It’s the deepest Ukrainian drone strike of the war, so far
A month after Ukraine began bombarding targets inside Russia with explosives-laden sports planes modified for remote flight, one of the do-it-yourself drones has struck an oil refinery in the city of Salavat, more than 800 miles from the front line of Russia’s wider war on Ukraine.
It is, by far, Ukraine’s longest-range raid—and an escalation of Ukraine’s deep-strike campaign targeting Russian refineries, factories and strategic military sites.
And it’s at least the fourth attempted deep strike involving Ukraine’s sport-plane drones. Videos shot by people on the ground in Salavat clearly depict the wide straight wings, fixed wheels and propeller that are typical of an inexpensive sport plane, the kind a middle-class pilot can build at home from a kit costing as little as $90,000.
How come they can’t shoot it down before it arrives?
They’re flying these in very low and slow, which is hard for SAM radars to detect and lock on to unless you’re right up next to them – and once they’re past the front lines Russia doesn’t have many (if any) point defense installations.
In fact I imagine that the economic impacts of these attacks may be a secondary goal, and the main intent is actually to force Russia to pull SAM systems off the front line and redeploy them across the Russian interior to defend facilities they thought were safely out of Ukraine’s reach. The fewer defenses on the front line, the more capable Ukraine’s air force is to support efforts on the ground.
Ukraine playing pro dota and forcing dire to ward their own jungle.
Ideally, they redeploy and still can’t shoot the fuckers down lol
Russia’s air defense had a backbone of Cold War era tech before the war started. Ukraine has been consistently plinking away at it. Most of it is naturally positioned near borders to prevent penetration. If you sneak past the coverage thins out quickly. Russia is a huge country so it’s also understandable to not have high density coverage throughout.
At one point Russia had a great setup. But that time was long ago. And oil money going to modernization efforts means less yacht money. Air defense also isn’t that critical when you’re mostly concerned about beating up on small countries like Georgia and Chechnya that can’t fight back.
I imagine it’s too small, and perhaps made mostly of plastic and/or wood, so they might not show up on radar
Wood generally has enough water in it to show up on radar. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be a point to expensive composite materials for stealth.
It’s made of mostly metal, though.
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