Ukraine Hits The Planes That Haul Russia's Missiles

Ukrainian drones are targeting the cargo planes that make Russia's own air raids on Ukrainian cities possible

A Russian air force An-26. Via Wikimedia Commons

The Antonov An-26 is a twin-turboprop transport plane with a 26-ton maximum takeoff weight. The Russian air force has around 100 of them, and uses them to haul supplies, drop paratroopers and even—in a rare secondary role—inaccurately lob unguided bombs.

But in the current wider war on Ukraine, the five-crew An-26s are busy on a vital mission for Russia. They haul cruise missiles and long-range attack drones from their factories to the front-line bases that launch the drones … or the warplanes that then launch the cruise missiles.

And that’s why it was such a big deal when, on Sept. 21, attack drones from Ukraine’s Prymary unit blew up two of the An-26s parked at Kacha airfield in Russian-occupied Crimea, 215 km from the southern front line.

The attacks on Kacha didn’t end on that day. Ukrainian forces hit the airfield repeatedly over several days, systematically degrading this key logistics hub. Ukraine is trying to disrupt Russia’s own air raids—by attacking the people, equipment, and bases supporting those raids.

The destruction of the two An-26s is the latest in a drumbeat of successful strikes by Prymary using fixed-wing first-person-view drones ranging hundreds of kilometers, presumably connected to their distant operators via Starlink or some other satellite communications system.

Starlink works just fine over Crimea but doesn’t work over Russia proper, lending units such as Prymary the ability to employ highly maneuverable FPV strike drones rather than less accurate models that may rely on, say, some unjammable internal inertial navigation system.

Read the rest at Euromaidan Press.