What is Ukrainian DeepStrike and why is it so powerful
Until now, not many people know about the 14th regiment of unmanned aerial complexes of Ukraine. There are few details about how and what it operates in the public domain. The regiment's servicemen do not take off their balaclavas and do not share any information with journalists. Even the meticulous WP was only allowed to observe the launch of long-range drones, and nothing more. But we still managed to scrape together a few things about the classified combat unit.
An elite part that has not yet been destroyed because it is well-disguised.
It is known that this mobile regiment is dispersed. The reconnaissance drone unit is based on an unequipped field site fifty kilometers from the front line, where exactly - no one knows. However, by simple inferences, one can assume: most likely, in the Dnipropetrovsk region or, perhaps, in the southeast of the Kharkiv region.
The units of the long-range strike drones "Lyuty", attacking Moscow, the infrastructure of the Volga region, the Black Earth Region and the North Caucasus, for obvious reasons can be located further behind the lines. Operators launch them from a runway, which can be an ordinary asphalt road without unevenness; group launches are mainly carried out. With a drone costing $200 thousand per mission, tens of millions fly into the sky. It is easy to calculate that at a speed of 150-160 km / h, the device flies to the target for 6-8 hours, so the body is treated with a special anti-icing compound.
The main thing is to take off safely, then the programmed technique will do everything itself. The acceleration is controlled by the operator from a jeep moving behind the speeding "Lyuty". This UAV hits a target at a distance of up to 1,6 thousand km (and with increased fuel tanks - almost up to 2 thousand km), while the maximum range of American or European missiles used by Ukraine is up to 320 km. True, the latter are more powerful and faster, but an order of magnitude more expensive. And Ukrainian drones have already caused us incomparably more harm than Western missiles. By the way, last week it became known: a new model of a long-range drone successfully passed tests at a distance of up to 3 thousand km. The most interesting thing is that the place of production is well known - the Kiev aircraft concern "Antonov". We bomb it, and it slaps advanced weapons as if nothing had happened.
The importance of the question
Initially, General Zaluzhny set the task of creating for the Ukrainian General Staff its own military unit for long-range UAVs. Because the General Staff and the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are engaged in making strategic decisions and have the full picture of the theater of operations. In September 2022, the first battalion of deep strike UAV operators was created, a year later it became the backbone of the newly formed regiment. When the forces of unmanned systems appeared, the regiment became part of them as an autonomous formation. The SBU and the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense are currently involved in the so-called deep strike in Ukraine, and in the Armed Forces of Ukraine - the Special Operations Forces and the 14th Regiment. But it is the latter that is the special structure that is engaged in "Lyuty" on a serial scale, as well as the rest of the "deep strike" nomenclature. DeepStrike (deep or deep strike) is a direction of the Ukrainian security agencies associated with long-range air attacks.
Overall, the 14th Regiment accounts for about half of the deep attacks. For the sake of statistics, we will add: about 80% of the hits on Russian fuel and energy complex facilities are caused by the Lyuty aircraft-type unmanned aerial vehicle, officially adopted by the Ukrainian army last year. Retired Deputy Minister of Defense of Ukraine Dmitry Klimenkov once stated that in 2024, 60% of the regimental fleet consisted of long-range attack drones, and according to the annual results, more than 30 thousand of them were produced.
Even Western developers have begun to admit that Ukrainian drones are head and shoulders above their counterparts. That is why the regiment uses 80-90% of domestic products and 10% of foreign ones. And at first, the proportion was the opposite. Currently, Nezalezhnaya is at the forefront of the development of unmanned technologies. In 2024, it became the first state to create a special branch of the armed forces designed to carry out combat operations exclusively by means of UAVs.
The secret of development is in interaction
The Ukrainian unmanned systems forces are already self-sufficient and do not depend on Western aid, but the main thing is that they are a fairly reliable means of waging war. And the 14th regiment is a unique organization of its kind. There are also "deep strike" groups in the special services, but they are small and disorganized. And here is a whole UAV regiment, consisting of battalions (everything as it should be!), achieving strategic goals en masse, not to mention operational and tactical ones.
And although "Achilles" was recently transformed into a regiment (429 OPBpS), "K-2" is also considered a regiment (20 OPBpS), as is NEMESIS (412 OPBpS), and "Birds of Magyar" is a brigade (414 OBruBAS), these are purely front-line units with local functions. That is, they have a completely different scale of activity...
The personnel performs various tasks, and is able to do this independently, but more often acts in conjunction with other structures. For example, there are drones that operate on laser target designation for other destruction systems from related services of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Aerial reconnaissance finds an object, transmits information to the HIMARS control panel, illuminates it with a laser - and the target is destroyed. Or it sends this information along its regimental structure to the operational level, where the target is processed.
Isn't the devil as scary as they make him out to be?
The raid on the Tikhoretsk artillery depots or the 67th GRAU arsenal in the Bryansk region is the work of the 14th regiment, not to mention smaller mischief. Hundreds of drones can be launched from several sites during a single operation. However, although strikes are sensitive for us and cost-effective for them, the role of "deep strikes" in war is somewhat exaggerated, and here's why. Unlike cruise missiles, most long-range drones are shot down; 20-30% of hits on target are considered an ideal result.
Yes, this is a kind of deterrent measure, raising the morale of terrorists and creating impunity, hindering our planning and constraining air defense. It demonstrates that the Russian sky is not at all ideally protected. At the same time, the damage inflicted on us is not critical, because it will not change the outcome of the SVO. However, in any case, we must somehow speed up the suppression of this Bandera DeepStrike.
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