Russia Dive-Bombing With Shaheds From on Excessive to Keep away from Small Arms Fireplace

Russia’s rising reliance on mass assaults with Iranian Shaheds has given solution to a brand new tactic, the place Moscow sends the exploding drones hurtling down from excessive altitudes.

“The present Russian tactic boils all the way down to always altering UAV routes and making an attempt to launch them at excessive altitudes — over 2 kilometers above the bottom,” Yurii Ihnat, the lead spokesperson for Ukraine’s air power, advised native media outlet RBC Ukraine in an article revealed on Tuesday.

“Then they dive straight down on the goal,” Ihnat added.

Whereas Ihnat did not particularly identify the Shahed, the Iranian-designed munition has been Russia’s essential drone for bombarding Ukrainian cities from afar.

The spokesperson mentioned high-altitude maneuvers imply the drones are extra simply detected on radars however fly out of vary of small arms hearth.

That is an issue for a part of Ukraine’s air defenses, which deploy cellular hearth teams with vehicle-mounted heavy machine weapons to shoot down Shaheds as they method.

Ukrainian items now say the one-way drones are flying greater and sooner, making them far more durable to hit. Some reported modifications to the Shahed have elevated its recognized high pace from 115 to 180 miles per hour.

Because of this, one cellular hearth group workforce chief advised Enterprise Insider’s Jake Epstein final week, Ukrainians should begin relying extra on shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles, also referred to as MANPADS.

It is all a part of Russia’s technique to make use of Shaheds to exhaust Ukraine’s air defenses, together with Ukrainian digital warfare and surface-to-air missiles.

Launches of the Shahed have risen sharply over the past 12 months, with Russia typically sending tons of at a goal in a single evening to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses. They’re mixed with waves of long-range missile strikes, making the evening assaults even deadlier and tougher to mitigate.

A number of the launched Shaheds are cheaper variations with out warheads that function decoys. Ihnat estimated to RBC Ukraine that for each 100 drones despatched to Ukraine, about 40 are often decoys.

Shaheds are slower and sometimes much less highly effective than cruise or ballistic missiles, however they price much less, at about $20,000 to $50,000 per drone. Even lower-end air protection missiles, just like the medium-range interceptor fired from the Soviet Buk-M1, can price about $300,000 every.

The US-made Patriot missile system, of which Ukraine is believed to have about six to eight, fires interceptors that may price as much as $4 million every.

That price disparity has fueled Moscow’s push to construct Shaheds domestically and ship them in waves, typically at civilian infrastructure.

Analysts from the Middle for Strategic & Worldwide Research reported that the variety of Shahed launches rose from a mean of 130 every week in September to 1,100 weekly launches this spring.

In the meantime, Ukrainian intelligence mentioned in February that Russia has begun growing a brand new model of the Shahed that may fly at speeds of as much as 372 miles per hour and has a variety of 1,550 miles.

The Ukrainian and Russian protection ministries didn’t reply to requests for remark despatched exterior common enterprise hours by BI.