A heavily armed Russian Aerospace Forces Ka-52 Hokum during the conflict in Ukraine. Russian Ministry of Defense
Warzone/The Drive: Ukraine’s Armor Appears To Have A Russian Attack Helicopter Problem
Russian Ka-52 attack helicopters’ presence at the front highlights the need for highly mobile and survivable short-range air defenses.
As Ukraine presses on with its counteroffensive in the south and east, making incremental advances in the process, there is evidence that Russia may be starting to enjoy more aerial access over critical areas near the front lines.
As Russia continues to adapt its application of air power, after a fairly dismal start to the campaign, some of its aircraft are now able to operate in a less restricted way, or at least Russia is willing to take on more risk in doing so. Either way, this will put further pressure on the Ukrainian forces, raising questions, in particular, about the availability of mobile short-range air defense systems, or SHORAD. At the very least, as Ukraine gets away from its more entrenched and fixed air defense capabilities, the importance of SHORAD is only going to be underscored.
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WNU Editor: It is telling that ten days into the counteroffensive, Ukraine has only shot down one Russian attack helicopter. This tells me two things. Ukraine is clearly lacking surface to air defense missiles, and Russia is dominating the skies along the front.
11 comments:
That is an astute observation. One of the mysteries of this war.
Why have not russian helos, been more prevalent in attacking enemy armor, especially at night?
Another issue...this war has been going on for over 1 year. The russians have been exposed to western ADA for a while now.
So it would not be too far fetched to assume that the Ka 52 may have been updated with new anti ADA systems. That might be another reason for this trend of not having helos shot down.
Anyway. It seems Ukrainian efforts have had marginal success up to now.
BTW
Where are all the GEPARDS for front line coverage? I guess someone who wrote a few months back, that gepards are difficult/complicated machines and it took a years worth of training to qualify.... might have been right.... and the ukies do not really know what they are doing with these things.
The other problem I remember was that the Swiss were the sole source of ammo production for these systems and up to 6 months ago the Swiss said they were not going to produce or sell ammo for/to the ukies.
Did this ever change? If so it might be another reason there is no tactical ADA coverage.
Any whoo.... javelins and RPGs are nice , but in the late Soviet / Nato days, for the west, the Helo gunship was designed to be the primary tank killer.
So, the helos killing lots of armor? No surprise there , they are doing what they were designed to do.
Love the dual counter rotating rotor design. The future.
Attack helicopters work best 2-4 km behind the forward edge of battle. When Russia (or US) operate them on or forward of the edge of battle, bad things happen (MANPADS). So, they are more of a defensive than offensive tool, which is their original NATO mission. Also, they are great for hunting farmers, but that is a different kind of war.
US lesson learned:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_attack_on_Karbala
The ukranians have been having great success with rhe gerpards countering uranian drones . I would thought to see storm , starstruck and a enger systems be prominent on the front
Star streak , l gotta turn off predict lol
KA52 losses gave been relatively heavy also
Counting Russia's dead in Ukraine - and what it says about the changing face of the war
lol go home loser
Def a big cub in a small zoo
Russia appears to lose 4 military aircraft in Russian territory
Two fighter jets and two helicopters reportedly downed in region northeast of Ukraine border.
Starstreak has the range, but helicopters 2k behind the line using terrain masking flight patterns and pop-up attacks would be hard to hit unless you had a good cueing system that alerts the gunner. Ukraine would need to do something sneaky like equip drones with microphones that detect helicopter rotors (or artillery firing) and land them behind Russian lines to form a grid that performs echolocation. The Brits used to use microphone systems to do counter-battery artillery work during WWI. Passive is better than active on the modern battlefield.
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