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Times
03-08-2025
- Politics
- Times
How Ukraine's air defence warriors take aim at Putin's drone swarms
Russian jets were flying fast towards the Ukrainian anti-aircraft battery. Lightning flashed and thunder roared in the night sky above, sending rain lashing against the branches concealing its position. 'They might launch KABs [glide bombs],' said 'Kingston', 30, as he watched a pair of red markers move across his radar screen in the battery control cabin. Eleven screens fed information from the skies and the battlefield to six soldiers hunched over them. 'That's a Su-34 with a Su-35 behind covering it. If anyone launches at the Su-34, the Su-35 will engage the battery that fired at his wingman.' The command vehicle is a tangle of wires fusing Soviet engineering to cutting-edge technology that the crew of Squadron Interception Unit, Third Army Corps, are testing on the battlefield for a US arms enterprise, looking to undermine President Putin's new weapon of choice. The jets closed to 110 kilometres, only 40 kilometres shy of bombing range. A third Sukhoi jet appeared. 'They're too far out for us to go to the bomb shelter — and if they launch anti-radar missiles, we won't have time anyway,' Kingston said with a wry grin. 'Don't rush, our radar is off,' said a voice over the radio. Kingston's display shows the scanner from another, more powerful radar, further from the front. The jets cannot hunt Kingston and his comrades with their battery's radar down. Instead, they veer south, releasing their bombs at a less fortunate group of Ukrainians. Nor was the Ukrainian battery hunting the Russian jets. They were focused on another prey. 'No Shaheds yet,' the voice on the radio signed off. Putin is gambling that the long-range Shahed suicide drone could prove to be the decisive weapon of this war. Russian troops are launching hundreds of them a night, terrorising cities in an effort to finally break the will of the Ukrainian people after more than three years of fighting. • Why Ukraine's newest weapons offer a glimpse of the future of war Moscow believes the Iranian design, complemented by cheap Chinese components, can force Kyiv's capitulation. Last month the Kremlin showcased its enormous Shahed production facility at Alabuga on state TV. Production is being ramped up of the weapons, which can now travel up to 1,600 miles with an explosive payload of up to 90kg. Other variants can travel further still. On Thursday the UN said Russia had launched ten times more missile and loitering munition attacks in June this year than the same month last year, killing 232 civilians and injuring 1,343. That was the highest monthly toll in three years, according to the UN. In the latest massive combined missile and drone attack on Kyiv on Wednesday 31 people were killed, including a two-year-old and four other children, and another 159 wounded, according to the Ukrainian authorities. Enormous waves of Shaheds are saturating Ukraine's air defences, forcing them to expend expensive missiles made in far smaller numbers on western production lines. 'By winter we'll be seeing thousands of Shaheds per day, and our government is only now starting to look for solutions,' said Odesit, the battery commander. 'Those solutions were needed yesterday.' The Third Army Corps, under the command of Colonel Andriy Biletsky, has decided not to wait for the slow wheels of Ukraine's government procurement to turn. Instead, it has thrown open its sector of the front to western arms companies for testing, research and development. The interception unit is pioneering the use of technology from an American start-up in the hope it can be scaled up to save Ukraine's cities. Outside the control cabin, stacks of small, fast interceptors wait to be launched, shielded from the rain under sheets of tarpaulin. Sleek and grey like missiles but with wings and miniature propellers, these semi-autonomous drones fly much faster than the Shaheds, homing in on their thermal signatures in order to strike them and explode. 'In a month and half, we downed 60 to 70 Shaheds,' said Odesit. 'We were already trying to hit them even when we just had first-person-view drones. But when we finally got a system that could technically do it, it was euphoria.' The Russians soon realised they had a problem in the battery's area of operation. 'A couple of weeks ago they made a major improvement to the Shahed. It senses something is coming for it,' said Odesit. 'They dodge now. Just before impact, they start manoeuvring. We were the first to encounter it because we downed so many. They tested this on us. It's a new problem we are trying to solve.' The interceptor manufacturer had already sent new equipment to counter the manoeuvres, the men of Third Army Corps said. While the battery waited for another wave of Shaheds, the crew played back video of their most recent successful shoot-down. Their equipment's sensors track heat and movement far further than the human eye can see. • Roger Boyes: Europe must keep Ukraine armed until 2027 A pilot guides the interceptor towards the Shahed at high speed using a controller taken from a popular games console. He locks on to the target. The thermal imaging camera relays each detail of the Shahed's engine back to the battery as the interceptor closes on its target, then strikes. These interceptors are the most effective his unit has tried, Odesit said, although arms companies are racing to provide the best solution to the Shahed attacks. 'We've identified two more interesting types of fixed-wing drones — and people went to train on them. They'll come back and we'll test them in combat conditions,' he said. 'Everything that's advertised as interceptors is mostly hype. The truly effective ones are very few.' The new technology does not always work smoothly. The soldiers have to contact a remote tech support to overcome error messages flashing on screen among lines of code and English-language prompts. Computers, routers and controls are restarted in sequences. 'It's endless,' said Odesit. 'The more complex the technology, the more problems.' The men have had to become rudimentary electricians, fixing cables and testing connections. Their battlefield tests were designed to eliminate these 'bugs', Odesit stressed, praising the manufacturer for providing 24-hour tech support. The soldiers' frontline feedback is vital to improving the system, which they believe is on track to solving the Shahed problem for the entire country. Meanwhile, the radar screens are alight with activity. A wave of Shaheds is attacking Odesa across the sea from Crimea. A Ukrainian helicopter marked blue is engaging a Shahed marked red with a machine gun over the Donbas. A Ukrainian equivalent to the Shahed, Liutiy long-range kamikaze drones, are descending on Russia's Millerovo air base. Millerovo is the primary launch site for drones crossing the battery's operational area and it was hit hard the night before, the crew said. So they settled in for a quiet night, sipping energy drinks to stay focused until their shift finished. The Times departed shortly beforehand for the nearby town of Izyum only to discover that, after seeing their aircraft shot down en masse at night, the Russian Shahed operators here had changed tactics. It was already broad daylight on a weekday morning when the distinctive whine of a Shahed engine finally appeared above the town, growing ever louder as it flew closer. Humming harder as it descended, it skimmed ten metres above the building accommodating The Times, before crashing into a warehouse some 500 metres away. A second followed, sending a grey smoke plume into the air. It is not only the technology that can change and surprise, the Russians have proven. 'The enemy quickly finds countermeasures,' said Odesit. 'Then we find counter-countermeasures. It's constant competition. Whoever's a step ahead gets results.'
