Ukrainian ATACMS Rockets Are Blowing Up Russia’s Best S-400 Air Defenses As Fast As The S-400s Can Deploy To Crimea
David Axe | Jun 12, 2024 | 03:39pm EDT
A Russian S-400 launcher on parade in 2012. VYACHESLAV ARGENBERG/HTTP://WWW.VASCOPLANET.COM PHOTOIn mid-May, the Ukrainian army launched a powerful barrage of 10 American-made Army Tactical Missile System rockets at a Russian base in Belbek outside Sevastopol in occupied Crimea.
The raid inflicted as much damage as Ukrainian planners could have realistically hoped for. Photos from the ground confirmed the two-ton ATACMS, each scattering hundreds of grenade-sized bomblets, destroyed a radar and two launchers from an S-400 air-defense battery. There were reports the rockets also damaged four warplanes at a nearby military airfield.
Belbek and Sevastopol are important bases for the Russian air force and what remains of the Russian navy’s Black Sea Fleet, so it should come as no surprise that the Russians promptly replaced the wrecked components of the S-400, whose missiles range as far as 250 miles.
And like the punchline of an explosive joke, the Ukrainians bombarded the Belbek S-400 battery again on Tuesday.
Unspecified munitions—likely the same 190-mile-range M39A1 ATACMS that hit Belbek in May—rained down on the Belbek S-400 as well as a two other nearby air-defenses batteries: another S-400 as well as a shorter-ranged S-300.
“At least 10 ATACMS missiles were used in the strike,” the Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies reported, “with the Russian air-defense system failing to intercept any of them.”
Two radars were destroyed, the Ukrainian defense ministry claimed—one each from an S-300 and S-400 battery. “Regarding the third radar, information is being clarified,” the ministry added. “The detonation of munitions was recorded in all three areas where the anti-aircraft missile systems were stationed.”
Belbek is becoming an attrition trap for the Russian air force’s best air-defense system. The Ukrainians hit fresh missile batteries roughly as fast as they can deploy. . . .
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/06/12/ukrainian-atacms-rockets-are-blowing-up-russias-best-s-400-air-defenses-as-fast-as-the-s-400s-can-deploy-to-crimea/