Ukraine War, 14 December 2024: Part 1

Hello everybody!

Now to take a peek at the war in Ukraine, where - amid Medvedev’s offer of two choices for Ukraine: ‘be with Russia or disappear altogether’ - things just can’t stop heating up.

For the start, and on the ‘strategic’ plan: it’s interesting to read a growing number of messages from Ukrainian officers wondering why is Israel bombing Syria ‘only now’, when Assad was toppled. Apparently, it’s slowly dawning even to people within the ZSU, that Israel - or, better said: Netanyahu (wanted by the ICC for crimes against humanity) - is another of Putin’s buddies, and thus Israel is a friend of Russia. No friend of Ukraine.

I see this as a positive development. Only not sure how long it might take until ‘those up there’ in Kyiv might realise the same.

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AIR/MISSILE WARFARE

The last three weeks, the Russians were keeping both the Ukrainian Air Force & Air Defence Force (PSZSU; I’m shortening this to PSU) on its toes with ‘suspicious works’ thought to be related to the deployment of (yet more) of Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs). Is a bit hard to explain, but let me try.

As mentioned back in November, that ‘Oreshnik experimental IRBM’ is not in series production. At least not yet. At best, the Russians have few ‘prototypes left over from the early 2010s’ - and even then: they’ve got to cobble them together to have an ‘operational’ example. Missiles like Oreshnik are big and thus (relatively) easy to track with help of reconnaissance satellites. This means that if the Russians want to miss such a giant factory like Pivdenmash in Dnipro with six banks of six multiple re-entry vehicles - again, like they’ve missed back on 21 November - the USA (and ‘NATO’, and Ukraine) are able to track their preparations for another launch.

Of course, the USA (and thus ‘NATO’) can’t ignore any such preparations. Ukraine - even less so. Correspondingly, they’re all carefully monitoring what’s going on at Kapustin Yar (and few other sites). Of course, the Russians know they’ve been monitored. Therefore, on 6 December, the Russians made like if they would be preparing the launch of another missile. Of course, this promptly caused Kyiv to put the country on alert for another Oreshnik strike. Then, few hours later, the alert was cancelled (and, surprisingly enough, this time there were no evacuations of Western embassies from Kyiv, like before the strike of 21 November).

Why this?

You can bet your annual income (if not more), that the Russians are all the time monitoring the work of the PSU’s air defences - foremost by the means of communications-, electronic- and signals intelligence (COMINT, ELINT & SIGINT). And, because they know the USA (and ‘NATO’, and Ukraine) are all the time monitoring their ‘works’ at Kapustin Yar, they know that if they do ‘something suspicious’ at that site, there’s going to be a reaction: see, the PSU is going to bring its air defences into position, power up their radars and similar. Indeed, any ‘suspicious works’ at Kapustin Yar are also forcing the PSU to keep the mass of its ‘best’ air defence systems concentrated in the Kyiv area.

In turn, this is then enabling the Russians to strike by other means somewhere else around Ukraine.

And so, this ‘suspicious works at Kapustin Yar’ are meanwhile taking place something like ‘once a week’.

Meanwhile, the Russians are exploiting the opportunity: with the PSU ‘bunching together’ its ‘best’ air defences to protect Kyiv and Odesa, yesterday - and following a ‘break’ of several days - they’ve launched their newest ‘biggest ever’, combined drone- and missile strike on Ukraine. Perhaps the number of cruise missiles involved was not the biggest ever, but that of UAVs - definitely so. Official Kyiv released the following statistics:

• 193 attack UAVs: the PSU claimed 80 as shot down and 105 as ‘jammed’. Interestingly, contacts in Ukraine are indicating a high failure rate of - mostly PR China-manufactured - components of involved UAVs; kind of ‘unsurprisingly’, only about 1% actually reached their targets.

• 55 Kh-101 air-launched cruise missiles, 24 Kalibr sea-launched cruise missiles, and 7 Iskander-K ground-launched cruise missiles: the PSU claimed to have shot down 80 out of this total of 86 cruise missiles. Contacts in Ukraine are indicating, ‘a lot by F-16s’.

• 4 Kinzhal air-launched hypersonic missiles (released by MiG-31Ks): none was shot down.

• 2 Iskander-M ground-launched quasi-ballistic missiles: 1 was claimed as shot down.

• 1 KN-23 ballistic missile (something like ‘North Korean-made Iskander-M on stereoids, but less precise’): was not shot down.

• 1 Kh-59 air-launched precision-guided, stand-off missile: was not shot down.

Gents from the @war_monitor_ua (on X) have prepared the following map:

What can be seen on it?

Contrary to the GenStab-U, the map is indicating attacks by at least six Kh-22s. These are hypersonic cruise missiles released by Tu-22M-3 bombs (and, actually: nearly all such missiles deployed against Ukraine so far were Kh-32s, which is an upgraded, or at least overhauled and modernised version). Apparently, the PSU entirely failed to detect them, and thus - and as usually - didn’t mention them in its summary.

