air defenses were pretty shoddy early in the wider war

• They’ve improved since then, one think tank concluded

• Concentrating radars, missiles and guns around certain key targets, the Russians can shoot down the cast majority of Ukraine’s deep-strike drones

• Russia can’t defend everywhere, but it can prioritize its defense in order to blunt the impact of Ukrainian drone raids—and preserve the Russian economy

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Russian air defenses struggled early in Russia’s wider war on Ukraine. Nearly four years later, Russia’s air-defenders have adopted better tactics and newer equipment—and have now become a major obstacle for Ukraine’s deep-strike campaign.

That’s one main takeaway from a new report from the Royal United Services Institute in London. “Russia produces some of the most formidable air defense systems in the world and fields them in large numbers,” analyst Jack Watling and the rest of the RUSI team wrote.

“These pose a threat to NATO air forces and to conventional deterrence in Europe,” the RUSI team added. “They also intercept most Ukrainian munitions targeting Russia’s infrastructure and industry and therefore contribute to securing the revenue generation that underpins Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.”

Russia’s thousands of fixed surface-to-air missile batteries and mobile guns and launchers weren’t always so fearsome. When Russian regiments rolled deeper into Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, Russian commanders feared their overeager, inexperienced air defenders would shoot down Russian planes, drones and missiles.

“In the first few days of the war, Russian air defenders were under orders to treat all aircraft and other aerial vehicles as friendly,” the RUSI analysts wrote. “The result was embarrassing, as Ukrainian UAVs and aircraft struck Russian columns. Russian air defenses quickly transitioned to protecting key nodes, and losses of Ukrainian aircraft increased immediately.”

The threat endures, even as the Russian armed forces have lost hundreds of air defense radars, launchers, and vehicles. Steady losses to Russian missiles have badly depleted Ukrainian air force brigades—in particular, the units flying irreplaceable Sukhoi Su-27 interceptors.

The Russians have been less successful countering Ukraine’s one-way strike drones, which routinely target oil refineries, factories, and other strategic facilities as deep as 1,600 km inside Russia. But the same geographic factors that complicate Russian air defense efforts in Russia also limit the impact of Ukrainian drone strikes.

“Russia has continued to take hits around oil refineries, military-industrial sites, and logistics hubs as Ukraine has scaled the production of a wide range of long-range strike systems,” the RUSI team explained. “The regular images of fires in Russia have caused a perception that Russian air defenses are failing to protect the territory.”

“The reality is more complex,” the analysts stressed. “There are a lot of targets in Russia, and they are geographically dispersed, meaning that they cannot all be defended. Ukraine has, over time, become quite adept at attacking targets that lack air defense and has prioritized targets where flammable or sensitive materials will allow small numbers of munitions with limited payloads to cause cascading damage to a facility.”

But there are many other, better-defended targets.

Read the rest at Euromaidan Press.