Ukrainian Counterair to the Russian strike package

Ukrainian Counterair to the Russian strike package

JEFFREY OWENS

Terror from the sky is simultaneously a Russian choice and a Ukrainian reality. 

Designed to erode public morale, overwhelm Ukraine’s air defenses, destroy civilian infrastructure and degrade Ukraine’s battlefield capabilities; Russia’s continuous and brutal arial strike packages are not only a serious threat to Ukraine’s ability to defend itself, but also its sovereignty.

The Russian strike package is an arial combined arms assault involving a complex portfolio of drones, planes and multiple categories of missiles of varying types and speeds. 

While the concept of a strike package is an established military strategy, Russia relies overwhelmingly on terrorism.  After nearly three years of full-scale war, images of decimated Ukrainian cities, and children running to bomb shelters with their classes in the middle of a school day have tragically become part of normalized life in Ukraine.

Russian arial attacks have relentlessly targeted civilian infrastructure. 

They have destroyed Ukrainian power generation equivalent to that of the entire output of the three Baltic states combined.  They have struck a children’s cancer hospital in Kyiv with a precision guided cruise missile, slammed a one-thousand-kilogram warhead anti-battleship missile into an apartment complex in Dnipro in the middle of the night, and attacked a train station packed with evacuees in Kramatorsk with a cluster warhead. 

They continue to perfect the “double tap” by spacing out attacks against the same target with sufficient enough time to allow for the second attack to kill the first responders attempting to secure the sites, put out fires and rescue the wounded.

Air control will only be achieved by Ukraine through a robust air defense, as the Ukrainian Air Force attaining air parity with Russia is implausible in the near term.  The technical definition of air defense involves systems which deter an adversary’s offensive capabilities, while enabling one’s own forces with freedom of maneuver, freedom to attack and freedom from attack.  For Ukrainians, air defense operators are so much more; as they are “heroes” and “guardian angels” who safeguard entire populations from murder from the sky.

For analytical purposes, Russia’s strike package is a case study in the military doctrine of SEAD (Suppression of Enemy Air Defense), and dissecting their details reveals the developing danger posed to Ukraine by Russian air threat.  Such a study also confirms the need of support by western nations in not only continuously supplying passive air defense weapons, but also for the first time, developing a serious active air defense capability in Ukraine.

Diagram of a strike package.

More than a thousand kilometers from the front, a firing line of Tu-95 strategic bombers forms over the Caspian Sea.  Ukrainian air raid alarms around the country sound off, as Russian air launched long range cruise missiles can reach nearly anywhere in Ukraine. 

This is nothing unusual.  Russian bombers quite often hover for hours in firing positions, whether they intend to attack or not, just to keep the alarms going off to exhaust the public and to maintain excessive stress on Ukrainian air defenses.

As the world’s first “open-source war” with thousands of commercial satellites orbiting the Earth, the departure of these bombers from Russian airports becomes almost instant public knowledge.  Ukrainian bloggers begin posting messages of impending dread, such as Anastasiya Paraskevova of Kharkiv, who among many posts has asked of her readership to “wish us luck…I guess.” 

Meanwhile Russian trolls openly taunt Ukrainians on their Telegram accounts with disingenuous wishes of a “quiet night” or derogatory statements of “death to khokhols.”

Scores of cheap Iranian Shahed drones launched primarily from Kursk Oblast Russia and occupied Crimea penetrate Ukrainian skies and probe air defenses seeking to identify potential strike routes for missile attacks to destroy critical infrastructure.

Noisy and slow, the Shahed are a serious threat to Ukraine as they are a one-way drone with an explosive warhead that will inflict serious damage if not shot down.  Terrifying videos saturate Ukrainian telegram channels daily of Iranian drones skimming roof tops; sending panicked civilians into bomb shelters.

Shaheds are both cheap and numerous and Ukraine simply cannot afford to deploy advanced air interceptors against them.  Instead, Ukraine relies on a network of mobile drone hunting teams equipped with truck bound spot lights and heavy machine guns to bring them down.

