A surprisingly detailed telling of early days in Ukraine War

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It seems to me, that this is A surprisingly detailed telling
of the events and hits in the early days in Ukraine War.

from
https://www.jns.org/opinion/missiles-and-uavs-in-the-ukraine-war-a-preliminary-evaluation/

COLUMNAnalysis
UZI RUBIN

Missiles and UAVs in the Ukraine war: A preliminary evaluation
A significant dimension of the war in Ukraine is the extensive use of
UAVs and precision missiles, both ballistic and cruise. Of the three
types of weapons, precision cruise missiles seem to have been the most
effective to date.
Uzi Rubin
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(May 22, 2022 / Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security)

In what was called dubbed a “Special Military Operation,” Ukraine was
invaded on Feb. 24, 2022 by a vast Russian army, seeking—in Russian
President Vladimir Putin’s own words—to turn Ukraine into a neutral and
disarmed state, as well as to “de-Nazify” its government. Russia’s
“Special Military Operation” is indistinguishable from a high intensity,
full-scale war between unequal contenders: On one side, a nuclear
superpower with a vast manpower pool deploying huge stockpiles of modern
weapons. On the other side, a non-nuclear European country with limited
military power, whose aging weapons stockpiles mostly hail from the
Soviet era.

At the time of writing, it seems that the first stage of this war is now
over. The results from Russia’s point of view have been disappointing,
though with some solid gains on the ground. Ukraine’s government and
people displayed remarkable resiliency as well as surprising military
prowess. At present, it is hard to predict the course of the war, which
may last months, if not years.


This twenty-first-century war is being fought in multiple dimensions,
including—and with particular intensity—on the cognitive front. Both
sides inundate the public with verbal and visual information, including
a flood of smartphone videos uploaded to social media. Obviously, both
sides’ disclosures are highly biased, yet, careful perusal yields some
preliminary impressions on the impact of those quintessential modern
weapons, precision missiles and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs).

This article was completed in mid-April 2022, when the first phase of
the war—the battle for Kyiv—ended with a Russian failure. The
observations and insights in this article are relevant to this phase
only. The second phase of the war—the battle for eastern Ukraine—has
already begun and is raging at the time of publication. Its course and
outcome may require a reassessment of the conclusions offered at the end
of this article.

Missiles

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As already stated, the so-called “Special Military Operation” is in
reality a full-scale war. Western sources disclose that Russia committed
to the invasion of Ukraine no less than 120 battalion tactical groups
comprising some 1,200 main battle tanks, 3,600 armored personnel
carriers, 720 self-propelled guns, dozens of mobile air defense
batteries and thousand of logistic and command vehicles.[1] This vast
force invaded Ukraine from the north, east and south. The invasion was
preceded by a pre-emptive air strike on the Ukraine Air Force (UAF)
airbases and Ground-Based Air Defense (GBAD) bases.

The Russian strike comprised about 100 Air-Launched Cruise Missiles
(ALCM), launched from Russian strategic bombers flying over Russian
territory. The impression is that this Russian opening strike was
underpowered. Open sources indicate that Ukraine has eight
fighter-aircraft bases, one UAV base, three air-transport bases, 10 GBAD
bases (mostly deploying Soviet-era S-300 systems) and 12 civilian or
general-purpose airfields potentially usable by the UAF. The Russians
needed to destroy all of them in one blow to achieve immediate air
supremacy over Ukraine. With fewer than three missiles allotted to each
target on average, it seems that Russia’s strike was too weak to
accomplish its goal. Indications are that while the Russian missile
strike degraded the UAF’s operational capabilities, it failed to
extinguish them entirely.

