Even as the Russian ground advance on key targets including Kyiv and Odessa remains stalled, it has used long-range rockets in recent days to devastating effect against the Ukrainian military and infrastructure.
As the war grinds on, the strikes are a reminder of how Russia’s vastly superior armaments give it a distinct advantage, even as what was meant to be a lightning blitz to take out the Ukrainian government turns into a grueling war of attrition.
In the first week of the war, it is not clear how many Russian strikes hit their targets, but Piotr Lukasiewicz, an analyst at Polityka Insight, a Warsaw-based research institute, said that they did serious damage to Ukraine’s command and control centers.
“They disabled an important headquarters and communications center in the beginning with precision strikes,” he said.
Just as the Russians are plagued by logistical and resupply issues, the Ukrainians are struggling to replace the stationary systems that the Russians have destroyed or disabled.
“Gradually Ukrainians are losing their radars or warning systems,” Mr. Lukasiewicz said.
The Russians also have shown that their weapons can hit with precision. A strike on a barracks in Mykolaiv on Friday that was housing 200 marines, killing dozens, was among the deadliest of the war. It also came with little warning, according to the mayor, Oleksandr Senkevich, with no air alarms sounding. The strike raised questions about Ukrainian tactics and why they would have concentrated so many soldiers in one location on the front lines.
This war showed even if there is asymmetric advantege in certain defensive weapons like atgms manpads etc. long range weapons can still reduce any static element like barracks depots, airfields and similar.
Instead of larger bulky sam systems, mobile-towed medium altitude sams specialized against pgms,long range cruise missiles would be favored more which can be more easily replaced and transferred when taken out unlike S300 variants. Those cant take out hypersonic missiles currently but for bulk numbers of the systems like calibr,tomahawk they can be effective. Limited effectiveness to high altitude threats as well and arm measures like giraffe radars.
Drones also seem to be still launched from makeshift runways. However there are other methods that can be applicable to drones as well.
Smaller drones like TB-2 can be modified to be launched by catapult-rocket assist and recovered by arrestor hook + short-runway
They are pretty slow at landing and arrestor hook would slow it down more so a very short runway would be sufficient in my opinion with an arrestor hook.
Armored vehicle launched bridge/drone-runway can be an option in my opinion. Several vehicles can make a short runways with an arrestor hook.
Armoured vehicle-launched bridge
An armoured vehicle-launched bridge (AVLB) [1] is a combat support vehicle, sometimes regarded as a subtype of military engineering vehicle, designed to assist militaries in rapidly deploying tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles across gap-type obstacles, such as rivers. The AVLB is usually a
M60 AVLB - Wikipedia
A mobile runway for light drones would negate any attack even hypersonic since it is continiously on the move.
Also for example ZEL can be a future alternative for launching adapting drones for non-runway situations.
Zero-length launch - Wikipedia
Why Germany developed and cancelled the F-104 ZELL program
Near future interceptor a2a drones which would obviously be much lighter than fighter aircraft and carry much less and only a2a payload so they can be launched by Zel much easier than cold war era planes from frontlines and land on protected short runways behind the frontlines with arrestor hook then recovered and launch again. Transportation would be an issue but if landing sites numbers are high, or highways are very long to not to be taken at once by cruise missiles they can travel to the next launch site from air and launched from Zel platforms on the ground.
Also initial concept for the interceptor was Mat landing. An inflatable mat that is carried around with vehicles. Manned landing became a problem but unmanned landing would not make much problems.
Last edited:
