Russian weapons in a special operation in Ukraine: expert Linin gave a detailed analysis

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“Calibers”, “Iskanders”, “Lancets” – but there is something to work on

The decision on a special operation to protect the republics of Donbass was made, including taking into account the capabilities of the Russian Armed Forces . In other words, if there were no such opportunities, including the latest weapons, then they would hardly have decided on an operation. And these opportunities in recent years, admittedly, have grown significantly. MK asked a military expert what weapons systems Russian troops use.

Photo: Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation

About the new Russian weapons became widely known about seven years ago, with the start of the operation of the Russian Aerospace Forces in Syria. There, for the first time, long-range cruise missiles “Caliber” were lit up. Then the world learned about the “Daggers”, “Zircons” and much more. Weapons were demonstrated in the exercises, making the US and NATO pretty nervous. According to experts, including foreign ones, some samples of Russian weapons are superior to their American counterparts.

The German Der Spiegel wrote a few years ago: “According to experts, the Russian army has probably become stronger than all the EU armies combined. After the reforms, the new capabilities of the Russian army worry even the US military.”

Now Russian weapons are being used to demilitarize Ukraine and turn into trash all the weapons that it received from the US and NATO countries. The special operation to denazify and demilitarize Ukraine has been going on for three weeks. The military department assures: everything is according to plan. Military expert Yevgeny Linin told MK about the strengths and weaknesses of our weapons.

“First of all, I cannot fail to note the effectiveness of our Caliber cruise missiles,” the expert said. – They are practically not knocked down in modern conditions, and unmistakably hit targets. The same can be said about Iskander-M short-range ballistic missiles. During the special operation, none of these missiles was intercepted, and all assigned targets were destroyed.

I would also like to mention the effective Kh-31 and Kh-58 air-to-ground missiles, which were used from our Su-30 tactical fighters and Su-34 front-line bombers.

X-31 is a short-range air-to-ground missile that effectively hits targets using laser illumination or a radio beam.

The X-58 missile was designed to destroy enemy air defense systems, namely radar stations. That is, if the ground-based radar works on radiation, the aircraft's equipment detects it, the missile is sent to that place and automatically hits the target based on a signal that comes from the enemy's radar station.

Both of these missiles are the development of Soviet designers, and have been in service since the 80s of the last century. Of course, they undergo periodic upgrades, but, nevertheless, we cannot say that this is the “last word” of science and technology.

For me, however, it remains not entirely clear why our aviation stopped flying for three days, from February 25 to 28. In fact, that's when we started losing. Because while it was working, both ground targets of the enemy and air defense systems were effectively destroyed.

– Definitely – drones. According to official data, there are 67 companies armed with drones in our Armed Forces. The total number is more than two thousand aircraft for various purposes. This makes Russia the second largest army in the world after Israel in terms of their number. Personally, I have one question: where are they? Why are there few videos using the same Orlan-10 devices?

MK Help: Orlan-10 “- reconnaissance drone. Able to work within a radius of up to 120 km, climb to a height of up to 5 km and stay in the air for up to 14 hours. It is equipped with day and night cameras, target illumination equipment and an electronic warfare system. Orlan is used, as a rule, in threes: one from a height of up to 1.5 km conducts reconnaissance, the second covers the EW complex a little higher, the third from 4-5 km relays the signal to the base

Further. We found ourselves practically without shock drones, which are simply necessary. We have a few units of Orion devices weighing a ton.

In general, the effectiveness of attack drones, that is, those that are capable of not only conducting reconnaissance, but also carrying weapons – bombs and missiles, can be judged by the example of all armed conflicts of recent years. This is Nagorno-Karabakh and Yemen. In general, Karabakh, like a litmus test, showed what an advantage drones have over air defense systems, even such advanced ones as our Pantsir-S1.

And this despite the fact that the cost of drones is disproportionately lower. The drone itself and the weapons it carries are consumables. It's not a $100 million plane. No. This is a small, as a rule, apparatus: an engine, a minimum set of avionics and navigation aids. While the same “Pantsir” is the latest technological equipment, means of intercepting and destroying air targets, as well as a full-fledged crew.

During the special operation, it became obvious that if the drones were not destroyed all at once (and as it turned out, they were not destroyed in full, because downed drones still appear in the daily reports of our military), then it is almost impossible to defend against them.< /p>

On the video on the Web, you can find examples of the use of Ukrainian “Bayraktars” against our air defense systems. Moreover, they hit when our complexes are in a non-working state. Air defense systems, unfortunately, cannot operate continuously, as you can quickly “burn” their resource, and repairs will be required.

– There are objectively very few drones capable of striking ground targets. Of the weapons used, we saw only loitering guided munitions. We did not see a single missile in the case, which should be in the nomenclature of attack drones. Although earlier at the same exhibitions a large number of corresponding weapons were demonstrated.

– See what happens, even if the “Orions” were used, it cannot be said that this is happening en masse. I dare to suggest that all these ammunition that were created for drones are either prototypes so far, or were produced in very limited quantities.

I cannot ignore the issue of using electronic warfare (EW). I personally think that there are problems here too. Electronic warfare equipment cannot operate in all bands at the same time, and the drones used by the Ukrainian side, even the simplest ones, flying anywhere and somehow losing contact with the base, use several frequency bands for their work.

There is no point in even talking about Bayraktars. They have the ability to control even from a satellite. Simply put, electronic warfare equipment is practically unable to interfere with their control systems, and it is unrealistic to intercept them.

