The Russian system of staged attacks in Ukraine has significantly improved – Forbes

Over the past two years, the Russian system of staged attacks has significantly improved.

This information reported according to Forbes.

The combat tandem of the Russians, from the networked drones, allowing for the detection of targets deep behind the front line and artillery capable of striking them, is rapidly advancing.

The Russian deep strike chain continues to inflict painful losses on Ukraine’s air defense systems, which are becoming increasingly difficult to replace. Two weeks after a Russian drone detected Ukrainian Patriot air defense missile launchers and an immediate missile strike hit two Ukrainian Patriot launcher units, Russians also detected and struck a NASAMS air defense missile battery.

A video published by Russian military in social media on Saturday captured a precision missile strike on a Norwegian-developed NASAMS air defense missile system launcher, 50 kilometers from the front line in the Zaporizhzhia region in southern Ukraine. The range of the AIM-120 NASAMS missile, as you may have guessed, is precisely 50 kilometers.

This is the second likely loss of a NASAMS missile carrier. Before pro-Russian Republicans in the US Congress suspended aid to Ukraine in October, the US gifted dozens of NASAMS batteries to Kyiv, each equipped with multiple radars, at least one control station, and nine to twelve launcher units.

Ukraine is expected to receive an additional 15 to 18 NASAMS launcher units from Canada, Norway and Lithuania, so their supply is not expected to run out. However, this alone does not make the recent strike any less serious. Over the past two years, Russians have had difficulty hitting mobile targets at a distance farther than a few kilometers beyond the thousand-kilometer front line. But this spring, the situation in the 25-month-old Russo-Ukrainian conflict has changed.

In just one month, which turned out to be bloody for Ukrainian air defenses, artillerymen and pilots, Russian forces detected and destroyed “Patriots,” the first high-mobility artillery rocket system HIMARS, and a pair of Mi-17 attack helicopters. In each case, Ukrainian systems were located tens of kilometers behind the front line and were either already in motion or about to move.