Through the night of July 31, Russia targeted Kyiv with 89 drones. According to Ukrainian sources, all Russian drones were shot down.
You might wonder – How in this world do the Russians think they are going to win the war if they cannot get a single drone to penetrate Ukrainian air defenses? How do Ukrainian drones routinely penetrate Russian air defenses?
If the Russian July 31 attack comes through as a pathetic failure, you might want to read on. The failure is more nuanced than Ukrainian media would want you to believe.
The Russians may well be working to a well-thought-out game plan. Their strategy appears to be as follows.
- Fly the drones to heights where they can only be engaged with missiles. Not with guns.
- Any missile fired at the drone is likely to be more expensive than the drone. Assuming it takes two missiles to down a low-signature drone, Russia would achieve a victory by
- Imposing a heavier cost
- Depleting Ukrainian AD missile stocks
- Gaining intelligence on AD system deployment for follow on SEAD (Suppression of Enemy Air Defence) attacks with Iskander-M missiles.
If the July 31 attack had been intended as a strike on specific targets, the Russians would likely have attempted to saturate Ukrainian air defenses using a large number of drones arriving simultaneously from different directions, counting on some drones slipping through the defense AD missile barrage.
An attack spread over the night is suggestive of a probing attack.
There is more to the Russian strategy. It’s widely assumed that the 89 drones employed for the most recent attack in Kyiv, one of the largest attacks on the Ukrainian capital, if not the largest, were Russian Geran-2 drones. However, it’s possible that among the drones used, some were the newly developed Gerbera drones.
Gerbera Drone
On July 24, Ukrainian social media accounts posted pictures of a new Russian drone resembling the Geran-2 kamikaze drone.
The new drone crashed near Kyiv without sustaining much damage. Surprisingly, the drone featured no warhead. Its airframe was built using radar-absorbing foam and balsa wood/plywood. At first sight, it could make you wonder if the Russians had now started buying drones from the Houthis!
Ukrainian sources claimed that the UAV was flying at a speed of 150 kph and at an altitude of 20-30 m, completely transparent to Ukrainian AD radars. The minimal damage to the UAV was suggestive of a crash into an obstruction such as a tree, not an AD weapon downing.
Inside the airframe, the Ukrainians reportedly found a 3G / 4G modem with a Ukrainian SIM card.
