Marta Gichko20:11, 05/21/24

To successfully defend against this type of attack, you need to have three levels of air defense: prevent, detect and destroy.

Ukraine continues to sink the Russian fleet. Kyiv is winning the missile-drone war.

Former Royal Navy officer and air defense expert Tom Sharp writes about this in a column for The Telegraph . He noted that the intensity of Ukraine’s attacks on Russian ships, port infrastructure and energy facilities is amazing.

Which ATACMS sink ships?

At the end of last week, there was a complex attack on the port of Novorossiysk, the Tuapse oil refinery and the adjacent oil terminal. The attack was carried out by drones, including naval ones. The Russian defense tried to counteract them, but not in vain.

On Sunday, ATACMS struck a pier in Sevastopol, sinking the minesweeper Kurovets, one of the few Russian warships that did not flee Crimea for the relative safety of Novorossiysk. There are also reports that a Karakurt-class missile corvette was sunk during the same attack. Since it was potentially armed with the long-range and extremely powerful Kalibr missile, this loss would be of great significance to the Russian Federation if confirmed.

Besides losing another ship (or two), this is important on several levels. First, many believed that ATACMS’ accuracy of about 9 meters was insufficient for use against ships. Additionally, the models in Ukrainian hands disperse large quantities of grenade-sized submunitions, negating the need for high precision. But it is unlikely that missiles with submunitions could have caused the ship to sink.

However, such missiles are armor-piercing and can destroy tanks. Hitting a ship with this missile is guaranteed to cause significant damage, and uncontrolled fire caused by submunitions can cause the ship to sink.

“It is quite possible that the Ukrainians actually used a variant of the ATACMS with a larger unitary warhead weighing 213 kg. This could certainly sink the ship,” Sharp writes.

However, if the Ukrainians have a unitary ATACMS combat unit, it seems strange that they did not use some of them to destroy the Kerch Bridge. Now that the Russians have built a railway to transport goods along the “land bridge” north of Azov from Russia to Crimea, the Kerch Bridge is no longer an extremely important logistics supply route. But this is Ukraine’s obvious goal.

Russian air defense in a state of chaos

What is clear is that Russian air defense systems are still in a state of chaos. The previous ATACMS attack destroyed a battery of S-400 anti-aircraft missiles and about 10 aircraft at Belbek airfield. The strike exposed the limitations of the much-touted S-400.

As the expert writes, in order to successfully protect against this type of attack, you need to have three levels: prevent, detect and destroy. The “alert” feature relies on intelligence, satellite surveillance and other inputs to let you know that an attack is imminent. If you are smart and have the right tools at hand, you can hit the enemy before he launches.

Nowadays a lot of effort is spent on “discovery”. As missiles become faster, there is a need to detect them earlier and process information faster. After this, the “destruction” level should work. In world conflicts, the Patriot systems demonstrate the best effectiveness, THAAD (syn Patriot) and the Israeli Arrow and Iron Dome systems have repeatedly confirmed their combat qualities.

“Missile defense is complex, and if one of its layers is missing, abandoned or destroyed, then it becomes ineffective… At least for now, we Westerners have the advantage – and the Ukrainians have shown again and again how Russia lacks this advantage makes her vulnerable,” Sharp writes.

One must be extremely careful in extrapolating Ukraine’s advantage in sea and drone attacks to any sense of optimism about a land war. However, with a third of the Black Sea Fleet now destroyed, another missile carrier possibly sunk, Ukrainian grain exports now largely restored, Russian air defense systems largely inoperative, Ukraine is demonstrating an improved ability to attack Russian critical infrastructure far inside its territory – the expert stated that the picture is not to the delight of Putin.

(C)UNIAN 2024