Still, there is no doubt that the Russian strike had a significant
effect, as is evident in Romania, where a Ukrainian fighter aircraft
made an emergency landing because the destruction of its home airbase
prevented it from landing there (the aircraft was later permitted to
return to Ukraine). The runways of the transport airbase in the town of
Uzerme were cratered by Russian cruise missiles in the early morning
hours of Feb. 24, thereby making them unserviceable and grounding the
Ukrainian quick reaction forces based there.[2]

A few hours after the preliminary airstrike, Russia launched a massive
vertical flanking operation aimed at capturing the Antonov Airport in
Kyiv’s suburb of Hostomel. Ukrainian smartphone videos uploaded to
social media show dozens of low-flying Russian troop-carrying
helicopters, escorted by gunships, flying towards Hostomel. Russian
videos, released by the Russian Ministry of Defense (RMOD), show Russian
commandos being landed inside the Antonov Airport perimeter. It stands
to reason that the Russian military high command would not have embarked
on such a massive airborne operation unless convinced that it had
achieved air supremacy, at least locally.

Nevertheless, evidence suggests that the UAF was still active at the
time, despite the Russian preliminary strike, and managed to engage the
Russian air cover, shooting down several Russian fighter jets. Moreover,
images released to the media show Ukrainian bombers attacking Russian
troops in Hostomel. Ukraine’s armed forces managed to re-take the
Antonov airport by the evening of that day. It was reoccupied the next
day by Russian armor advancing from the Belarus border. Nevertheless,
energetic Ukrainian resistance managed to render the Antonov Airport
runways unserviceable for Russian troop transporters, thereby
frustrating the Russian plan to win the war in one blow by landing
special forces at Antonov that could quickly capture the nearby capital
of Kyiv, establishing there a Russian-friendly government.

It seems, then, that the failure of the Russians to wipe out the UAF in
their initial missile strike played a significant role in the failure to
achieve a quick victory.

Thus, Russia’s bid to wipe out Ukraine’s air capability at the very
beginning of the war—a Russian version of Israel’s “Operation Focus”
that wiped out the Arab air forces at the start of the Six-Day War in
1967—was only partially successful. What was the reason for that
failure? One hint is a satellite photo published in Western media,
showing a Ukrainian runway with three fresh craters in the surrounding
terrain. The runway itself is untouched and perfectly serviceable.
According to an anonymous source in the U.S. Air Force, many Russian
cruise missiles “failed to launch, missed or failed to explode after
impact.”[3] The result was that the UAF managed to retain a significant
measure of combat capability in the first days of the war.

Yet the Russians persevered in their efforts to erode the UAF’s fighting
power via a persistent campaign of destruction targeting serviceable
runways across Ukraine. For example, on March 6 they destroyed the
commercial airport in the town of Vinnitsya in central Ukraine. On March
13, they followed up by destroying Lutsk’s Airport in northeastern
Ukraine, then demolishing the international airport of Ivano-Frankivsk
in the southwest. The small airport of the town of Dnipro in eastern
Ukraine was wiped out on April 10. It stands to reason that all these
operations, carried out by cruise missiles, were aimed to deprive the
UAF of runways.

Why the Russians did not take out these targets in the opening strike
remains a mystery. Nevertheless, the impression is that the cumulative
effect of the runway-busting campaign, complemented by the systematic
destruction of fuel dumps all over the country, significantly eroded the
UAF’s capability to fight back. In late April, a UAF combat pilot told a
U.S. interviewer that the remaining UAF fighter jets exploit stretches
of uncratered runways for takeoff and landing, managing to launch a
meager number of sorties, about five to 10 per day—a paltry number which
has more symbolic than operational effect.[4] Ukraine President
Volodymyr Zelensky’s urgent calls for the West to establish a “no-fly
zone” over Ukraine and to send replacement fighter aircraft to his
country are clear indications of the dire straights of the UAF.

