During the third year of the war, Russia demonstrates complete air superiority not only at the aviation and missile level, but also among the front line brigades using cheap FPV drones.
At the beginning of the conflict in February 2022, Ukrainian, Russian, Western media, and the military community noted that when the Russian army first entered Ukraine, Russian units lacked unmanned aerial vehicle (UAVs) and proper air reconnaissance.
However, in the third year, the Russian military industrial complex, army, and volunteers managed to turn the situation in Russia’s favour by establishing the production and use of cheap first-person view (FPV) drones. Meanwhile, Ukrainians are actively complaining about the insufficient efforts of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) in the sky. According to Ukrainian media, they also note the superiority of the Russian army in the air confrontation.
Footage of vivid examples of Russian troops using different air offensive capabilities surfaced online. The first footage shows a Russian Iskander-M operational-tactical missile system hitting an AFU’s S-300PT surface-to-air missile system division at Polyviane, Poltava region. The video also captured a secondary detonation.
The tactic of ammunition dropping has been developed since the beginning of the conflict in Donbas (a common name for the Luhansk and Donetsk regions). Other footage show the destruction of a Ukrainian Su-25 aircraft by a Lancet drone barrage munition at Dovhintsevo airfield, Dnipropetrovsk region.
Cheap Russian drones destroy costly military vehicles
Russian troops are meanwhile advancing towards the Ukrainian town of Chasiv Yar, according to reports on Sunday, 10 June, Euractiv informs. The town is 20 kilometres west of Bakhmut, a Ukrainian city that Russian forces seized a year ago after months of fighting. Both sides consider it a potential bridgehead for a Russian offensive on the key cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.
Another video demonstrates a projectile dropped from a Russian UAV hitting a US-made International M1224 MaxxPro MRAP (Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected) armoured fighting vehicle. Having problems with its centre of gravity, the MRAP overturned when hitting an obstacle and was subsequently destroyed by the Russian drone at Chasiv Yar.
Moreover, Russian troops hit another US-made M1A1SA Abrams tank at the town of Ocheretyne, north-west of Avdiivka. According to the footage, a cheap Russian kamikaze drone targeted a tank belonging to the 47th Separate Mechanised Brigade of the AFU.
The destruction of heavy equipment and armoured vehicles by cheap Russian drones, as well as the ability to record this from other reconnaissance UAVs, demonstrates Russia’s airspace superiority on the front lines.
