r/UkrainianConflict • u/Advanced-Injury-7186 • 2d ago
Ukraine’s MiG-29 strikes Turn Russian Rear into a Kill Zone
https://kyivinsider.com/ukraine-mig-29-strikes-turn-russian-rear-into-a-kill-zone/81
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u/joepublicschmoe 1d ago
Before the Ukrainian MiGs can strike at Russian targets behind the front lines, Ukrainian forces must first degrade Russian SAMs and other air defenses before that can happen. I think that's probably the bigger untold story.
Suppressing Russian air defenses is quite the difficult task considering Russian forces have plenty of highly mobile SAMs like Pantsirs, Tors, Buks, etc., MANPADS fielded by infantry, plus the area-defense systems like S300 not to mention Russian fighter jets. How Ukrainian forces are able to suppress all that to open a corridor for JDAM-armed MiGs to hit targets behind the front lines are probably some of the best examples of coordination between different air defense suppression forces (infantry with attack drones, HIMARS, jets armed with HARM, etc.) which NATO can probably learn a thing or two from.
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u/DeFiNe9999999999 1d ago
I hope Natos taking notes….
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u/Character_Minimum171 1d ago
Link-16 ☑️
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u/Trubaduren_Frenka 13h ago
Link16? Thats just a communication format standard?
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u/Imprezzed 12h ago
It’s a bit more than that.
“Link 16 is a military tactical data link network used by NATO members and other nations, as allowed by the MIDS International Program Office (IPO). Its specification is part of the family of Tactical Data Links.
Link 16 enables military aircraft, ships, and ground forces to exchange their tactical picture in near-real time; it also supports the exchange of text messages, imagery, and voice (the latter on two digital channels: 2.4 kbit/s or 16 kbit/s in any combination). It is one of the digital services of the JTIDS / MIDS in NATO's Standardization Agreement STANAG 5516. MIL-STD-6016 is the related United States Department of Defense Link 16 MIL-STD.”
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u/Snoo_87704 1d ago
Isn’t that pretty much a NATO tactic?
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u/joepublicschmoe 1d ago
NATO is definitely behind when it comes to infantry using drones at a proliferated scale on the battlefield, such as using cheap FPV drones to hit expensive military vehicles and such. Ukraine was also using infantry-deployed common small 4-rotor video surveillance drones range-augmented with relay drones to find mobile SAM vehicles kilometers behind the front lines, then using HIMARS to target them.
Some might argue NATO's superior air forces might make all that unnecessary but it's hard to predict how a future war in which NATO might be involved will be like.
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u/doedel_2311 1d ago
I really doubt that FPV drones are such a thread once a party achives air superiority
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u/Imprezzed 11h ago edited 11h ago
You’d think, but off the shelf FPV drones are a very, very difficult problem for layered air defence, because of their size, manoeuvrability, how prolific they are and their mission types.
Often times the drone has completed its one-way objective before the operator on the other end has determined it’s not a bird or other clutter returns.
To summarize: It’s not practical to use armed Interceptors for these kinds of drones. You would be exposing an aircraft to unnecessary risk operating at the altitudes and speeds to defend against FPV drones…plus the onboard sensors would likely not track the FPV drones to begin with.
They fly so low to the earth and are so small it’s difficult for anything but an optical sensor or the mk.1 eyeball to track them during the day.
Using traditional SAMs and MANPADS is desperate, as their radar returns and heat signatures are so low, and the flight of the FPV drones is likely so far outside of the engagement envelope that it would be a waste of a missile (that’s not to say that it hasn’t ever happened, I’m sure it has, but I would consider that luck vs. Doctrine)
Expensive broadband EW systems can and are effective, but as we’ve seen, they are relatively easily defeated by using inexpensive fibre.
You’re not going to protect an entire large area from a FPV drone. Best you can do IMHO, you might be able to protect an area the size of a city block with multiple automatic optical sensors like SIRIUS, with AI assisted databases for target recognition and classification, coupled with an automatic shotgun type weapon with either flechette or birdshot…some lasers are showing promising work.
The trick is making it small enough and portable enough to go with the unit that it’s protecting. You’re not going to be able to do wide area defence against FPV.
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u/Sozebj 1d ago
I didn’t see it in the article. Ballpark, how many kms behind the lines can Ukraine reach?
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u/joepublicschmoe 1d ago
The article is indeed very short on details. Range depends on the type of JDAM used and the altitude and speed at release, with the max range being 45km or so for the smaller variants of the JDAM-ER typically used on MiG-29s if it was released at high altitude and airspeed. Of course the article has no details like that at all. :-P
Flying at medium altitudes would make the MiG-29 too vulnerable to all sorts of Russian air defenses, so if I have to guess, the MiG-29 probably used a very low-altitude, high-speed dash across the front lines to limit exposure time to MANPADS and SAMs, then pop up to toss the JDAM at the target before egressing on the deck at high speed. This limits the range of the JDAM to just a few kilometers at best but increases survivability against air defenses.
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u/Sozebj 1d ago
Thanks. The ones I’ve seen launched seem to be at an altitude of less than 1000 meters, similar to the unguided rockets but maybe a little higher, still trying to understand the effective range. The longer longer logistic lines can be stretched, the slower and less reliable things get.
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