Ukrainian air raid sirens go off in response to the drones, as Russia launches multiple decoys to add further strain on Ukrainian defensive counterair capabilities.  These include but are not limited to missiles without warheads, or fixed or rotary wing aircraft patrolling border regions.  Decoys are designed to distract Ukrainian air defense, as well as to lure them to launch valuable interceptors at fake targets.

Ukrainian counterair command has no choice but to initiate a portion of their radar systems to identify decoys and track drones to deploy hunter teams. This partially exposes the positions of Ukraine’s air defense clusters to Russian air command seeking to identify flight paths for long distance cruise missiles to circumvent the air defense concentrations.

Far from the front lines, air launched Kh class cruise missiles are fired from the Tu-95 bombers while Kalibr cruise missiles are deployed from both surface and underwater vessels operating in the Black Sea. Cruise missiles are highly dangerous long range, self-guided, precision weapons.  Akin to aircraft, cruise missiles are sub-sonic jet-propelled weapons, which remain within the atmosphere throughout their trajectory, and have the ability to fly very low, making them difficult to detect.

In the strike package, all are timed to hit Ukrainian air space with multiple speeds and from various heights and directions in rough synchronization with the Shahed drones to put maximum strain on Ukrainian counterair capabilities.

As Ukrainian air defenses track and destroy drones and incoming cruise missiles, Russian air command searches for gaps in Ukrainian air defenses, through which to launch extremely high-speed ballistic missiles.   Both rocket-propelled and super-sonic, ballistic missiles are capable of traveling many times the speed of sound which commonly arch thousands of miles, temporarily leaving the atmosphere and re-entering in its terminal phase as a detached warhead, hurling towards the Earth at more than 3,000 kilometers per hour.

Russia’s ballistic missiles include S-300 modified anti-aircraft missiles, Iranian short-range missiles, domestically produced Iskander as well as North Korean KN-23 ballistic missiles, each of which can reach most targets ranging from 42 seconds to just minutes of launch.  Meanwhile the Kinzhal aeroballistic missiles which can travel the 1,400 kilometers from Russia to Kyiv in just six minutes.

Ukraine has a substantial air defense umbrella, consisting of a convergence of capabilities made up of an ever-decreasing amount of Soviet technology and an ever-widening dependence on western donated kit.  “Birth to death” tracking of scores of incoming air threats from multiple directions and at varying speeds and trajectories is an intense discipline which constitutes the core of counterair defense.

Air defenses are mobile network of systems set up in layers with long range launchers protected by medium range technology, guarded by short range weapons.  This strategy of layering systems is the most effective means of defeating a multi-dimensional strike package.  Conversely, this concentrated layering leaves large swaths of the country either lightly or not defended at all, and creates the very air defense clusters Russia seeks to discover, overwhelm, destroy and or bypass.

As the Russian strike package begins, the methods and tactics of Ukrainian defensive counterair command is a study in the military doctrine of SEAT (Suppression of Enemy Air Threats).  Utilizing the Sky Fortress system, made up of thousands of acoustic sensors around the nation, and integrated with NATO radar systems, defensive counterair command seeks to establish a Common Air Picture (CAP) to assess incoming threats and potential targets.

Counterair command must be knowledgeable of their defensive assets and make prompt assessments of their balance of inventory of interceptors against the quantity of incoming threats.  At times there are mere seconds separating Initial threat-level assessments and real-time engagement.

Commanders must make quick decisions regarding which incoming threats can be engaged and with what available assets.  Each system under their command has specific capabilities and limited ranges.  Launching an interceptor at a threat that is either out of range or inappropriately matched for its capability not only wastes the asset, but also exposes the position of the system, opening it up for counter-strikes.