It seems that Ukraine’s GBAD array, too, was severely damaged by the
Feb. 24 preliminary strike, as well as by subsequent Russian attacks.
According to the Turkish blog ORYX, whose reliability was verified by
its coverage of the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, the Ukrainians had
lost—at the time of writing—22 S-300 launchers as well as 17 other
short-range GBAD batteries.[5] That some Ukrainian GBAD capability did
survive is attested to by the alleged reluctance of the Russian Air
Force to operate in Ukraine’s skies. A hint is provided by the Russian
armed forces’ disclosure that it had attacked a Ukrainian S300 radar on
April 5—indicating that the Ukrainians still had serviceable air
defenses more than five weeks after the outbreak of the war. At
Ukraine’s behest, four S-300 batteries were provided by Eastern European
neighbors still operating this venerable ex-Soviet system.

In summary, then, while Russia managed to bring UAF manned aircraft
operations to a near standstill, it still lacks (at this time) an
uncontested control of Ukraine’s airspace, particularly at low altitudes
that are within the range of MANPADs (Man Portable Air Defense Systems,
that now include the modern Western systems being rushed into Ukraine
from the United States and European countries). This is a testimony to
the bravery and steadfastness of Ukraine’s soldiers in their struggle
against a much superior Russian air force. It also demonstrates the
perseverance and power of the Russian armed forces, based on qualitative
and quantitative superiority as well as the capacity to cover the entire
national territory of Ukraine with cruise and ballistic missile fire. It
seems at present that Russia has the wherewithal to achieve full air
supremacy over Ukraine. Whether it will succeed in doing so remains to
be seen.

The impression is that the brunt of the attacks on UAF assets have been
via cruise, rather than ballistic missiles. The Russian SS-26 Iskander
precision quasi-ballistic missiles can reach deep into Ukraine from
launching points in the eastern part of the country as well as from
Belarus. Photographic evidence shows their use against Ukraine’s
military and civilian infrastructure, for example a salvo of four
Iskander missiles taking off from Belarus and demolishing a regional
Ukrainian military headquarters compound. Yet there seems to be a lack
of evidence for Iskander attacks against UAF targets—perhaps because
such attacks were not recorded.

The assumed preference of cruise over ballistic missiles in dealing with
UAF assets—if true—begs for an explanation. A lack of Iskander missiles
is not plausible: the Russians have been firing them in abundance since
the beginning of the invasion—100 rounds just in the first week of the
fighting.[6] Perhaps the explanation lies in the different warheads,
since those of the Iskander’s ballistic missiles are generally heavier.
Perhaps cruise missiles with their lighter warheads are reserved for
softer targets like air force assets, while the heavier Iskanders are
used against more hardened targets. This, of course, is speculation that
has not been corroborated at the time of writing.

Beyond the extensive use of the current generation of legacy precision
missiles, the Russians unleashed one of their cutting-edge missiles—the
air-launched, hypersonic Kinzahl, making its debut on the world’s
battlefields. The Kinzahl, which has a range of 2,000 kilometers (1,240
miles), is launched from the MiG-31 heavy combat aircraft on the usual
curving trajectory, but has tremendous maneuvering capability once it
reenters the atmosphere. Hence, it can be fired in an offset direction
but curve at the last minute into the target. This prevents the defender
from guessing the intended target or predicting the final trajectory of
the missile, rendering all existing missile defense systems (based on
trajectory prediction) impotent against this type of threat.

At the end of March, the Russian Army spokesperson disclosed that Russia
had already used this weapon on three occasions: To attack an ammunition
dump in western Ukraine, to hit a parking garage in downtown Kyiv
where—according to the Russians—the Ukrainians hid Grad rocket launchers
and against fuel dumps in the city of Mikolaiv in Southern Ukraine. The
missiles were launched from a distance of 1,000 kilometers (620 miles).
The Russians’ justification for employing such defense-evading missiles
against a country that lacks missile defense was that the Kinzahl’s
tremendous terminal speed was essential for penetrating bunkers and
underground structures. [7].

This explanation is not too convincing, especially when considering the
attack on fuel dumps. It is more likely that the Russians chose to use
this cutting-edge weapon rather than more conventional missiles for a
“shock and awe” effect against the United States and its allies. The
psychological impact was indeed significant, and the appearance of the
Kinzahl on the battlefield reignited the heated debate on why the United
States still lacks weapons of similar capabilities.

