All memes aside, the Russians are the only developers of mobile GBAD systems other than maybe the West's Stinger MANPAD. They've sold air defense systems to every corner of the planet and their systems have been involved in a lot of conflicts. I'm referring to systems like: S300, Tor, Buk, Pantsir, and Osa among many others.
Drones are the ideal target for some of the aforementioned systems. Yet, we see Ukrainian drones flying into even the deepest regions of Russia to strike critical targets.
Is this failure to destroy targets inherent to drone saturation attacks or are these systems just not as good as everyone previously thought? Because there really isn't any alternative other than the extremely expensive Patriot system which is really only good against ballistic missiles. Maybe Russia's huge size is the issue?
It's a combination of:
1. Poor maintenance due to corruption and overconfidence. Russian/Soviet systems, in a vacuum, are not terrible (the Ukrainians can make good use of them), but Russia's military was gutted by stealing and grifting because the leadership bought into their own hype and thought Ukraine could never defeat Mighty Russian Bear no matter how much they stole.
2. The Russians at this point have lost A LOT of AD assets and ammo to attrition from enemy attacks, and also wasting them by using AD rockets to bomb civilians. Ukrainian drone attacks are having such success now in particular because they've lost so many.
The fact that the conflict has devolved into trench warfare proves that the air defenses work even if nothing else works.
>that the air defenses work
More like Ukrainian air defences work. Whereas Ukraine has currently, what, 50 functional older generation fighter jets remaining and that basically it for the air assets excluding drones.
We will see how it goes after ukies start getting western planes.
Ukraine as quite a legacy of expertise with missiles and radar systems though. Russia is more expertise with stuff like torture and murder.
Ukie Air Force was wiped out in 2014 by Russian AD. Ukie’s air impact has been negligible because what few platforms they have left are kept well out of AD range.
>proves that the air defenses work even if nothing else works
if Russian trillion dollar air defense best achievement is preventing 100 old Soviet aircrafts from bombing Russian lines then I think it's shit
>if Russian trillion dollar air defense best achievement is preventing 100 old Soviet aircrafts from bombing Russian lines then I think it's shit
Semi-preventing... god these people were bragging about how this would stop the US air force, some still are trying to...
Regardless AA systems there are just too many manpads around to risk pilots/planes. That's all.
>Was anyone else expecting Russian air defense systems to be more competent?
No. They have always have been laughably shit at electronic systems.
Hahahahaha pathetic, Tunguska's have been in service since what 1982 and still they are unreliable pieces of shit. Seems to explain with exception of the beginning of the war they are hardly seen on the frontline unlike systems like TOR or Pantsir which somehow seem more reliable. Also makes me wonder if Smerch is kinda the rocket arty equivalent of this as very few have been destroyed and strikes of them seem to have become extremely rare compared to at the beginning of the war.
No but i expected there to be overwhelming number of funky old reserves blanketing at minimum the entire Ukrainian border, but more likely multiple perimeters around Moscow.
Now it feels like there are something like 3 S-400 batteries, 5 pantsirs, 10 Tors and 10..20 simpler systems being rotated around the entire Russia and frontline. Ah, and the one S-500 guarding Putins bridge in Crimea..
>Was anyone else expecting
Not those of us who remember Mathias Rust'a epic troll in 1984.
….what? AD forces have been the most competent part of the military of BOTH sides.
Russian AD successfully intercepted 0 Storm Shadows
then Russian AD successfully intercepted 0 Neptunes that hit S-400 in Crimea
then Russian AD successfully intercepted 1 out of 3 Neptunes that flew to Feodosia
then Russian AD successfully lost 350 million worth of radars and EW in Kherson in one week
well, at least Russian AD successfully intercepted Prigozin
That was probably an onboard bomb.
Your source on the Storm Shadow claim is…?
Your Neptune claims source are…?
Meanwhile the large drone raid on several locations were mostly shot down with the one exception of those cargo planes.
The reason why both sides are spamming drones is because AD is locking out both sides’ air power and even bombs aren’t safe.
This war has proven that Russian air defense systems are very high quality. Western AD is simply lacking due to doctrinal differences (assumption of having air superiority). Russia and Ukraine share a very long border and each country is very large. It's a certainty that a drone or missile attack will make it through somewhere, even in areas considered "safe".
This is your brain on ukraine propaganda
>russian AA
>consistently takes down Himars, cruise missiles, HAARM is plain useless
>NATO AA
>struggles to see Lancets and Geran' on the radar
Simple as
None of these systems are optimized or designed to fight agains small cardboard and plastic drones.
This is a new age of warfare and air defence will have to adapt to it. The hard part is going to be detecting these things
skill issue
the hardware may be okay, but one of the biggest problems with Russian AD is that it's crewed by Russians
Gepard can take out drones fine.
Their physical parameters are reasonably good; but the ergonomics, datalinks, displays, computing, sensors and of course the human operators' quality undercut that.
Russian AD units have performed relatively better than their artillery units or infantry units.
It's honestly more of a case of overshilling than anything else. S-300 and S-400 aren't infallible and will get knocked out by well planned strikes. AFAIK Tor and Buk function well enough as well, not infallible either but they do work. AFAIK most of the footage of Tor and Buks getting their asses handed to them have been when they've been caught with their pants down, though that recent Himars'ing of a 9S36 radar was fucking embarrassing. We have seen Buk successes from the Ukrainian side though and we've also seen Tor engage drones, a few times from the drone's perspective even (the misses in these cases should not be taken to be the norm, though they shouldn't be dismissed either). It is important to keep in mind survivorship bias is a thing. Pantsir and Osa though we've known is terrible for a long time already.