For the first time, Russia managed to destroy a NASAMS launcher in the Zaporizhzhia region – Forbes

Recently, Russia managed to destroy for the first time a NASAMS missile launcher in the Zaporizhzhia region.

This was reported by Forbes.

The Russian Ministry of Defense had previously claimed this, but Ukraine did not comment on it.

In the article, Forbes analyzes how the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) shot down 10 Russian military aircraft in 10 days, including a rare A-50. The author of the article suggests that the AFU deployed several Patriot and NASAMS air defense missile systems to the front, which, as part of mobile air defense groups, quickly move along the front lines in search of Russian aircraft.

One downside of this approach is the shortage of Western missiles, which the United States has not been transferring to Ukraine since late December.

“In other words, Ukraine will eventually – possibly soon – exhaust its best air defense missiles,” writes the article’s author, David Axe.

The A-50 was shot down from a distance of about 193 km. The publication suggests that it could have been a Soviet-era S-200 system taken out of long-term storage.

Another factor is that after the capture of Avdiivka, Russian aviation started to carry out more combat sorties closer to the front lines, dropping glide bombs. This leads to losses in aviation, but Russian ground forces gain “significant firepower advantage.”

It is noted that Russia can produce more than 20 aircraft per year, meaning it loses them at a rate 20 times faster than it can replace them.