Sometime on or before Wednesday, a trio of Mil Mi-8 or Mil Mi-17 assault helicopters from the Ukrainian army’s 12th Army Aviation Brigade landed in a field in Novopavlivka, 35 miles west of the front line outside the ruins of Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine....CONTINUE READING
It seems the helicopters were reloading for a daylight rocket attack in support of the Ukrainian brigades holding a new defensive line threading through the villages of Berdychi, Orlivka and Tonen’ke.
The Mils’ crews—at least a pilot and co-pilot apiece—probably weren’t planning on being on the ground for very long. But it was long enough for Russia’s improved drone-artillery kill-chain to work as designed.
A cluster munition exploded overhead of the 12th Brigade helicopters, damaging at least two of them and apparently killing two aviators: Yaroslav Kava and Andriy Bakun. One Mil managed to fly away before explosives-laden drones streaked in to finish off the two that didn’t escape.
The strike extends a startling kill-streak for Russian forces in Ukraine. In just the last week or so, the Russians have knocked out their first Ukrainian High-Mobility Artillery Rocket System, their first launchers for a Ukrainian Patriot air-defense battery and now a pair of helicopters.
It should be obvious by now that the Russians’ kill-chain—the networked drones and artillery that allow them to spot targets deep behind the front line and hit them before they move—is getting better, fast.
In theory, Russia widened its war on Ukraine 25 months ago with a speedy kill-chain based in part on the Strelets data network, which fuses targeting data from surveillance drones and other reconnaissance assets with the fire-control systems of artillery batteries.
The Russian Ministry of Defense has released Footage showing a Cluster Munition Strike on a Field of several Ukrainian Mil Mi-8 and Mi-17 Transport Helicopters landed near the Frontline in the Donetsk Region of Eastern Ukraine, with at least 2 of the Helicopters being Destroyed;… pic.twitter.com/cIeAspjrTz
— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) March 13, 2024
In practice, Strelets and other Russian targeting networks rarely worked as designed—and mostly for human reasons. To put it simply, senior Russian commanders didn’t trust junior Russian commanders to open fire based on new—and fleeting—intelligence.
Leaders “are culturally averse to providing those who are executing orders with the context to exercise judgement,” Mykhaylo Zabrodskyi, Jack Watling, Oleksandr Danylyuk and Nick Reynolds explained in a 2022 report for the Royal United Services Institute in London.
That began to change last year—and the reforms have accelerated this year. The Russians are deploying more and better surveillance drones passing better data along more robust networks to more front-line artillery batteries and attack-drone crews.
“Russia is using new technology to improve sensor-to-shooter links,” Blair Battersby, a British Army warrant officer, wrote for the U.S. Army’s training command. More to the point, Russian commanders seem to be giving front-line forces more leeway to act on their own.
Surveilling deeper, and shooting farther, faster and more accurately, Russian forces are mitigating one of their longstanding disadvantages—and blunting what once was a key Ukrainian advantage. The relative freedom of movement that Russia’s slow targeting afforded Ukrainian forces.
It should be painfully obvious to Ukrainian commanders that their forces no longer are safe within 50 miles of the front line—especially while out in the open during daytime.
They have two choices. Pull their own helicopters, rocket-launchers and air-defenses batteries farther from the front—or add protection. The Ukrainians could break the Russian kill-chain by jamming or shooting down the surveillance drones that usually are the first links in the chain.
But that means deploying more jammers and air-defense systems, both of which currently are in high demand and short supply.
Ukraine’s allies could help, of course. But its biggest ally, the United States, has sent just one package of military aid in the nearly three months since pro-Russia Republicans in the U.S. Congress began blocking fresh funding for Ukraine…CONTINUE READING>>
