Text/Steam Rocket
(Satellite image of the site of the attack, the destroyed building inside the red circle)
Recently, a number of foreign media have reported the news of the missile attack on Ukraine's Lviv International Airport, and these news are accompanied by pictures of smoke billowing from the scene. But then the mayor of Lviv, Ukraine, publicly "debunked the rumors" that Lviv Airport was not attacked, but that some facilities around the airport were attacked. When everyone thought that the location of the attack on the mayor of Lviv was not so important, the exposure of satellite images almost announced that the Ukrainian Air Force had suffered a "catastrophe".
(MiG-29 fighter jets taking off from the Lviv State Aircraft Maintenance Plant)
According to the latest report of the Global Network, some US media got high-resolution satellite pictures of the site of the attack a few hours after the attack near Lviv Airport, and it was indeed not Lviv International Airport that was attacked, but the Lviv State Aircraft Repair Plant, which is vital to the current Ukrainian Air Force. The repair shop is the only place in Ukraine where the MiG-29 fighter jet can be overhauled, and the repair plant is also the only large remaining large air repair plant in Ukraine, the loss of the repair plant means that the last and most important logistical capabilities of the Ukrainian Air Force are gone, almost declaring the "countdown to death" of the Ukrainian Air Force.
(The workshop can also perform maintenance and repairs on aero engines))
It is understood that the repair plant suffered a precise strike of 6 cruise missiles of unknown Russian models, a large hangar in the repair shop was directly hit, in addition to the destruction of several repair shop buildings, although Ukraine claimed to have intercepted 2 missiles, but still could not prevent the repair shop from functioning normally. Satellite images show that there are still a number of MiG-21, MiG-23 and MiG-27 fighters parked in the workshop, but these old aircraft cannot gain any advantage in the confrontation with Russia, and even if they are sent to the battlefield, they cannot play any role.
Some analysts believe that Russia's strike on the repair plant means that Russia's operational thinking on the attack on Ukrainian ground targets has undergone a major change, from the previous Russian air raids on Ukraine, the targets of Russian air raids on Ukraine mainly focused on the attack on ground military targets, such as the Russian military has repeatedly dispatched "Orion" drones in recent times, including a variety of UTVs to attack Ukrainian armored vehicles, tanks and other living forces. The Russian Su-34, Ka-52, Mi-28N and other weapons commonly used by the Russian army to strike at the ground also focused on targets such as the assembled Ukrainian army positions. Moreover, when the Russian army attacked these targets, it mainly let fixed-wing attack aircraft or bombers carry unguided bombs, while helicopter gunships directly used rockets and cannons to fight. As a consequence, the Russian army shot down a number of helicopter gunships in the early stages of the war. In order to ensure the accuracy of the strike, the fixed-wing fighters that use no navigation bombs to strike targets can only choose to fly at a low altitude during the day to carry out ground strikes, which also gives Ukraine a good opportunity to shoot down these fighters, and eventually causes a number of Russian advanced bombers and helicopter gunships to be shot down by Ukrainian individual air defense missiles, with heavy losses.
(Russian Su-34 fighter-bomber shot down during an airstrike)
However, the Russian army is now changing its thinking and directly using precision-guided weapons to strike at Ukrainian logistics facilities, which is obviously to avoid pulling the war too long, and wants to end the war as soon as possible by destroying the logistics capabilities of the Ukrainian army. Moreover, the Russian army also carried out an effective attack on the Maleshev Machinery Factory in Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine, directly allowing this long-standing cradle that served as a number of main battle tanks in the Soviet period, and also an important military industrial base in Ukraine, and similar operations were not uncommon in the Russian military operations against Ukraine, including the Kiev Tank Factory and the Zhytomyr Vehicle Factory were hit by the Russian army. Ukraine, as the Soviet Union's former "military industrial town", now the important military enterprises left by the Soviet Union to Ukraine have either been destroyed or taken over by the Russian army. Without NATO's intervention, Ukraine no longer has the ability to fight protractedly.