Ukraine has its own missile industry, and during the years preceding the
current war, it disclosed the development of an Iskander—like precision
missile. It also developed the Polonez precision rocket, sold to
Azerbaijan and used during the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war. Yet there is
no evidence of any Ukrainian indigenous missiles being used in the
present war.

At the same time, evidence shows that Ukraine is using its Soviet-era
SS-21 Tochka missiles. Various sources estimate that Ukraine had about
500 missiles of this type and up to 90 launchers at the onset of the
war. This short-range missile (120 to 140 kilometers or 75-85 miles)
often carries an anti-personnel cluster munition warhead. On one
occasion, a Ukrainian Tochka missile hit the Sea of Azov port of
Berdyansk, now occupied by Russia. The Russians claimed that they had
intercepted that missile, but images of its debris don’t show any
evidence supporting this claim.

On two well-advertised occasions, Tochka missiles caused massive
civilian loss of life. On March 14, a Tochka missile hit the city of
Donetsk—the capital of the pro- Russian Donetsk People’s Republic
(DPR)—killing 20 civilians and triggering a Russian accusation of
“genocide.” On April 4,another Tochka hit a train station in the
Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, killing 59 civilians. The spent rocket
section of the missile carried the enigmatic inscription “For the
Children.” This event may have been retaliation by the DPR for the
earlier missile attack on Donetsk attributed to Ukraine.

It seems that beyond their effect on the cognitive battlefield,
Ukraine’s ballistic missiles have had no discernable effect on the
course of the land battles. One caveat: On April 1, a fire broke out in
an oil depot in the Russian city of Belgorod, located 40 kilometers (25
miles) from Ukraine’s border. One smartphone video shows what seems to
be three missiles slamming into the depot. On April 25, two oil storage
tanks in the Russian city of Bryansk, 150 kilometers (93 miles) from the
Ukraine border caught fire simultaneously. Russia blamed it on Ukrainian
helicopter attacks. Ukraine denied responsibility for the Belgorod event
but refused to comment on the Bryansk fire. Some observers argue that
both events were caused by the Ukrainian Tochka missile attacks.[8]
Perhaps the Ukrainians did put their Tochka missiles to a better and
more strategically significant use than mere propaganda.

In summary, then, it seems that in spite of their problematic
reliability and occasional accuracy problems, Russia’s ballistic and
cruise missiles (of which more than 1,000 rounds are estimated to have
been used at the time of writing) were effective in suppressing the UAF
combat capability as well as Ukraine’s air defenses. Ukraine does not
possess modern missile defense weapons. According to various sources,
UAF fighter aircraft managed to shoot down some Russian cruise missiles.

In a televised April 25 interview, an anonymous Ukraine fighter pilot
stated that he had managed to shoot down two out of six cruise missiles
launched by the Russian navy from the Caspian Sea at Odessa.[9] While he
describes this as a “satisfactory achievement,” the Ukrainian pilot
admitted that it was more effective to combat cruise missiles from the
ground, and stressed the need for modern GBAD and anti-missile systems.
With no effective protection, Ukraine’s air bases, logistic centers and
ammunition depots are largely exposed to Russian deep-striking precision
cruise missiles. At the time of writing, the other missiles used by the
respective sides—the ultramodern “Kinzahl” and the obsolete
“Tochka”—seem to have had no significant effect except on the cognitive
battlefield.

UAVs

One other significant dimension of the Battle of Ukraine is the
extensive use of UAVs by both sides, for obtaining visual intelligence
as well as for ground attack. In 2019, Ukraine purchased from Turkey 20
Bayraktar TB2 armed UAVs, a type that later on proved its mettle in the
2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war as well as in sundry other conflicts in the
Middle East and North Africa. The Ukrainians have been using them
against the invading Russians since the outbreak of the war.