Forbes
23-03-2025
- Politics
- Forbes
Ukraine's Jammers Confuse Russia's Glide Bombs. Watch One Stray.
A KAB in mid-flight. Fighterbomber, the unofficial Telegram channel of the Russian air force, has claimed the air force's widely feared KAB or UMPK satellite-guided glide bombs are accurate to within 15 feet of a target. So it's noteworthy when one of the winged bombs, which can glide 25 miles or farther and deliver hundreds or even thousands of pounds of explosives, misses by a wide margin. A miss might mean that Ukrainian jamming, which can disrupt the radio signal between a KAB and its associated navigation satellites, is working—and proliferating. A recording of a Russian drone feed, posted online on or just before Saturday, seems to depict the effects of Ukrainian jamming in real time. In the video, the drone is circling a structure somewhere near the front line in Ukraine—potentially a base for Ukrainian troops—and apparently preparing to assess the damage from a KAB strike that's already underway. The drone has its crosshairs over one particular structure. But when the KAB explodes, it's hundreds of yards away—and in an open field. Wide misses are reportedly becoming common all along the 700-mile front line as more and better Ukrainian jammers cover more of the most important sectors. A KAB explodes harmlessly. 'The golden era of the divine UMPK turned out to be short-lived,' Fighterbomber noted last month. 'The bombs are still flying,' Fighterbomber reported. 'But there's a catch. All satellite-guided correction systems have left the chat.' And for one main reason: Ukrainian radio jammers have become so effective, and so numerous, that they 'saturate the front line.' The glide bombs can't communicate with the GLONASS satellite constellation, Russia's less sophisticated and less expansive answer to the United States' own GPS satellite constellation. Without a steady connection for course correction, the glide bombs tend to stray and harmlessly explode on some field—just like that one video depicts. It seems Ukraine is deploying more than one type of jammer. KABs may be losing accuracy all along the front line, but one leading Ukrainian jammer manufacturer has copped to covering just a few key sectors, including Kharkiv in the north and Zaporizhzhia in the south. Night Watch's new Lima jammer isn't a traditional model that simply blasts radio noise toward the enemy. 'We use digital interference,' a representative of the 10-person Night Watch electronic warfare team told Forbes. It's 'a combination of jamming, spoofing and information cyber attack on the navigation receiver.' 'After the deployment of the [electronic warfare] system, the accuracy of the bombings first decreased and then, realizing the ineffectiveness of this method of destruction and the impossibility of achieving the goal, the enemy stopped shelling regional centers altogether,' the rep claimed. Some KABs are still flying, of course—the recent video proves that. But they may be targeting sectors where the Ukrainians haven't yet deployed their best new jammers. As the jammers arrive, the bombs should begin to stray off course—and blow up fields instead of buildings full of Ukrainian troops.
