Ukraine Blog 39 – Fighting Russians with HARM and HIMARS and… Hrim?
Dear friends,
family and colleagues,
During last
week, the Ukrainian side baffled me with two main surprises. One of them was
also on the mainstream media, the Saki airbase attack. However, the event that
was even more astonishing, kept under the radar… well, it literally did. And it
did so for good reason.
So let’s
dive into it, what made me fall from my chair? The event that surprised me the
most during the war didn’t came totally unannounced. Already I noticed two
weeks ago that the losses in Russian anti-aircraft batteries increased to
around 135 on the Russian losses chart of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense after
remaining steady at around 110 for about two months.
It was slightly
revealed that almost all of these losses happened in the Kherson region. So the
primary suspect for this was that the Ukrainians in some smart way deployed the
Bayraktars in a more clever way. However, the answer came a couple of days
later. The Russians posted some pictures of debris of what was unmistakably a
AGM-88 High-Speed Anti-Radiation (HARM) missile.
For starters:
this makes any military enthusiast even more enthusiastic. Knowing that Ukraine
for the time being still doesn’t operate Western jets, the only way possible is
that Western and Ukrainian technicians in some way have managed to modify the
HARM missiles in such a way that they can be carried by Ukraine’s Soviet-era MIG-29’s
and SU-27’s. The media missed it, but this is the most important deployment of Western
weapons so far in the war, even more important than HIMARS. The reason is that
the Ukrainians here are doing exactly what Russia should have done in the first
two days of their operations, namely Suppression and Destruction of Enemy Air
Defenses (SEAD and DEAD). The Ukrainians in a couple of weeks have destroyed
dozens of air defense sites in the Kherson region and that leaves little debate
on where the first big counter offensive will take place, but more on that
later. Let’s make no mistake here: this is the first time any of the parties
makes a serious attempt in establishing air superiority. Ukraine can also
expect additional MIG-29 fighters from Slovakia and additional SU-25’s from
Macedonia by the end of the month.
So how
could the Ukrainians have fired the HARM’s? Well, first dive a little bit in
how the HARM works. A HARM is an anti-radiation missile. This type of missile
detects enemy radar activity, tracks it back to the source and locks onto the
target. Earlier anti-radiation missiles could be made ineffective by turning
off the radar. However, the newest version of the HARM, the AGM-88E can keep
locking on the target and its trajectory can even be adjusted via GPS. I think
the Ukrainians got an older version of the HARM, that is able to stay locked on
its target. Any integration of Western air weapons onto Soviet platforms is
very difficult, but managing to do it on Ukraine’s 35+ year old planes is
absolutely a magnificent engineering achievement. The worst thing for the
Russians is that their air defense operators always have to be on guard and can
only operate their radar for a very limited period of time. And this is exactly
what led to surprise number two: the Saki airbase attack.
This attack
on this very important airbase on the Crimea disaster for Russia because of two
different reasons
1. The Ukrainians destroyed in total at
least nine aircraft, but heavily damaged or destroyed at least five more. This amounts
to 8 percent of the total fighter jet inventory of the Russian navy.
2. Even more important was that it was
visible to tens of thousands of Russian seaside tourists, who now for the first
time saw first hand that almost six months into the war, Ukraine is able to
bring the war to territory that has been controlled by Russia for years. The immediate
aftereffect became swiftly visible. A traffic jam of more than one hundred kilometers
was waiting on the Kerch bridge, waiting to get back into the Russian mainland.
That’s at least one hundred thousand Russians that now can spread the word that
not all is well.
I don’t believe
the Russian air defense is that incompetent that they couldn’t do anything
against this attack. However, I do expect that there’s a direct relationship
between the deployment of the HARMS and the Saki airbase attack. I believe the
Ukrainians created a corridor through which the Ukrainian missiles could fly
towards the airbase.
The second surprise
is actually the suspected type of munitions that the Ukrainians deployed to
attack the airbase. First of all, the Ukrainians targeted the airbase in an immensely
clever way.
In the
footage via the link above, the left two impacts are the most interesting. They
hit the Russian munition dumps. The Russians, like their crappy ground force
logistics, also store their aviation bombs and munitions in open air close to
the aircraft as opposed to NATO nations who keep them in airconditioned secure
concrete bunkers. The only thing the Ukrainians had to do, was hitting these
concentrations of munitions. The result is, that all those Russian planes were destroyed
by their own bombs.
But the
Ukrainians need to be clever. There Americans vehemently deny they have
delivered the long range ATACMS missiles for the HIMARS system. What people
forget, is that Ukraine just before the war started, was working on some very
advanced long range missiles, called Hrim
I’m very
confident that this is the missile that struck Saki air base, but if that’s
true, it also means that Ukraine has to be very hesitant and clever when deploying
these missiles. I expect Ukraine to have at most three dozens of them available.
However, their deployment in combination with the HARM’s, makes me confident
that after the Ukrainians have taken Kherson, we will see more of them in
action when air defenses in Zaporizhzhia will be targeted.
Speaking of
Kherson, expect things to change there rapidly. I have the same feeling as before
the Ukrainians lifted the siege of Kyiv and took back Snake island. I think the
battle of Kherson will be a perfect illustration of how you win a modern battle,
by targeting the logistics in a very clever way and not by senseless storming
of trenches. The Ukrainians have struck the Antonovskiy Bridge and Nova
Kakhovka dam bridge in a very clever way. They perforated the road surface with
various barrages of HIMARS, not destroying it, but make it impossible for
vehicles heavier than a van to cross. The Russians can now only bring very
limited supplies to the west bank of the Dnipro river via two pontoon ferries.
This has a
clear purpose: the Russians should be able to get out on foot, but not taking
their equipment. But why do we want Russians to escape? The reason is very simple:
it will save the Ukrainians around two months in heavy urban combat for the
city of Kherson. By giving the Russians the option to get out, there’s no reason
left for them to defend Kherson, where they will starve without logistics in
place. Trust me: things will go fast. How fast? Well, at the moment of writing,
the Ukrainian high comment confirmed rumors from the past days that the Russian
army command is moving out.
After
Kherson has been freed, there’s no need for Ukraine to keep a large army
presence on the West bank of the Dnipro. I expect a war booty of thousands of (much
needed) armored vehicles and trucks. Exactly the type of equipment the
Ukrainians need to completely stop and reverse the last area of Russian
advances, namely around the city of Bakhmut.
Слава
Україні!
Niels
Comments
Post a Comment