Like the Azerbaijanis in the 2020 war, the Ukrainians also used videos
from their UAVs successes for propaganda, releasing action videos
recorded by the Bayraktar’ cameras of Russian armor and vehicles being
hit. Yet, in contrast to the decisive role of the Bayraktars UAVs
against Armenia’s army in 2020, their impact in the current Battle for
Ukraine seems marginal.

As of April 12, the Turkish ORYX blog listed total Russian mobile
equipment losses as 476 tanks, 849 armored personnel carriers and 787
trucks. Of these, only six armored personnel carriers and 24 trucks but
not a single tank were attributed to Bayraktar strikes. The results were
somewhat better with regard to Russian mobile GBAD systems: Out of 25
systems lost by Russia, 10 were attributed to Bayraktar strikes.

It seems that the Bayraktar operators (some of whom were Turkish,
judging by the soundtrack of one of those videos) strove to emulate
their strategy from the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, when they first
destroyed most of Armenia’s GBAD systems, thereby freeing them to go
after its armor, trucks and troop concentration. It seems, however, that
this time the Turkish-made UAVs did not repeat their former success, as
evident from the negligible amount of Russian equipment they destroyed.
Moreover, since each Bayraktar video is date-stamped, scrutiny of the
strike dates indicates that after the first week of the war, the success
rate started to decline, coming to a virtual stop in mid-March, after
which date Bayraktar kills became rather rare.

Two different explanations can be offered for this decline in the
recorded kill rate of the Bayraktars. First, the more modern Russian
mobile air defense systems were more successful than the obsolete
Armenian ones in shooting down the slow-flying and vulnerable Bayraktar
UAVs. Second—an explanation offered by some Turkish observers—is that
the Ukrainians decided to decrease the media exposure of their combat
UAVs to divert Russian attention. This second explanation sounds
artificial and even if true, is by itself an indirect confirmation of
the first one—that the Russians got the measure of the Bayraktars and
were shooting them down at a high rate.

The Ukrainians are making extensive use of Unmanned Helicopter Vehicles
(UHVs).[10] An article published in a leading Western newspaper
describes the establishment, several years ago, of a heavy UHV unit in
Ukraine staffed by volunteers and UHV enthusiasts. The unit’s personnel
developed their own brand of heavy, eight-rotors UHVs, that could carry
light bombs.

The founder of that unit was a Ukrainian high-tech expert who had
participated in the 2014 “color revolution” that deposed the incumbent
pro-Russian president. Financing of R&D and production came from small
government budgets and crowdsourcing. At the outset of the Russian
invasion, a substantial armored column approached Kyiv from the north.
The Ukrainian VHS unit sortied out, moving by night aboard all-terrain
vehicles. Bombs from their heavy VHSs destroyed the leading vehicles of
the column, thereby bringing it to a dead stop. The unit’s VHSs then
concentrated on the destruction of fuel and supply trucks at the tail
end of the convoy, paralyzing it for several days.

According to this report, the Russian tried to disrupt the Ukrainian
UHVs by electronic interference, but had to stop from time to time to
allow their own UAVs to operate. The Ukrainians exploited the pauses in
electronic interference to launch their own heavy UHVs.[11] As we have
already observed above, the information provided by both sides in this
war is highly biased, and the story of how a crowdsourced group of
high-tech enthusiasts stopped a Russian armored column seems biased
enough. However, some indirect corroboration for the story, or at least
parts of it, comes from a Russian-released video showing a mobile air
defense system shooting down a heavy, eight-rotor Ukrainian UHV.

Apart from militarized heavy UHVs, the Ukrainians are making an
extensive use of commercial-grade UHVs of the kinds available from
consumer goods vendors. Social media is flooded with images captured by
commercial-grade UHVs depicting Russian forces in the field, the
destruction of Russian armor as well as war crimes committed by Russian
troops against Ukrainian civilians. Ukrainian supporters in the West are
contributing hundreds of commercial-grade UHVs to the Ukrainian
forces.[12] It seems that commercial UHVs are rendering the battlefield
transparent, making it impossible to hide military forces. Their
position and movements are constantly monitored in real-time, at least
in clear weather and mostly during the daytime.