Yahoo
07-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Ukraine war latest: North Korean soldiers 'brought in again' to fight in Kursk Oblast, Zelensky says
Key developments on Feb. 7: North Korean soldiers "brought in again" to fight in Kursk Oblast, Zelensky says Ukraine downs Russian guided bomb near Zaporizhzhia, Air Force says Kyiv denies reports of alleged failed Russian Oreshnik missile launch at Ukraine Trump ready to step up Russia sanctions to end war in Ukraine, special envoy says North Korean soldiers were "brought in again" by Russia to the embattled Kursk Oblast, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his evening address on Feb. 7. Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi briefed Zelensky about new Russian attacks in Kursk Oblast, a day after Russian media claimed Ukraine had launched a new offensive in the Russian region. "A significant number of occupiers have been eliminated, we are talking hundreds of Russian and North Korean servicemen," the president said. The Kyiv Independent could not verify these claims. The New York Times reported on Jan. 30 that North Korean troops had been pulled from the front, and a Special Operations Forces spokesperson confirmed to the Kyiv Independent that Ukraine's special forces had not faced Pyongyang's soldiers for three weeks. Ukraine's spy chief Kyrylo Budanov denied these reports. He said that the number of North Korean troops has decreased, and Ukraine is trying to establish why. "A total of 60,000 Russian troops in Kursk Oblast are 60,000 that have not replenished the already significant occupier's forces in Pokrovsk and other sectors in our Donetsk Oblast," Zelensky said. Ukrainian forces shot down a Russian guided aerial bomb near the front-line southern city of Zaporizhzhia on Feb. 7, Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat told Interfax-Ukraine. Guided aerial bombs (KABs), while having a shorter range than missiles, are cheaper to produce and are launched from aircraft within Russian territory or Russian-occupied territories, beyond the reach of Ukrainian air defense. They are nearly impossible to shoot down because they have heavy iron structures, and come in extremely fast from high altitudes, unlike cruise missiles or drones, according to experts. According to Ihnat, it was not the first time Ukraine downed a guided bomb. "To counter this threat, we need a comprehensive approach — both the use of ground-based air defense and aviation components to drive the carriers of these KABs as far as possible," the spokesperson said, without specifying how the target was shot down. His remarks came after Telegram channels reported that Ukrainian soldiers had down the guided aerial bomb on the morning of Feb. 7, allegedly using experimental weaponry. Read also: Trump's ICC sanctions won't hinder Russian war crimes investigation, Kyiv says Ukraine's Center for Strategic Communication and Information Security on Feb. 7 refuted media reports of Russia's alleged failed launch of its new intermediate-range ballistic missile, the Oreshnik, at Ukraine. The statement came after Forbes, citing Ukrainian soldier and blogger Kyrylo Sazonov, wrote that Russia launched another Oreshnik missile on Feb. 6 "apparently targeting Kyiv." Sazonov claimed that the missile "didn't fly far" and exploded in Russia. "The article in the U.S. media is based only on Sazonov's assumptions, not on actual data," the statement, published by the center that operates under Ukraine's Culture and Information Ministry, read. Neither Ukraine nor Russia has officially reported the launch of Oreshnik. Read also: Ukraine expecting important decisions at Ramstein meeting, Foreign Ministry says U.S. President Donald Trump is prepared to double down on the sanctions against Russia to pressure the Kremlin into ending its war against Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, the U.S. special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, told The New York Post in an interview published on Feb. 6. According to Kellogg, current U.S. sanctions on Russia, particularly those targeting its energy sector, amount to a "3 on a 10-point scale" regarding economic pressure. He argued there is significant room to strengthen them further. "You could really increase the sanctions — especially the latest sanctions (targeting oil production and exports)," Kellogg said. "It's opened the aperture way high to do something." He added that Trump has already gathered his national security team, including Vice President J.D. Vance and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, to discuss a coordinated strategy to end the war. Kellogg criticized former President Joe Biden's approach of supporting Ukraine "as long as it takes," calling it "a bumper sticker, not a strategy." Kellogg emphasized that Trump's administration is focused on a "holistic approach" to ending the war, combining support for Ukraine with increased pressure on Russia. Trump's special envoy is expected to visit Ukraine later this month for talks with Ukrainian officials, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's Chief of Staff Andriy Yermak said on Feb. 7. Read also: Zelensky, Trump may meet in Washington next week Ukraine War Latest is put together by the Kyiv Independent news desk team, who keep you informed 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If you value our work and want to ensure we have the resources to continue, join the Kyiv Independent community. We've been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
Yahoo
07-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Ukraine downs Russian guided bomb near Zaporizhzhia, Air Force says
Ukrainian forces shot down a Russian guided aerial bomb near the front-line southern city of Zaporizhzhia on Feb. 7, Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat told Interfax-Ukraine. Guided aerial bombs (KABs), while having a shorter range than missiles, are cheaper to produce and are launched from aircraft within Russian territory or Russian-occupied territories, beyond the reach of Ukrainian air defense. They are nearly impossible to shoot down because they have heavy iron structures, and come in extremely fast from high altitudes, unlike cruise missiles or drones, according to experts. According to Ihnat, it was not the first time Ukraine downed a guided bomb. "To counter this threat, we need a comprehensive approach — both the use of ground-based air defense and aviation components to drive the carriers of these KABs as far as possible," the spokesperson said, without specifying how the target was shot down. His remarks came after Telegram channels reported that Ukrainian soldiers had down the guided aerial bomb on the morning of Feb. 7, allegedly using experimental weaponry. Russia regularly attacks Ukrainian front-line settlements with guided bombs. Over the past week, a total of 760 such bombs were launched at Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky said. According to the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, Russian glide bombs killed 360 Ukrainian civilians in 2024, and injured 1,861, a threefold increase in fatalities, and a sixfold increase in injuries compared to 2023. Read also: Russia's primitive glide bombs are still outmatching Ukraine's air defenses, killing more civilians We've been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
