Ukraine War, early August 2022, Part 1
Good morning everybody!
After a break of few weeks — for some time off and for my usual work — I’m back to preparing my ‘reviews/summaries’. For the start, let’s check what was going on since back around 20 July this year.
Diplomatic Level
At the top in relations between Kyiv and Moscow, and essentially: nothing changed at all. The Fool in Kremlin is still insisting on a Ukrainian capitulation, nothing less. Indeed, there’s a growing number of rumours about preparation of ‘referendums’ in Kherson and occupied parts of Zaporizhzhya and Donbass — for these to join the Russian Federation. Ukrainians see no reason why should they capitulate, and Zelensky stressed — several times — that in the case of any kind of referendums, there are going to be no negotiations at all any more.
Not much changed in relations between Ukraine and the West. That is: sure, Washington just authorised another arms- and equipment transfer worth US$1 billion, but actually: both the USA and the rest of NATO are still foremost ‘thinking about thinking’ regarding supply of armament to Ukraine. Sorry, dear Ukrainians: you must wait because this is perfectly in sense of — meanwhile — ‘traditional’ way of fighting wars by the West: fighting to profit. Not fighting to win a war. Which means: NATO is busy considering Putin’s reactions, but, and foremost, rearming itself, placing orders for new weapons systems worth hundreds of billions ‘to the left and right’ — because that is securing profits for its own oligarchy (which, of course, is never named that ‘ordinary’ way, but labelled ‘private- and corporate interests’, and usually sold to the public as ‘higher national interests’). Correspondingly, thousands of old tanks and artillery pieces remain stored, and you, Ukrainians, be happy — and don’t forget to be thankful, at every opportunity — for the few dozens of what you get.
At least the arrangement with exports of Ukrainian wheat is working: AFAIK, seven or eight ships have loaded their cargo in Odesa of the last 10 days, at least two others in Chornomorsk. The first was already approaching Lebanon, two days ago; between three and seven others were undergoing Russian ‘inspections’ in Istanbul (read: delays…then, really: ‘arms smuggling’ — from Ukraine to where….?), or about to undergo these. Seems, most of times, ships are underway from Ukrainian ports to Istanbul in convoys of 2–3 vessels. Ukraine is planning to export about 3 million tones of wheat a month for the rest of this year: this has already caused a significant drop in the wheat price. Curiously, not one of ships is underway for countries where the worst famine and biggest resulting problems were expected, like, say, Ethiopia, Somalia…
Air
Meanwhile it’s sure that the Russians have run their stocks of ballistic- and cruise missiles ‘dry’. That is: they’ve had much less than the Keystone Cops in Moscow were claiming, and have spent nearly everything. Is just another illustration for what kind of strategic miscalculation this war is — for the Fool in Kremlin, first and foremost.
Net result: they’re down to using whatever their factories manage to assemble. That’s about 4–8 Kh-101 and about 4–8 3M54 Kalibr cruise missiles — a month (the figure for ballistic missiles like Iskander-M is about the same). Reasons are not only including their price or capacity of factories: it turned out that all such weapons are overdependent on Western electronics for proper function; these are ever harder to get, and Chinese companies are reluctant to deliver out of fear of Western sanctions.
Even when ballistic- and cruise missiles are deployed by the Russians, Ukrainian air defences are meanwhile reasonably well-enough organised and equipped. Example: on 8 August, all four Kalibrs released by the Black Sea Fleet were shot down while passing the Odesa area (one by an interceptor of the Ukrainian Air Force, three by ground-based air defences). Before that, the last Kalibr-strike took place on 24 July (4 missiles, 3 shot down), and 23 July (4 missiles, 2 shot down; the other two hit the port of Odesa on 23 July, killing about 50 Ukrainian servicemen).
The VKS seems to have expended whatever Kh-22Ms it still had in working condition, too: I do not know of any strikes by them for about a month. Kh-59Ms are still a problem, because they are smaller, and frequently deployed against targets closer to the frontline, thus leaving Ukrainians less time to react.
Rather unsurprisingly, the VKS thus reached back on one of its show-weapons: the Kh-47 Kinzhal. One was deployed on 7 August to strike a military facility in Vinnytsia region. This missile is diving on its target at something like 12,000km/h and Ukrainians — just like the Russians and then the entire West — have no means of defence against such, hypersonic weapons. However, as indicated by ‘show weapon’: Kinzhal is neither in production nor really ‘operational’ as such. The entire ‘project’ consists of few Iskander ballistic missiles modified for deployment from MiG-31Ms — foremost for propaganda purposes. This is why only two are known to have been deployed in combat since 24 February. Of course, considering how short they are on weapons enabling them to strike deeper into Ukraine, it’s almost certainly that the Russians are going to do everything in their powers to ready another few rounds.
Meanwhile, the mass of VKS air strikes remain limited to two types of operations. The first is the ‘good old spray and pray’ by Su-25s — as ineffective as ever. From time to time, different experts, even a few involved professionals are attempting to counter in the social media. Here one example from few days ago, where one explained that the accuracy of ‘spray and pray’ is ‘similar to that of the BM-21’. Of course, ‘everything depends on the type of warhead used’…as if navigation is unimportant, Mr. Red Star?….Well, if that is the case, then it’s rather surprising the Russians have managed to capture even two square metres of Ukraine. Sorry, Flying Red Stars: until proven otherwise, cannot but remain on my standpoint and conclude this for useful for just one purpose — which is saving your backsides from becoming another case of ‘200’.
