from
https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-ukraine-war-advanced-air-defenses-failed-drone-strikes-2023-9

Why Ukraine is able to embarrass Russia's air defense systems, among the
most advanced in the world, with small drones

Alia Shoaib Sep 2, 2023, 3:27 AM PDT
A man holds a remote control and looks up at a drone in the sky.
A Ukrainian serviceman operating a drone on August 17. Viacheslav
Ratynskyi/Reuters

Recent drone attacks in Russia have exposed weaknesses in the country's
advanced air defenses.
Most of these were built to identify and destroy targets like missiles,
a drone expert said.
As a result, smaller drones have been able to evade detection and strike
targets on Russian soil.

Recent drone attacks across Russia have exposed the country's supposedly
sophisticated air defense systems as they struggle to account for the
relatively small, hard-to-detect drones, an analyst told Insider.

"Russia boasted of having layered defenses before the war, the sensor
electronic warfare, different missile batteries, kinetic batteries,
radars, that can sort of identify and interdict the threat," Samuel
Bendett, an analyst and expert in unmanned and robotic military systems
at the Center for Naval Analyses, said.

But he added that "most of these defenses were built to identify and
destroy larger targets like missiles, helicopters, aircraft. Many were
not really geared towards identifying much smaller UAVs [unmanned aerial
vehicles]."

Drone warfare has been an integral part of the conflict in Ukraine, with
both sides regularly exploiting the technology as part of their military
strategies.

The recent spate of attacks on Russian soil, however, are likely to be
embarrassing for one of the world's foremost military powers.

Airfields and other locations deep within Russian territory have been
pummeled in multiple strikes by exploding drone attacks in recent weeks
— with one flurry, on the night of August 29, striking five separate
locations.

In a spectacular attack, Ukrainian drones bombarded an airport in the
city of Pskov in north-west Russia, blasting four Ilyushin Il-76
military transport planes, according to state media outlet TASS.

The UK's Ministry of Defence called it "the largest attack on Russia
since the start of the conflict."

Russian air defense systems, which are among the most advanced in the
world, are used by dozens of countries, and many have developed
variations of them, according to the Center for Strategic and
International studies.

The defenses operate on a "three-tier" system, layering weapons with
different ranges to make it hard to penetrate, the think tank said.

But these systems, while advanced, are not infallible.

In July, drones struck and damaged two non-residential buildings in the
center of Moscow, despite the neighboring building having a
super-advanced Pantsir S-1 missile system on its roof, a report said.

"Such defenses are never absolute, there are always going to be gaps
that will be exploited," Bendett said.

In an update on the Ukraine conflict on Thursday, the UK's Ministry of
Defence said that the number of UAVs hitting their targets likely meant
that Russia was struggling to detect and destroy them, and it would
possibly force it to rethink its air defense strategy.

Bendett said that Ukraine had vastly improved its domestic drone
production industry over the course of the war, and it was likely
producing up to six different long-range drones that it could be using
to strike Russia.

Ukraine can only use its own drones to strike inside Russia because of
restrictions on using NATO weapons on Russian territory.

Read next

MILITARY & DEFENSE
Russian planes keep getting blown up in airfields hundreds of miles from
the fighting, exposing embarrassing gaps in its defenses

Watch: VIDEO: Why Russia's military is failing so far in Ukraine