Russia, in turn, has thrown into battle all its types of UAVs. The
primary type for tactical reconnaissance is the Orlan 10, an
infantry-operated UAV for “beyond the hill” observation. RMOD releases
show several types of combat UAVs in action against Ukrainian forces.
One type of armed UAV featured by the RMOD is the Forepost-R, a Russian
version of the unarmed Israeli Searcher 2 UAV sold years ago to Russia
(Ukrainian released video footage shows the Israeli tags on the
instrumentation of a downed Forepost-B).

Russia’s leading armed UAV, equivalent to the Ukrainian-operated
Bayraktar, is the Inokhodets (called Orion in its export version). This
is a rather large UAV that can carry up to 250 kilograms (550 lbs) of
ordnance, including air-to-air missiles for combating helicopters. One
Russian-released video shows an Inokhodets UAV attacking ground targets
with anti-tank missiles. At least one Inokhodets was shot down, probably
by a Ukrainian MANPAD. In addition, the Russians unveiled their own
suicide UAV, the KUB, which outwardly resembles the Iranian Shahed 136
of the 2019 raid on the Saudi oil installation fame. Yet with all this
large selection of Russian armed UAVs, their impact on the ground
campaign seems limited at best.

Conclusions

The war in Ukraine is the largest land battle since the 1991 Gulf War.
This article focused on the effect of precision missiles and UAVs on
this battle. The following conclusions should be taken with a degree of
caution, since they are based on incomplete, conflicting and biased
information. The Battle of Ukraine is far from over, and its future
course may confirm or refute the impressions now offered. With this
cautionary caveat, let us proceed to draw some conclusions from the
evidence to date.

According to open-source evidence, it seems that Russia’s precision
missiles—both cruise and ballistic—have significantly suppressed the
UAF’s combat capability, largely preventing it from interfering with
Russia’s maneuvering ground forces after the first few days of the war.
It stands to reason that air combat was also significant in reducing the
size of the UAF fighter force. Yet, the description of UAF fighters
forced to take off and land on the remaining serviceable stretches of
cratered runways testifies to the effectiveness of precision missiles in
shutting down airbases. This is an important lesson for Western air
forces, and especially so for the Israeli Air Force.

As for unmanned aircraft, it seems that their most significant impact is
in providing real-time battlefield reconnaissance. UAVs and
UHVs—including commercial-grade systems—have brought about “the
transparent battlefield” where nothing can be hidden. At the same time,
it seems the ground attacks by armed UAVs of both sides had no
discernable effect on the course of the battle. This is somewhat
surprising given the decisive role of armed UAVs in recent land battles
in northern Syria, Libya and the Caucasus.

Two reasons can be offered for these contradictory results: First,
compared to the land-based firepower from artillery and anti-tank
weapons, the level of firepower provided by armed UAVs is negligible.
Second, that the modern Russian GBAD protecting its advancing troops
took the measure of the Ukrainian armed UAVs—the Turkish Bayraktars—and
managed to shoot them down at a rate exceeding their replenishment
rate—if indeed the Turks did offer any replenishment. It is estimated
that on the eve of the war Ukraine had 20 Bayraktar UAVs in service. It
seems then that the Russians managed to shoot down most of them during
the first three weeks of the war—a lengthy but not unreasonable period
of time.

It follows then that armed UAVs may have a significant effect in
low-intensity wars and against unsophisticated antagonists. The
vulnerability of the larger types such as the Turkish Bayraktars and the
Russian Inokhodets to modern GBAD reduces their ability to affect land
battle in high-intensity conflicts (the jury is still out about the
effect of suicide UAVs). This too is an important lesson to Western air
forces. It seems that in ground attack missions, manned aircraft are
destined to be replaced not by unmanned aircraft, but by precision
missiles fired from hundreds of kilometers away. It will be the defense
against such missiles—both of the cruising and ballistic types—that will
decide the outcome of future wars.

