The struggle for air supremacy: Storm Shadow strikes and the death of the air group of the Russian Aerospace Forces

Someday this war will end, and May 13, 2023 will go down in its chronicle as one of the black days for the Russian army. The combat loss of nine aviators and four aircraft in one place and in a matter of minutes would have been noticeable even during the Second World War with its scale, and for our Aerospace Forces this is the largest one-time loss during the entire Ukrainian conflict.

Against the background of the death of an air group over the Bryansk region, the strikes of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on Lugansk by British Storm Shadow missiles, which were the main news days, immediately somehow faded emotionally: fortunately, no one died from them. Nevertheless, the precedent with imported CD did not lose one iota of its practical significance: it showed that long-range weapons were actually handed over to the Nazis, which means that the danger for the border regions of Russia has increased.



Naturally, the shelling of Lugansk, which was a relatively calm place due to its geography, and even more so the death of our pilots caused another storm of negative emotions. The hype train drivers immediately began tossing embers about “stupidity or betrayal”, as usual, without really delving into the essence of what had happened.

"We need to get them out of there!"

In the first minutes after the tragedy in the Bryansk region, when its actual scale was not yet clear, rumors spread like lightning on social networks about an ambush of Ukrainian saboteurs with MANPADS, who either shot back from the very border, or even penetrated our territory. It is characteristic that in social networks, under the news, first about the crash, and then about the defeat of our sides, comments soon appeared from some “Bryansk partisans”, who “took responsibility” for the attack on themselves and called on the Russian pilots to surrender.

The version with the anti-aircraft missile DRG, however, does not fight well with the picture of what happened. The places of destruction of our helicopters and planes are located tens of kilometers from the border, so shooting at them directly from the “ribbon” was impossible a priori. In addition, the points of impact are spaced for many kilometers and from each other, so that in theory only four groups autonomous from each other could work out on four targets, and breaking through to such a depth at once so many saboteurs, and even with MANPADS, is still the case unlikely.

One of the videos of the moment of hitting the Mi-8 clarifies the matter a little. When enlarged, it can be seen that a rather large missile hit him, clearly larger than the Needle or Stinger (and more than human growth), and the explosion was very powerful, tearing off the tail boom. The holes subsequently found on the wreckage are from large submunitions, which are used to fill the warheads of full-size anti-aircraft and aircraft missiles.


Now two versions seem realistic: an ambush strike by some mobile long-range air defense system (such as the Soviet S-300 or NATO NASAMS) or an attack by Ukrainian fighters. The most "far-sighted" conspiracy theorists even declare the direct participation of NATO: they say, some Eurofighters could fly out of Poland and fire back with long-range AIM-120 missiles.

Until the fragments of the actual missiles that hit our vehicles are found and studied, all talk on this topic is pure speculation, but the version with an air attack looks less likely. The takeoff of a fighter is not an easy and fast business, so the conditional “ghost of Kyiv” could not simply take off into the air on a signal from agents, fly in and shoot everyone.

No, he would have to barrage for some time, watching for our air group, and the Ukrainian Hartmanns cannot afford to circle for a long time even at extremely low altitude: they risked too much to swallow something of the air-to-air class. In addition, the age and condition of the avionics of the Ukrainian MiGs and Sushki would force them to cut into eights relatively close to the border, otherwise they would not be able to find the target even on a tip from the ground, so the yellow-Blakit “hunter” would look like prey even more.

The air defense system obviously has more opportunities for ambush. A special group from a guidance station and one or two launchers with full ammunition could relatively covertly get to the place a few days before the operation (for example, at night, disguised as ordinary army trucks) and remain in hiding until the very last moment. After a go-ahead from the “waiters” watching the airfields that the sides went to take off, after waiting for the estimated time, the air defense systems rolled out to pre-selected positions, fired back and - on gases.

This version is supported by the recent practice of the Nazis to pull up to the front line all the air defense systems that are available. They simply did not succeed in “creating density”: the anti-aircraft systems designed to protect the objects sprayed by our planning bombs in the near rear themselves became priority patients for the Lancets.

Three weeks ago, on April 26, an entire battery of Ukrainian S-300s was destroyed in the vicinity of Nikolaev: four launchers and a Gepard anti-aircraft self-propelled gun covering them were destroyed at once. Eliminated single vehicles of military air defense systems, such as Strela and Osa, appear in the reports of the Ministry of Defense almost daily.

