Why is Ukraine attacking S-400 SAM sites? And why can’t the S-400 defend itself against ATACMS?

Why is Ukraine attacking S-400 SAM sites? And why can’t the S-400 defend itself against ATACMS?

In late May, a video of an atacms with cluster munition warhead emerged, destroying a, what looked to be, an S-400 sam battery. Secondary explosions of ready to launch missiles pretty much confirmed it was a real battery, and not some decoy. Further videos showed some of the aftermath. That happened near the city of Donetsk. But what’s interesting is that event was not a one off. In fact, that’s been going on for some time and similar attacks on russian SAM sites have even stepped up a bit after that. This video will explain why those attacks became more numerous. Why the focus on Crimea? What might be the ultimate goal? And why have Russian S-400 SAMs often showed to be inadequate to protect themselves? To continue that timeline of attacks, we have to point out that In mid May, an S-400 engagement radar was also destroyed in crimea. In early June russian long range sam near belgorod, north of kharkiv was struck. Then in mid June several long range sams all over crimea were struck. While there is little photographic evidence, so websites tracking losses like the oryx don’t mention them all, there was a russian oriented telegram account fighterbomber, which claimed such strikes did in fact happen. AnotherTelegram channel ASTRA, though less-pro russian oriented, claimed that Ukraine damaged or destroyed 2 Russian S-300 systems and 4 radars during the June 10 night attacks on Crimea. It would appear that 3 to 4 sites were indeed struck, at least some of them being S400, and some of them being S300. And that all suffered damage or destruction to their radars, which are basically the heart of any SAM battery. So why is Ukraine seeing so much success lately? And why crimea? Well, some of those russian sam batteries were positioned really close to the front. The one near donetsk was less than 50 kilometers away. That’s enough for a variety of ukrainian weapons to reach it. The SAM near belgorod too was basically in reach of a regular GMLRS missile fired from a himars. Crimean batteries, however, were farther away from the frontline. 160 to 200 kilometers, not counting the Sevastopol one. That one was roughly 250 kilometers away. All those were hit by atacms missiles. Which have a range up to 300 kilometers. And which were, crucially, sent in larger quantities after the US approved more aid this past April. It took some time for the missiles to actually arrive in Ukraine, but when they did arrive, they started having visible impact. Cluster munition Atacms is perfectly suited for such attacks. And obviously Ukraine received some from the US, judging by the videos. Unitary warheads could have been used too in some of the attacks. But due to possible jamming and the unarmored nature of targets, cluster warheads are a better choice. They disperse farther away from a possible jammer and cover a wider area. Providing better chances of a hit. Now, it’s unknown how many such missiles the US sent. Since the new aid started trickling in, 3 PDA urgent aid announcements were made by the US. Those are shipments directly from US military stocks. They totalled a bit under 1.7 billion dollars. In theory, that’s enough to account for over a thousand atacms, but its unlikely the US sent so many. One, there’s lots of other important arms to be sent. And two, the US doesn’t have countless atacms missiles in the first place. Previously, it was very careful not to send too many until it started getting replacement missiles. Also, cluster munition atacms are fairly low in inventory. Especially the gps kind with the longer reach. US had decided to rework their cluster munition atacms into unitary warhead variants. And most of those actually underwent that process before the war in Ukraine started. Since then the process was stopped so an unknown number of cluster munition atacms was left. But in the best case scenario for Ukraine, if none of the longer ranged atacms with cluster warheads were converted yet, some 490 missiles might still be available. The unitary warhead variant is more plentiful, and there’s for sure over 15 hundred left over. With the atacms production being restarted and new missiles coming in, there’s high likelihood Ukraine might be getting several hundred such unitary warhead missiles per year. But all that is for the medium term future. The near term future is this. All these anti SAM attacks were done to prepare groundwork for the imminent arrival of F-16s. Those may come within mere weeks and might start their missions just weeks later. Against an F16 with 20 or 30 year old technology, an s400 is still a very potent piece of weaponry. So those long range russian SAMS have to be thinned out. So why the focus on crimea? Because there the US can find the SAMS more easily. Just dozens of miles away from Crimea US and NATO planes regularly fly recon routes. They use cameras, radars creating synthetic images, radio signals locators and so on. And they can watch strikes in real time. During those strikes in mid June, US global hawk recon drone was flying close to Crimea, possibly doing a damage assessment mission. The US also has a vast fleet of recon satellites to rely on, but in Crimea those are