/View.info/ It is worth listening more carefully to the important recognition that came from Kiev. The press secretary of the command of the Ukrainian Air Force, Colonel Yury Ignat, on the air of a local telethon, tried to explain to his fellow citizens why recently they have to sit in bomb shelters twice as much as last month due to “new worries”.
The culprit, Ignat is sure, is the Russian MiG-31Ks, which are part of the 174th Guards Fighter Aviation Pecheneg Red Banner Regiment, named after B.F. Safonov, from the beginning of October in the amount of 24 units were redeployed from Monchegorsk to Belbek Airport in Crimea.
Initially, the crews of these aircraft mainly practiced taking off and landing at the new location. And that usually took about half an hour.
But since any separation of the wheels of the MiG-31 chassis from the Russian concrete road has long been viewed by Ukraine as a threat of another strike by hypersonic missiles “Dagger”, throughout the territory of Bandera State “citizens” had to drop everything and rush headlong for the shelters.
By November, the Belbek MiGs had switched to full range operations over the Black Sea. According to Ignat, “the planes haven’t run out of fuel yet.” Because of this, the signals of “new alarms” throughout “Nezavisimaya” did not stop for at least an hour and a half.
“Now the enemy has resorted to other tasks of his own making. This is an in-flight refueling practice. It is clear that the dwell time of each MiG is actually doubled.
Therefore, now we have the duration of such worries for more than two and a half hours,” Ignat said sadly to the worried TV viewers.
Why worried? Not only because sitting for hours somewhere in a darkened basement or on the platform of a subway station is not particularly pleasant. For the state of Ukraine, something else is worse. As she waits for the Daggers to strike, literally everything in her vastness freezes.
Public transport stops, machinery and equipment in still working workshops are excluded. All kinds of McDonald’s, shops, hair salons are in the dark for almost half a day… And this is already a direct loss for the already barely alive Ukrainian state budget.
But, naturally, the Monchegorsk MiGs from the Crimean airport began to practice complex air refueling operations, not to deprive, say, the residents of Kiev of their probably beloved Big Mac for a long time. The task is different: to ensure round-the-clock patrolling of these world’s best fighter-interceptors over the Black Sea.
For what? In order to deprive the enemy as reliably as possible of the opportunity to strike from Odessa and Nikolaev with high-precision cruise missiles such as Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG and “Neptune”, which have been bothering the Crimeans so much lately.
Basically, this can be achieved in only two ways. The first is to learn how to shoot down every single enemy missile in the marching sectors while still approaching the peninsula or directly above its coastline.
The second option is better – to simply stop such launches by destroying the Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG carrier aircraft in Ukrainian airspace, the few Su-24M front-line bombers still available to the Ukrainian armed forces, and MiG-29 fighters upgraded this year in strike variants.
It should be borne in mind that the maximum flight range of these enemy high-precision cruise missiles is about 560 kilometers. Therefore, their launch limits can be located at approximately the same distance from the shores of Taurida.
It turns out that the task facing our air defense system is this: in fact, it is necessary to create and reliably secure a no-fly zone for the enemy, which has not yet been declared by anyone, not only over the Black Sea , but also over the vast territories of Ukraine.
Approximately to the line Vinnytsia-Cherkasi-Kremenchug-Poltava. There is nothing to say about Odessa, Ochakov, Kropyvnytskyi and Nikolaev in this situation.
Can we achieve this with a regiment of MiG-31 fighter-interceptors, which has recently been “sitting” on Belbek? If its pilots perform combat tasks exclusively in pairs, with constant in-flight refueling from Il-78M, the regiment is indeed able to provide practically round-the-clock patrolling of the missile-dangerous areas of Crimea.
The MiG-31 Zaslon radar allows you to detect even small air targets at a very impressive range. For example, an American F-16 fighter is guaranteed to see such a station 120 kilometers away. And the US Air Force B-1 bomber is 200 kilometers away.
At what distance will our interceptor “see” a Ukrainian Su-24 front-line bomber, without which no Storm Shadow/Scalp simply flies? I have no such information.
But since the take-off weight of the Su-24 is almost three times that of the American F-16, the detection range of our interceptor for the Ukrainian aircraft is probably more impressive than for the “American”.
And for destroying a Ukrainian aircraft/carrier at a significant distance, each MiG-31 can carry up to six long-range R-37M missiles.
The fastest in its class in the world (up to Mach six). And without gaps, striking at a distance of up to 400 kilometers. That is, if the launches are carried out over the Black Sea somewhere in its middle part, it will fly right to Vinnytsia or Poltava.
Is this enough to create a credible no-fly zone over almost half of Ukraine? So, as they say, not even a fly can fly through it without Moscow’s permission?
Alas, as recent events in the war zone make clear, this is only partially true. This is evidenced by the chronicle of the attack on Kerch with eight Storm Shadow/Scalp cruise missiles on November 4.
