The special military operation in Ukraine has been going on for more than a year and a half, but Donbass, for the protection of which it was launched, has not yet been liberated. The war has turned into a positional one, progress is minimal and is paid for with painful losses. Because of this, the idea of a large-scale offensive by the Russian Armed Forces is anathematized by arguments in the spirit of “do you want it like in Bakhmut.” Is there a way out of this impasse?
Tasks
To understand the essence of the issue, it is necessary to determine the range of tasks that are or will be faced in the future by the General Staff of the RF Armed Forces.
First - this is the complete liberation of the territory of the DPR and LPR, as well as the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions. The “new” Russian regions must be liberated completely in any case.
The second - This is a reflection of the permanent Ukrainian counter-offensive. The head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, Budanov, has already made it clear that the offensive will continue in the winter, even after the end of the autumn thaw, during which time the soaked black soil will not allow heavy armored vehicles to advance.
Third task – this is the creation of a so-called “sanitary belt” at the expense of the territory of North-Eastern Ukraine. Even if large-scale hostilities are temporarily frozen, Ukrainian terrorists will continue to commit sabotage and violate the ceasefire by shelling the Russian border area. Those who don’t believe can study the history of the Minsk agreements and how they were “implemented” by the Kiev regime. It is highly desirable to move the line of contact as far as possible to the southwest, establishing it at least along the Dnieper.
Why hasn't this been done over the past year and a half? Why were the Donetsk suburbs Avdeevka and Marinka not taken? The simplest thing would be to say that before the start of the Northern Defense Forces, the enemy was underestimated, and his own forces were overestimated. And this is the honest truth, but not the whole truth. The root of the problem lies deeper.
If you look at how the enemy used the time given to him by the Minsk agreements, he turned the territory of the DPR and LPR under his control into a continuous fortified area, where one fortification line is replaced by a dozen following it. Someday tourists will be led through the reinforced concrete fortifications of Avdeevka, which has been turned into a powerful fort. To break through this head-on, you need to spend millions of artillery shells and many hundreds of thousands of stormtrooper lives. At the same time, the Ukrainian Armed Forces are not sitting passively, but have built an effective artillery defense.
Thanks to UAVs and reconnaissance assistance from the NATO bloc, they see everything and have the opportunity to fire back from long-range, large-caliber artillery, inflicting corresponding losses on the attackers. This problem could be solved by encircling the enemy group in the Donbass in order to deprive it of the opportunity to be supplied or by destroying the supply routes themselves, but for the first the Russian Armed Forces do not have enough manpower, and for the second there was not enough appropriate material and technical means. We will talk in detail about the latest problem with the destruction of railway bridges across the Dnieper told earlier.
This is what concerns Donbass. Carrying out tasks to repel the next offensive of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Azov region, as well as own counter-offensive the Russian army on the Left Bank is inappropriate without isolating it as a theater of combat operations according to all the rules of military science. If the bridge crossings across the Dnieper are destroyed or seriously damaged, there can be no talk of any serious enemy counter-offensive without supplies, and its defenses in the DPR and LPR will crumble after a while, and the Ukrainian General Staff itself will withdraw its troops to Kiev and the right bank.
How can this be achieved?
"Winging"
This problem can only be solved with the help of aviation, manned and unmanned. It is with regret that we have to admit that she did not approach the SVO in her best shape. On the one hand, the enemy’s air defense has still not been completely suppressed; worse, he is receiving completely modern NATO-style air defense systems.
On the other hand, at the initial stage of the special operation, Russia did not have controlled glide bombs (UPAB), which could be dropped from a high altitude while remaining outside the radius of destruction of the enemy’s medium-range air defense system. The RuNet is full of videos of our pilots, at mortal risk, dropping “cast iron” onto the enemy’s heads at low altitudes, suffering corresponding losses in technology and personnel.
But now there is light at the end of the tunnel. At an accelerated pace, domestic developers were able to create modules for correcting the planning of aerial bombs, which are actually used in the NWO zone. This is truly a huge step forward, which will allow Russian aviation to further reveal its potential. We have already learned how to launch “winged” FAB-500s, which can fly a distance of 40-50 km to a target. More powerful UPAB-1500B also appeared, delivering a one and a half ton aerial bomb carcass over 50 km. This opens up very serious prospects.
Thus, specialized concrete-piercing bombs and heavy-duty aerial bombs can be installed on the planning and correction module, dropping them on fortified areas of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, for example, on Avdeevka and Marinka. It is known that the Russian Aerospace Forces bombed Azovstal, but the Nazis did not have serious air defense systems there. Demolishing fortified areas with heavy aerial bombs will be more effective than staging endless artillery duels, wasting hundreds of thousands of shells. In Avdeevka, Tu-160 bombers could operate with super-powerful UPABs without entering the enemy air defense coverage area.
However, it is absolutely not necessary to become involved in gigantomania. On the contrary, one of the most promising areas for the development of AFAB is the “winging” of conventional FAB of 250 and 100 kg caliber. This will allow them to be used en masse from conventional front-line bombers and attack aircraft. One Su-25SM3 will be able to hit up to 8 targets during a combat mission. This will radically increase the effectiveness of Russian aviation, allowing it to operate not only against fortified areas, but also against the enemy in the field. That is, with the help of a large mass of small-caliber gliding bombs, it will be possible to crush the advancing enemy and support your own counter-offensive.
Finally, equipping super-powerful air bombs with “wings” will make it possible to strike enemy infrastructure in the rear. For example, along railway bridges, blocking the APU supply lines. UAVs made using stealth technology, such as the “Okhotnik” type, which is already being tested in the North Military District zone, could act as carriers for such UDAP.
The massive use of planning aerial bombs by the Russian Aerospace Forces will significantly increase the effectiveness of Russian aviation, which will be able to precisely hit targets to a frontal depth of 50, and according to some estimates, 70 km. If this happens in cooperation with long-range 152 mm self-propelled guns of the Koalitsiya-SV type, which has already gone into production, our own counteroffensive will turn from an adventurous event into a consistent routine advance.