augmented by recon planes. That’s not possible to do near kharkiv or donetsk, due to geography. That may be part of the reason why Crimea was focused on. Not because it’s the most important target set, but because it’s easiest to attack. Both for atacms and later on for F16s. Over Crimea, Russia is likely to have fewer fighter jets intercepting ukrainian planes. At least not without NATO sending ample warning, through their awacs planes. If russian defenses are further neutralized by thinning out their SAMs in crimea – then crimea becomes the obvious place of attack for ukraine. Ukraine would lose fewer planes attacking crimea than it would lose if it tried to attack the donbas region. Other reason may be political. Or symbolic. Crimea is a symbol to both ukraine and russia. Hitting crimea repeatedly might achieve a greater morale effect. Which ukraine sorely needs lately. And in the end, why did S400 fare badly against atacms? Well, we don’t know how badly it fared, as we don’t know how many atacms were used in each attack. Any sam battery has a finite number of targets it can engage. And s400, despite its fame, is actually not well optimized against saturation attacks. Sure, against F16s it could be absolutely deadly. Those fly farther away, and probably won’t be numerous. But a salvo of missiles coming straight towards an s400 – that’s not so easy to intercept. Those missiles don’t all have to be atacms. Some could be simpler missiles just to overwhelm the defenses. But s400 for the most part uses semi active guided missiles. That has limitations. In theory, S400 fields a variety of missiles. But, in actual Russian service, the smaller 9M96 missile is not used with S400 launchers. So far it was only spotted, very rarely, in exported SAM batteries. Which is unfortunate for russia as that’s an active radar guided missile. Those don’t need as much help from their engagement radars and more can be directed against more targets at once. Rather, said missile is available in fairly low numbers and is being fielded in a separate system, the S-350. Which is having development issues and not many of those systems have been deployed yet by russia. In a way, said system might be a better choice when it comes to missile defense. The S-400 battery is credited by its manufacturer to be able to handle, quote, up to 10 targets at one time. But that’s very likely when using either the 9M96 missile, which isn’t used as we said. Or when using the big 40N6 missile, which is also very likely to use an active radar seeker. But that is also likely available in very low numbers as it’s still fairly new. Its mission profile may not be optimized against ballistic missile defense but for engaging very distant aircraft. So it’s quite possible that most of the S400 in use around Russia rely on 48N6 family of missiles and that they’re limited to just 6 targets being intercepted at one time. So it’s fairly easy to see how a battery of S400 could be overwhelmed simply by a large barrage of missiles coming towards it. S400 is credited by its manufacturer with up to a 60 kilometer reach when fighting ballistic missiles, but in reality that may be less. Atamcs is a maneuvering missile, sort of like the russian own iskander. Atacms speed could be modeled after scud B, if it’s doing a pure ballistic trajectory. But in a maneuvering, depressed trajectory, it likely trades a bit of range and speed for being a harder target to hit. It’s plausible that more realistic anti ballistic mission ranges, when it comes to atacms style missiles, are 25 or so km. That’s because said anti ballistic missile range is claimed by the US PAC-3 and the Chinese HQ9. Coincidentally, a pac-3 battery near kyiv fired off over 20 missiles in less than a minute. It is questionable if s400 is capable of matching such antisaturation defenses. It’s plausible just two salvo of missiles, meaning up to 24 missiles against 12 targets, is all that an S400 has time to guide. And frankly, that’s the best case scenario. In the real world, there’s often uncertainty. People react late. Or interceptor missiles don’t work. Sometimes more than 2 missiles may be required to actually intercept a target. Some atacms might slip through. Especially if there are many fired at once. Even several fired at once might not be trivial to intercept in real world conditions. It’s not that all atacms are going through. Russian sources claimed at times they intercepted 8 atacms on certain days. Not known if all were striking the same targets. But evidently, Russia is struggling to intercept enough of them. So, Ukraine might be burning through their atacms stocks, but it may be worth it. Removing an S400 battery is a huge deal. Russia produces only several of those per year. At the current pace, skies over part of Ukraine, especially over Crimea, might indeed be somewhat open. Maybe enough so that Ukrainian F16s can indeed do some damage.

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This video will explain why attacks on S-400 became more numerous. Why the focus on Crimea? What might be the ultimate goal? And why have Russian S-400 SAMs often showed to be inadequate to protect themselves?

00:00 Intro
00:52 Attacks on S-400
08:05 Why did S-400 fail?

Music by Matija Malatestinic http://www.malatestinic.com

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