We see that Ukraine is in such a deplorable state of affairs that even without any electronic warfare, drones fly away, God knows where. In the same Croatia, in Zagreb, a Ukrainian drone fell, which they apparently dug up somewhere from Soviet warehouses. And electronic warfare has absolutely nothing to do with it. It's just that Ukraine's equipment is already so old, it works on the verge of its capabilities.

It turns out that electronic warfare stations are expensive equipment that requires constant protection and maintenance, which does not fully justify itself. Plus, it is quite energy-intensive, which means that you cannot install it in an open field. It needs to be covered by air defense systems, the same “Shells”, which, as we found out, are also used in a limited number. And what happens? Drones, both reconnaissance and strike, fly freely. And the latter also destroy our air defense systems.

– Observers. In theory, we should have thousands of them there. Their task is to constantly hang in the sky and record all the movements of Ukrainian troops. But that doesn't happen either. Why? Personally, it is difficult for me to answer this question.

We have good Kub-UAV drones. At least we know they apply. This is a loitering ammunition or kamikaze drone, which can stay in the air for up to one hour on average. During this time, he must detect the target and hit it.

Another of our Lancet-1 drones has the same properties. Moreover, about a year ago, the Lancet-3 was tested in Syria, which is also capable of staying in the air for quite a long time and hitting targets at a distance of up to 40 km.

At the same time, they fly on electric motors using batteries, practically silently. They are difficult to shoot down, as they are quite small. For understanding, the Lancet-3 weighs only 12 kilograms.

The tasks of such drones include hitting targets that are located in urban areas. This minimizes the destruction and the number of casualties among the civilian population. A very useful weapon. But how massively they are now used in Ukraine, we do not know.

Ukrainian media published photos of fragments of our fallen drones. For what reason they did not reach the targets, it is difficult to say. Perhaps the Ukrainian electronic warfare equipment worked, or maybe just the batteries were not charged. Now it's impossible to find out for sure.

– No, you don't think that I'm trying to convey to you that everything is bad with us. I just try to be objective, and this absolutely does not mean that our army has nothing to be proud of. It is not for nothing that the whole world, albeit reluctantly, recognizes her as one of the strongest.

Take, for example, our Zircon hypersonic missile, which is used for naval combat. Its range is about five hundred kilometers. It is difficult to say how expedient it is to apply it now, when Ukraine has practically no fleet. But having such a missile in service, we provide ourselves with an absolute advantage in the Black Sea. And I will say more: now the very fact of the presence of such missiles on board our ships serves as a deterrent effect on the use of the fleet by Ukraine's friends from NATO. True, we already understood that these “friends” turned out to be so-so, but nevertheless, at the initial stage of the special operation, there was a possibility that they could appear. And the Zircons just acted as a kind of stop factor from unnecessary interference.

All of our modernized equipment demonstrates its advantage. Let's take our T-90 tanks, they really showed their invulnerability against the same advertised American Javelin anti-tank missiles. There is a video on the Web in which even when the T-90 is under fire, it continues to move. The explosion of ammunition above it, which, in theory, was supposed to burn it from above with a cumulative jet, since the turret is the most unprotected place in the tank, showed that the T-90 can even cope with this. The dynamic protection that was used on them also confirms the effectiveness of our tanks.

Run-in BTR-82 – Russian armored personnel carrier, which is a deep modernization of the BTR-80. It has been adopted by the Russian army since 2013. No matter what anyone says, it is clear that modern weapons are capable of destroying them, but comparing them even with the predecessors of the BTR-72, you see: the difference is colossal. Because the BTR-72 was vulnerable even to small arms fire, such as machine guns.

Tested in the case, and more than once, small arms, Kalashnikov assault rifles. The conditions of the special operation are definitely not hothouse: high humidity, temperature fluctuations with minus values ​​at night, dirt and dustiness. But our “shooter” copes with everything.

I will also praise the Msta-S self-propelled artillery mount. This is perhaps the best artillery system in the world today.

After it became clear that the Ukrainians were actually fighting, and not running away at the sight of the Russian army, after several of our helicopters were shot down, it became clear that it was dangerous to use Mi-17 transport helicopters without escort of attack helicopters. From now on, the losses of our turntables tend to zero. Attack Ka-52s are very well protected. The footage of the Ka-52 moving away from the Stinger missile, firing off heat traps and maneuvering, is proof of this.

I cannot but praise the Soviet designers and developers of the Su-25 attack aircraft. The Russian Ministry of Defense showed video evidence of how, even if the Stinger hit one of the aircraft, it was able to land, saving the life of the crew.

– Tochka-U is a single-stage solid-propellant missile controlled throughout the flight. The problem with its interception is the shortest possible flight time to the target: 136 seconds for a maximum flight range of 120 kilometers.

To detect it (in order to detect the launch and calculate the flight path), the missile defense system must operate continuously, and the anti-missiles must be in constant readiness. To achieve this for marching units is almost impossible. It is also difficult to track the Tochka-U complex before the missile launch, since the launcher is mobile, and the preparation time for launch from the march is only 16 minutes. Therefore, they try to destroy such systems with the first blow at their locations. If it didn’t work out, they scan the area with the help of reconnaissance drones.

As a post-Soviet heritage, Ukraine had about 300 Tochka-U mobile complexes left. In 2014, they shot, according to some estimates, about 20 rockets. They sold part of the missiles to different countries, for example, to Yemen. At the beginning of the special operation, there were 20 launchers and, according to some sources, about 90 missiles.

We were able to destroy those storage sites that were known. But, apparently, based on the fact that launches still occur, this is not all. So they pop up from time to time. But I think that soon the problem with the Ukrainian “points” will be finally resolved.

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