Jun 22 2023, 01:35 PM
In one of the campaign’s early battles near Orikhiv, in Zaporizhzhia province, a Ukrainian infantry company drove into a minefield and reportedly came under fire from Alligators, losing several US-supplied Bradley infantry fighting vehicles and a German-built Leopard 2 tank.
It was unclear how many vehicles were destroyed or later recovered. Nor has Kyiv shed light on to how many Ukrainian soldiers were killed. But images of that battle, shared by Russian media and pro-war bloggers, spoke powerfully of the obstacles Ukraine’s forces will have to overcome.
Ukrainian troops and western analysts and officials have long highlighted the role of aviation, including Russian fighter jets and attack helicopters in picking off Ukrainian armour, and the lack of air defences at the frontline to deter them.
“I personally saw how, during our assault, the enemy [fighter jet] aircraft immediately fired on our advancing troops using laser guided bombs from a far distance,” said Stas, a soldier with an elite drone surveillance unit helping infantry regain lost territory in the south of the country. It was not an isolated incident, he said.
Russia’s use of helicopters to attack armour was a “very powerful technique” to which Ukraine had no parity, said Stas, pleading for the west to provide Ukraine with US Apache attack choppers, in addition to F-16 fighter jets.
Earlier this month, Russia deployed an additional 20 helicopters including Alligators to an airfield near Berdyansk, 100km from Orikhiv, which has become a leading base for rotary wing operations.
“In the constant contest between aviation measures and countermeasures, it is likely that Russia has gained a temporary advantage in southern Ukraine, especially with attack helicopters employing longer-range missiles against ground targets,” Britain’s defence intelligence tweeted over the weekend.
Russian fighter jets and helicopters are now exploiting deficiencies in Ukraine’s air defences at the frontline. Kyiv operates different Soviet-era surface-to-air missile systems, but has too few to provide full cover, leaving it partly reliant on very short-range shoulder-launched missiles (Manpads) which require the operator to see the target before shooting.
“Manpads are not very effective at night,” said a Ukrainian air force pilot. “We need systems with detection and guidance — radar or optical-electronic systems,” the pilot added.
Justin Bronk, senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think-tank, said Russian helicopters fitted with anti-tank guided missiles “were always going to be a much greater threat to Ukrainian forces during a counteroffensive than during periods when Ukraine was defending against Russian attacks”.
“They can hover, spot for targets and fire anti-tank guided missiles from beyond the range of shoulder-fired Manpads or anti-aircraft fire,” Bronk said.
This leaves Ukrainian forces having to constantly balance the risk of deploying their scarce surface-to-air missile systems closer to the front lines against the cost of leaving their armoured vehicles exposed to Russian gunfire.
As Russian missile strikes against multiple Ukrainian cities have intensified since early May, Ukraine’s armed forces had to keep their surface-to-air missile systems in place to protect the civilian population rather than moving them to the frontline. The losses in the opening battles of the counteroffensive to Ukrainian forces has set off a rush by western allies to supply additional air defence systems and ammunition to Kyiv.
Britain last week said that together with the US, Denmark and the Netherlands it was purchasing “hundreds of short and medium range air defence systems”, largely Soviet era, to be delivered in the coming weeks.
On Monday, Emmanuel Macron, president of France, announced Franco-Italian SAMP-T systems pledged earlier were now “operational” in Ukraine.
“The most important problem for Ukraine is that we need to do two air defence tasks simultaneously — to protect major urban areas and industry . . . and the frontline,” said Mykola Bielieskov, a research fellow at the Kyiv-based National Institute for Strategic Studies. “It’s a challenge as we have a shortage of land-based [air defences].”
Bielieskov cautioned that those systems could themselves become targets to Russian Lancet kamikaze drones.
Stas, the drone operator, said Ukraine needed F-16s and US helicopters to protect ground forces.
“Offensive actions require air cover and the most important thing now is the offensive, because if we do not swiftly win this war, if we do not take back all of our territory, it will drag on and on,” he said.
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