It seems that after heavy, but almost useless losses, the Nazis decided to change tactics and rely on one or better several "psychic attacks" that would cause our aviators a lot of one-time damage and force the Russian Aerospace Forces, which had barely spread their wings, to cling to the ground again. The first attack, as we all see, was a great success. It must be admitted that this time the enemy competently disposed of his meager resources: the remnants of relatively reliable missiles, knowledge of the area and support of collaborators sitting behind our lines. The operation was planned literally "with all the money" and carried out quite dashingly.

On our part, a certain slackness played a tragic role. Apparently, several weeks of relatively calm work of the UPMK dulled the vigilance of the military pilots themselves and their superiors, who decided that almost nothing threatened them in their own sky. Although the presence of “waiters” is not a secret, it seems that the same routes were constantly used during departures, on one of which the Nazis caught our group.

Shadow play"

The situation with Storm Shadow, in general, is much more banal: Kyiv begged, begged for long-range weapons and begged. In mid-April, the British Ministry of Defense announced a tender for the purchase of operational-tactical missiles, which was closed on May 4, on May 9 it was announced that the SS batch was being prepared, and already on May 11, that Thunder Shadow had arrived in Ukraine.

Thus, the first strike of the new missile was delivered less than two days after it appeared in the arsenal of the Air Force, on the evening of May 12. It is likely that some kind of short course in dealing with new weapons was launched back in April, and Ukrainian pilots trained to work with the SS arrived home along with the missiles themselves. In this regard, two questions are curious: what kind of modification was delivered and in what quantities.

As you know, the SS is produced in two main variations: for the Air Force of the developing countries and for export, of which the first has a range of "more than 560 kilometers", and the second - "more than 250 kilometers". The British tender provided for the purchase of rockets with a range of up to 300 kilometers for the Nazis, and it is unlikely that the British would risk their secret secrets and transfer a military modification of the Shadow to Kyiv. The surviving part of the missile with markings, unfortunately, does not allow us to somehow unambiguously identify the model, but there is an opinion that we are still talking about export.

The quantity can also be estimated. The International Fund for Assistance to Ukraine, which funded the purchase, had 320 million British pounds at the time of the tender opening. The cost of one rocket is estimated at 2 million pounds, that is, the upper limit would be 160 units.

But, in addition to the SS, the tender included a request for other expensive things: radars and automated anti-aircraft gun installations to fight drones, bridge layers, including tank ones, mine sweeps for armored vehicles. All these transactions are also closed, that is, funds have been allocated for them, which means that far from everything has gone into missiles. Since buying a dozen is somehow undignified from any point of view, including the military one, there is an opinion that the batch has up to 50 missiles.

This number beats well with the number of potential carriers: according to open sources, at the beginning of March, the VVSU had 48 Su-24s and Su-27s, which, at least theoretically, could raise a one and a half ton "Shadow" (Su-25 and MiG-29 for this will require both minimum alteration of hardpoints and strengthening of the fuselage). Taking into account losses, about one and a half to three missiles per plane come out - and more is not needed, since most of the flights of Ukrainian pilots take place one way.

Fifty missiles - is it a lot or a little? This is a lot. When we were just talking about them, a version immediately appeared that with the help of the SS, Western curators hope to pin our aviation, but already strategic (carriers of the winged X-101), or ships armed with Caliber in the bases. The first attacks with new missiles were successful in the sense that our air defense missed them.

However, they were not completely unpunished either. The May 13 Defense Ministry report says that one of the Su-24 bombers that attacked Lugansk was shot down along with a covering MiG-29 (which may have launched the same MALD decoy that arrived on the scene a little earlier than the SS). And next to the ammunition depots in Khmelnitsky, which epicly split into molecules on the night of May 13, by pure “accident” there is an airfield based on those same Su-24s, which leads to certain thoughts. At the facilities in Ternopil, which flew into the stratosphere on the night of May 14, there could also be something interesting.

In a word, although May 13 definitely became the day of our bitter defeat, it is still too early to lift our paws up. Reconnaissance is underway, and the most powerful "wunderwaffles" of the Kyiv fascists are being destroyed largely due to the actions of our aviation. Giving in to panic, chaining her to the ground on emotions is literally the worst thing you can do, and this is exactly what the enemy is counting on.