Uzi Rubin was founder and first director (1991-1999) of the Israel
Missile Defense Organization in the Israeli Defense Ministry, which
developed, produced and deployed the country’s first national defense
shield—the Arrow Weapon System. He subsequently served as Senior
Director for Proliferation and Technology in the National Security
Council (1999-2001), and directed several defense programs at the Israel
Aerospace Industries and in the Defense Ministry. He was twice awarded
the Israel Defense Prize (1996 and 2003), and was also awarded the U.S.
Missile Defense Agency “David Israel” Prize (2000). He has been a
visiting scholar at the Stanford Center for International Security and
Arms Control, where he directed a study on missile proliferation.

This article was first published by the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy
and Security.

Notes:

[1] Mittal, V. How The Ukrainian Military Strategy Stalled the Russian
Offensive, Harper, March 27, 2022

https://www.forbes.com/sites/vikrammittal/2022/03/27/how-the-ukrainians-military-strategy-stalled-the-russian-offensive/?sh=3eeb248c30a0

[2] Personal information provided to the present author by a former
commander of the Estonian Air Force, a Soviet air force serviceman in
his past. He received the information by phone on the morning of the
Russian invasion from his former Soviet Army colleagues now serving in
the Ukrainian armed forces.

[3]Barrie, D. Ukraine: Russia’s Air-Launched Cruise Missiles Coming Up
Short, IISS, April 1st 2022

https://www.iiss.org/blogs/military-balance/2022/04/ukraine-russias-air-launched-cruise-missiles-coming-up-short

[4] Veronikova, M and Kramer, Andrew E. How Ukraine’s Air Force is
Fighting Back Against Russian Jets, The New York Times March 31 2022

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/22/world/europe/ukraine-air-force-russia.html

[5] Attack on Europe: Documenting Equipment Losses During the 2022
Russian Invasion of Ukraine, Oryx, April 4, 2022

Attack On Europe: Documenting Russian Equipment Losses During The 2022
Russian Invasion Of Ukraine – Oryx (oryxspioenkop.com)

[6] mil.in.ua(pro- Ukrainian blog) “Iskander Shelling: In a Week, Over
100 Missiles Were Fired From Belarus”, March 30 2022

https://mil.in.ua/en/news/iskander-shelling-in-a-week-over-100-missiles-were-fired-from-belarus/

[7]Is the US Losing the Arms Race to Russia and China? Defense News
Weekly Full Episode March 26 2022

https://www.defensenews.com/video/2022/03/28/is-the-us-losing-an-arms-race-to-russia-and-china-defense-news-weekly-full-episode-32622/

[8] Axe, D. Fuel and Ammo Depots Keep Blowing Up in Russia, Forbes April
26, 2022

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2022/04/26/fuel-and-ammo-depots-keep-blowing-up-in-russia-ukraines-ballistic-missiles-might-be-why/?sh=1654537b46c5

[9] MSNBC, April 25 2022
https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/news/ukrainian-fighter-pilot-moonfish-discusses-war-in-the-sky/vi-AAWzd8l?ocid=msedgdhp

[10] In the present article, unmanned fixed-wing unmanned aircraft that
take off horizontally are dubbed UAVs. Unmanned multi-rotor helicopters
that take off vertically are dubbed UHVs.

[11]Borger, J., “The Drone Operators Who Halted Russian Convoy Headed
For Kyiv,” The Guardian, March 28, 2022

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/28/the-drone-operators-who-halted-the-russian-armoured-vehicles-heading-for-kyiv

[12] Greenwood, F., “Ukraine War Is Being Watched From Above,” Foreign
Policy, April 2, 2022

https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/04/02/russia-ukraine-war-drones-risks/