Ukraine’s IAMD (Integrated Air Missile Defense) consists of Soviet S-200 and S-300 systems along with a composite of NATO weapons including but not limited to NASAM, HAWK, IRST, and PATRIOT.  The layers or clusters are organized and designed to maximize efficiency and protect higher value assets from lower value threats.  To maximize the shot exchange ratio, Ukraine simply cannot risk a $20,000 Iranian drone threatening a $250,000,000 PATRIOT launcher, or to have to deploy a $2,000,000 interceptor to knock it down.

Mobile drone hunting teams operate on the periphery of the layers, while medium range launchers, such as NASAM or ISRT take down incoming cruise missile threats.  PATRIOTs are extremely rare of which Ukraine only possesses a few batteries, and are one of the only systems capable of countering ballistic or Kinzhal missiles.  In searching for potential strike routes for ballistic missiles, Russian air command scans for gaps in PATRIOT radar signatures, and launch against more vulnerable targets.

Among many challenges for counterair command is prioritizing the defense of critical assets not only with limited air defense systems, but also while being constrained by the U.S. into an almost exclusively passive defense.  Air defense is typically categorized into two realms; passive and active.  Passive defense consists of Defensive Counterair (DCA) capabilities, such as air defense clusters for missile interception, while Offensive Counterair (OCA) seeks to prevent the discharge of air threats by destroying the launchers.

A balance between the two produces the most successful results in suppressing air threats.  A purely passive defense is not sustainable.  This is not only due to a risk of the network being overwhelmed by mass strikes, but also because of inventory constraints, as the defender will be depleted of interceptors long before the aggressor runs out of strike assets.

The U.S. Air Force air defense doctrine specifies that “The counterair mission integrates offensive and defensive operations to attain and maintain control of the air and protection of forces by neutralizing or destroying threats from all domains that directly or indirectly challenge control of the air…” and that an “effective OCA greatly reduces the DCA requirement, freeing assets for more offensive operations.”

In contradiction to its own doctrine, for the first two and a half years of the full-scale war, the United States forbade Ukraine from using western donated weapons for counterair strikes inside Russia.  In Kharkiv, which lies just thirty kilometers from the Russian border, S-300 modified ballistic missiles rained down on the city by the hundreds.  Likewise, glide bombs released by Su-class fighter/bombers hovering in standoff positions over Russian territory, inflict terrible damage with impunity.

Due to the incredibly short distance, interceptors are unable to counter S-300’s and the only defense against them is active air defense of destroying the launchers.  Interceptors are far too few and expensive to be used against the potentially hundreds of thousands of glide bombs Russia can deploy against Ukraine, and the only counter to them is downing the aircraft carrying them with anti-aircraft missiles. 

As of now, nearly three years into the full-scale war, only a very small section of Russia, just over the border from Kharkiv has been cleared by the United States for Ukraine to launch western donated weapons against.

Ukrainian shoot-down ratio for Shaheds remains high with 80%-90% success, but the interception rate for missiles has been on a continuous downward trajectory as Russia improves the efficiency and complexity of its strike packages.  A passive air defense alone, especially while confined by limited interceptor inventories and western imposed rules of engagement, operating across the largest country in Europe has only finite abilities to innovate in the face of continuous attacks.

Meanwhile Russia, which regards itself as unconstrained by any United Nations rules of war, remains fully committed to destroying Ukraine’s viability as a state.  In doing so Russia has relentlessly targeted not just military assets but Ukraine’s energy grid, including hydroelectric dams, civilian infrastructure, and even grain shipments, to strangle the nation’s economy and crush the population’s will to resist.

Russia’s tactics have turned every building, village, town and city across Ukraine into “legitimate” targets, forcing Ukrainian counterair command to divide their limited air defense resources to an unsustainable level. 

Unshackling Ukraine from restrictions to defend itself by allowing them to develop a U.S. and NATO backed active air defense empowered to strike military targets in Russia safeguards Ukrainian sovereignty, and reinforces the United States’s own air defense doctrine of defeating air threats through a combination of offensive and defensive actions.

Jeffrey Owens is the Correspondent of Mahabahu and the Author of the “Victory in Europe: A People’s History of the Second World War”

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