The other type of VKS’ air strikes is SEAD. SEAD stands for ‘suppression of enemy air defences’ — and I’m not the last surprised if most of you haven’t heard a beep about the Russians running a big-style SEAD operation against Ukrainian air defences in the East, the last month. In such operations, the VKS was employing big formations — 20+ aircraft — including Il-20M flying command posts, A-50 SRDLOs (Russian for ‘AWACS’), Su-24MRs electronic reconnaissance aircraft, Su-34s equipped with SAP-14 and other electronic warfare pods, Su-35s armed with Kh-58s, and Su-34s armed with Kh-59Ms. Day by day. As far as I can say, the entire effort ended in a big failure: they hit next to nothing, and Ukrainian air defences along the frontline remain perfectly intact. Not that they are ‘enough’, or ‘shooting down whatever comes their way’, but the VKS still has absolutely no freedom of operation over the frontline. That’s hurting the entire Russian effort in Ukraine badly. Very badly.
This, even more so because, meanwhile, it’s the Russian ground based air defences that are under severe pressure. Often enough: in deep trouble. Through the mid- and late July, we’ve seen the Russians trying to protect their forward headquarters and depots with a combination of such systems like S-300, S-350, S-400, Buk, Tor and Pantsyr SAM-systems. Turned out the Wunderwaffen S-300 and S-400 were largely useless because Ukrainians regularly overpowered them. Every S-300 battalion (or SAM-site in military jargon) has just one 30N6E fire-control/illumination radar and can simultaneously engage only 6 targets. Whenever Ukrainians combined, say, 6 M32A1 rockets from one of their M142 HIMARS launchers with 1–2–3 (or more of) other rockets, it would have a problem with countering all the targets coming its way. The S-400 is slightly better, but is suffering due to very limited stocks of 9M96DM rockets with active radar homing. Indeed, most of S-400 SAM-sites deployed in Ukraine are equipped with semi-active radar homing 48N6DMs only. Using these while facing many targets at once is slowing down the reaction time and thus shortening the effective engagement range. I.e. while — depending on the type of the missile with which they are equipped — the S-300 and S-400 have an advertised range of 70, 125, 300 or even 400km — in reality they rarely can detect incoming targets from more than 30km away, and rarely engage these before the range is down to 20km. Indeed, intercepts are usually taking place at ranges of 12–15km. That’s leaving extremely little time for the system to continue intercepting additional rockets… This is why the S-350 is becoming ever more important: it is primarily equipped with 9M317MA missiles with active radar homing. These are offering the system few additional seconds of intercept time — and in this kind of war, every second counts. However, there are too few S-350s in service… probably because the Putin’s shareholding system pocketed too much for their further development and acquisition.
Another system that works better than expected should be the Buk M3: the SAM-sites operating it usually consist of six firing units and can simultaneously track and engage 36 targets: that’s badly necessary, then the word is that on 25 July one of them found itself facing a total of 28 rockets (the Russians claim that all were M31A1s) — at once. Ironically, nobody would say how many of these were shot down by the site in question…
Now mind: this was the situation already before Ukrainians pressed into service AGM-88 HARM (HARM stands for High-speed Anti-Radar Missile) of US origin, about a week ago. Word is that on a single day, these knocked out three 30N6E radars (i.e. knocked out three S-300 SAM-sites), and a single Pantsyr — apparently, all in the Kherson area.
Theoretically, avoiding an anti-radar missile might appear ‘simple’: after all, these are homing into radar emissions from the radar they’re targeting. Thus, back in the late 1960s and through the 1970s it was ‘simple’: when under attack by anti-radar missiles, turn off your radar, turn your antenna in opposite direction and the missile missed…. In practice, and in the early 21st Century, this is not working any more. Latest AGM-88C and AGM-88D have a GPS-receiver, too, and — if the enemy radar turns off — can memorise its position or strike pre-determined coordinates.
As of right now, it’s unclear how are Ukrainians deploying their AGM-88s: from their sole MiG-29MU2 (AFAIK, the only jet in Ukrainian Air Force equipped with MIL-STD-553 data-bus necessary for compatibility with Western-made weapons) — perhaps with help of the AN/ASQ-213A HTS pod, too? ….or in some sort of ground-launched sub-variant (as offered by Lockheed-Martin, years ago)? The latter would require the installation of a booster to launch the missile and accelerate it to a speed, in order for it to have a meaningful range.
One way or the other, there is no denial that the appearance of an as effective anti-radar missile in Ukrainian arsenal is really ‘big trouble’ for the Russians, because they are facing such weapons in combat for the first time ever, have next to no clue how to do so (because they’ve systematically ignored all the related experiences from warfare of the last 20 years), and now they have to find a solution for how to protect their radars from HARMs.
Not easy to do so and that at the time they have to power them up in order to shot down incoming HIMARS-rounds…
