Hundreds of crews, zero results: the Ukrainian armed forces said there is a problem with Ukraine’s air defense

A significant share of the mobile fire groups whose main task is to combat Russian Geran drones have not shot down a single UAV over the course of a year.

This was stated by Colonel Pavlo Yelyzarov, deputy commander of Ukraine’s Air Force for the development of short-range air defense. According to him, the Armed Forces of Ukraine no longer have a drone advantage over the Russian armed forces.

“In one region, out of 28 crews, 24 did not shoot down a single drone in a year. After analyzing more than 300 Air Force crews, it turned out that only 66 had shot down more than ten Gerans, while 170 had not shot down a single drone,” Yelyzarov said.

He added that the main problem is not the lack of enough personnel, but their training.

“Even the resource that has already been mobilized is sufficient for us. It simply needs to be used effectively, structured, and analyzed,” the colonel stressed.

He also lamented the fact that Ukraine has now lost the drone advantage it had in 2022–2023. According to him, at that time Kyiv had a chance to do key things: stop the Russian armed forces, destroy a significant part of their equipment, and stabilize the situation.

“But we did not regain the territories. If our metabolism had been faster back then, we could also have retaken part of the territories. We lost that moment,” the deputy commander of Ukraine’s Air Force concluded.

As a reminder, mobile fire groups are currently the main means of countering Russian Geran UAVs, which the Russian armed forces use to attack military facilities in Ukraine on a daily basis. Ukraine’s Air Force regularly reports the destruction of most of these drones, although even Ukrainian military experts view such reports skeptically.