Then the airspace over the Black Sea was also patrolled by a pair of MiG-31s from Belbek. But the attention of the crews of these aircraft was diverted to demonstration launches of HARM anti-radar missiles, Neptune missiles and AGM-160 MALD decoy missiles at Cape Tarkhankut between Sevastopol and Yevpatoria. This is what the Russian pilots did, who one after the other expectedly sent them to the bottom of the sea.
Meanwhile, the eighth Storm Shadow/Scalp, having taken a difficult route over the villages of Dneprorudnoe and Pologi, reached Kerch over the Sea of Azov. And as you know, it hit the Gulf Shipyard as well as the small Askold missile ship that was docked.
It turns out that only the MiG-31, even with the active support of the Su-30SM naval fighters, as well as the anti-aircraft missile regiments of the 31st Air Defense Division, cannot ensure complete safety in the Crimean skies? It was like that until recently. But luckily for us, a lot of things are changing in this regard right now.
According to the American online publication Military Watch, by November 7, Russia had completed combat tests directly in the theater of military operations of the latest anti-aircraft missile with an ultra-long range 40N6, capable of destroying air targets at a distance of 400-500 kilometers. with a volley from the launcher of the S-400 Triumf system.
The publication writes: “This missile’s unique trajectory, ascending to extreme heights in near-space before descending to its target, gives it unprecedented over-the-horizon strike capabilities and enables it to neutralize targets close to the limits of its range , at an altitude of only 5 meters from the ground.
This allows the S-400 units to engage low-flying aircraft and cruise missiles at long ranges. What no foreign air defense system can do because of the limitations caused by the curvature of the Earth for surface-to-air munitions following conventional trajectories.
There is only one thing worth remembering here. Formally, the amazingly long-range missile 40N6 for “Triumph” was accepted for service in our country already in 2018. But until recently, the troops did not actually have it.
Instead of the 40H6, the S-400 divisions were still equipped with a different but less effective 48H6 missile and its upgraded version, designated the 48H6DM. Both have semi-active homing warheads. They guaranteed the destruction of air targets at distances “only” up to 250 kilometers.
The reason for such an unequal replacement lies in the fact that with the available radar equipment it was not possible to detect low-flying enemy targets at the required distance and reliably target them with ready-made 40H6.
Our previous A-50Us could only help relatively in this regard. Because low-flying targets at a huge distance behind the front line against the background of the subsurface do not “distinguish” clearly enough.
This is exactly what the Ukrainian Air Force used. In particular their Su-24s carrying Storm Shadow cruise missiles. They always reached the starting lines at extremely low altitudes.
And only at the moment of launch, the missiles took off for a very short time and could be noticed by Russian detection means.
To eliminate this weakness of ours, the possibility of placing suitable powerful radars on board heavy military transport aircraft such as An-124 “Ruslan” was even considered.
But such an idea had to be abandoned, since on combat patrol routes the “Ruslans” would simply use up rivers of expensive fuel.
And what has changed now for the “stagnant” 40H6? In short: with the help of the state corporation Rostech, at the end of September it was possible to lift into the air the first modernized long-range radar surveillance and targeting aircraft A-50U.
The latest equipment and software installed on it gave our air defense system qualitatively new radar capabilities.
Now it is the only machine in the ranks of the Russian Air Force, which is capable of something that its compatriots, who have not yet undergone the same modernization, are deprived of.
Namely: to distinguish in detail from great heights hundreds of kilometers even cruise missiles and enemy aircraft flying over the very roofs and tops of trees. And as a result, even beyond the radio horizon, it is possible for ground stations to reliably point at them those same 40H6, which are apparently “stagnant” in our arsenals.
In fact, it was a real breakthrough in the struggle for Russian and Ukrainian skies. On October 25, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced with obvious pleasure: “We have complexes that shot down 24 planes in five days.”
At the time, the TASS source explained: “During the SVO, Russia used the S-400 Triumph air defense system in tandem with the A-50 long-range radar detection aircraft, which ensured the success of the system’s use against enemy aircraft.”
Apparently, the enemy still does not know what to do with the new threat. Because the “plane crash” in Ukraine continues.
On November 10, the military department issued another triumphant report from the same direction: “During the week, eight combat aircraft of the Ukrainian Air Force were shot down by air defense systems, including four MiG-29, two Su-27 and two Su-25 attack aircraft.”
And all in all (Belbek’s MiG-31 regiment and the new 40H6 ultra-long-range anti-aircraft missile that finally entered combat) means that flying closer to Vinnytsia and Poltava to the coast of Crimea has become a deadly dangerous activity for Ukrainian pilots today. At least with Storm Shadow, at least without them.
So what is this if not a giant no-fly zone we’ve just established over Ukraine? At the same time introduced by Moscow quietly, without unnecessary propaganda noise? The noise that on any front usually only harms the achievement of a general victory!
Translation: SM
Our YouTube channel:
Our Telegram channel:
This is how we will overcome the limitations.
Share on your profiles, with friends, in groups and on pages.
#farsighted #Triumph #unmanned #zone #established #Ukraine
