U.S.-Supplied Air Defenses Fail In Ukraine

U.S.-Supplied Air Defenses Fail In Ukraine

Moon of Alabama

On May 23 the former Commander in Chief of the Ukrainian army had a pessimistic assessment of the war in Ukraine (machine translation):

Former commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and now Ambassador to the UK Valery Zaluzhny said that Russia has overtaken Ukraine in innovations on the battlefield.

…
According to him, Ukraine at the moment “does not manage to continuously generate and scale innovations, even in those areas where yesterday we were ahead of the enemy.””The enemy has already overtaken us and we are lagging behind – and we must be honest about this,” he said

Zaluzhny was likely not only referring to the drone war which Russia is winning but also to the mediocre state of Ukraine’s air defenses.

A day after Zaluzhny, the spokesman of the Air Force of Ukraine confirmed his take (machine translation):

Russia has improved its ballistic missiles, so Patriot systems have become worse at shooting them down. This was stated by the head of the Communications Department of the Air Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Yuriy Ignat, commenting on today’s night shelling of Kiev.Iskander-M missiles, which attack along a ballistic trajectory, have been significantly improved and upgraded

“We are talking about shooting radar traps, which each missile can shoot during the approach to the target. Another is the flight of a ballistic missile along a quasi-ballistic trajectory, when the missile does not fly in a straight line, but already performs maneuvers, ” he said on the telethon.

The new Iskander versions use decoys to confuse the air defense radars. They also maneuver during the last phase of their flight making their interception nearly impossible.

Reporting on the large scale Saturday night attack on Ukraine the Washington Post noted that the U.S. provided Patriot air defenses systems in Ukraine had failed(archived):

More...