As next, and as usual, attack UAVs (yellow routes) were used to ‘map’ the Ukrainian air defences: to force them to power up their radars so the Russians can route their cruise missiles ‘around’ their positions. Mind that cruise missiles are flying at subsonic speeds, but are stills some 3-4 times faster than attack UAVs. Therefore, they are launched ‘hours after’ attack UAVs. Finally, ballistic missiles are the fastest of all of them, and they are usually launched only as the attack drones are about to reach their targets. In that fashion, the Russians are trying to overwhelm (or overpower) the Ukrainian air defences: confront them with ‘too many different targets at the same time’.

As far as is known, principal target was, once again, the Ukrainian power supply system. And then the power supply system in the Lviv Oblast in particular. Indeed, the mass of strikes was targeting facilities that were attacked already several times this year, but were meanwhile repaired. That included one power plant, which, reportedly, was ‘destroyed’. (Should there be any doubts in regards of what was targeted, I recommend a cross-examination of the map above, with the following one).

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No SIOP

When it comes to the Ukrainian operations of this kind… sigh…

It’s maddening to watch, and frustrating to draw such conclusions, but: after almost three years of war, at the strategic level, the PSU is still fighting its own war, the ZSU’s electronic warfare assets are fighting their own war, and the GUR and SBU are fighting their own wars: there is no integration of their operations. There is nothing like ‘single integrated operational plan’ (SIOP). One of unsurprising results is that the Russians - who are all the time trying to upgrade their missiles, or at least adapt old models to their new requirements, replace components they cannot purchase from the West and similar - are repeatedly taking the PSU by surprise. For example: by adding chaff and flare dispensers to their cruise missiles. Always because the related intelligence is not provided by the GUR. Indeed, even after three years of war, the GUR still has no clarity about the rate at which the Russians are manufacturing new missiles, nor about their or the stocks of UMPK glide-bombs available.

Talking about UMPKs: the Russians began both running out of UMPK kits for glide bombs - and out of remaining resources (or airframe-life) of aircraft that can deploy them (foremost Su-24s and Su-34s). The production of UMPKs has peaked in this summer, and is ever since in decline: the Tajfun Works has failed to fulfill the state orders for new kits in two successive months. The number of fully mission capable Su-24s and Su-34s is in constant decline: they were flown a lot, the last three years, and ever more of aircraft are in need of complex overhauls. However, the factories overhauling them can’t keep up with the demand already for more than a year. As a consequence, as first, the number of UMPKs installed on aircraft per every single flight decreased from average 4 to average 2, and then the total number of UMPK glide bombs deployed decreased to 40, before dropping down to around 20-25, the last few days.

Theoretically, a service like the GUR should have known, or at least predicted something of this kind, and advised the ZSU about this. Sure, I have no definite confirmation, but ‘that feeling in my small toe’, if you like, is that - as usually - this was simply not the case.

That is unsurprising, though, considering that three years into the war, Ukraine still has no SIOP. The lack of SIOP - and strategic-level cooperation between different services - is obvious from Ukrainian efforts at ‘retaliation’ for the Russian air strikes, too.

For a few days, Ukrainians are targeting the Russian refineries and oil depots. Then such operations stop and there is no re-targeting of facilities that have been damaged but are meanwhile repaired. Then military facilities are targeted - whether by UAVs, or by missiles like ATACMs and Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG - and then such operations stop. Then industrial facilities are targeted (like that factory of electronic components in Rostov-na-Donu, yesterday), and then such operations stop… and then the entire circle is randomly repeated, without any coordination of such efforts. Actually, it seems, every such operation is run by another authority (if they are run by authorities: regardless how much is official Kyiv boasting about major increases in production of UAVs, the mass of the UAV-related efforts in Ukraine remain privately funded).

If that is not enough: each such Ukrainian campaign of drone- and missile strikes requires its own operation of disabling the relevant Russian air defences - to ‘drill safe corridors’ towards targets. Essentially, this means that every time another effort or campaign is initaited, it has to start with yet another, separate ‘suppression of enemy air defences’ (SEAD) operation. And, indeed: every single time, there is another SEAD/DEAD operation, some of Russian air defences are knocked out. However, this has only temporary effects because there is no overall coordination. Net result is that every single of such efforts - including lots of irreplaceable, Western-supplied weaponry - is wasted.

All of which is a logical result of the Glavcom (Commander-in-Chief ZSU) - general Syrsky - appointing his incompetent buddies as commanders, and then having to micromanage single brigades and battalions around the battlefield, i.e. having to do the job of his buddies, instead of doing his (actual) job (like coordinating the work of all the branches of the ZSU and intelligence services).

…with which I’m getting to what is going to be discussed in the Part 2…

(…to be continued…)