Yesterday the Ukrainians performed their most splendid raid since the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in front of the whole world, two gunships formed a team from ultra-low altitude to penetrate the Russian mainland, bypassed the air defense network of the Russian front-line troops, and carried out a successful raid on the oil depot of a Russian border city, causing no small losses, but also exposed the Russian army's slack air surveillance after a month of operations, the lack of blind networking, and the lack of strikes against the Ukrainian air assets.
It is not an exaggeration to say that it was a bit of a slap in the face of the Russian army, but the Russian army also actively admitted its mistakes, admitting that some of its own problems led to the omission and allowing the Ukrainian army to carry out a surprise attack, and when the fire caused by the Ukrainian army raid had not been extinguished, it began to organize a rather fierce retaliatory counterattack. On the night of the raid on the oil depot, the Russian army organized at least 4 Iskander missile launchers in the territory, specially arranged the formation to set up shooting equipment, and fired a four-vehicle salvo at the Ukrainian military's facilities. It must be admitted that the appearance of this multi-vehicle salvo ballistic missile taking off in the air and heading straight for the target is still very imposing. Of course, the Russian military only said that the missile strike organized by the Organization was in response to the Ukrainian sneak attack, but it did not specify where the target of this missile strike was, which is also very interesting.
Since the beginning of the military operation, although the Russian army has been fighting long-range missiles every day, long-range strike operations against some important targets in the depth of the Ukrainian army, such as the ammunition depot oil depot spare parts depot, or special repair facilities, but from the actual release of some details, in addition to a similar performance of the use of the ship-launch caliber system to carry out a round of 8 missiles to strike different targets of the salvo, but so dragged out 4 Iskander ballistic missile salvo, that is the first time to see.
And considering that under the Targeted De-militarization action of the Russian Army for a month, the targets that must be attacked by expensive weapons such as Iskander are basically not much left, and the Russian army has even had nothing to do in the past few days to take Iskandar to blow up the beech mobile anti-aircraft missile system to display its accuracy, and now to engage in such a 4-vehicle missile salvo, that can only be said to be a deliberate, retaliatory and targeted counterattack operation with a retaliatory nature that has been shot out of real fire and carried out with a volume advantage. The target of the strike is likely to be the airfield and departure point where some of the remaining aviation units of the Ukrainian army are located, as well as the fuel and ammunition facilities, as well as the fuel and ammunition facilities that have been specially targeted and reconnaissance.
I have to say that the stock of the Russian army's long-range precision strike weapon is still quite amazing, from the military operation to the present, there is basically a lot of use every day to carry out precision strikes on various targets, and so far there has not been any sign of insufficient ammunition and is about to be exhausted, and it is still possible to organize such large-scale targeted strike operations. According to the statistics of the US Department of Defense, the number of cruise missiles and ballistic missiles used by the Russian military in this operation has far exceeded any previous military operation carried out by the US military, reaching a record number, far exceeding the psychological expectations of the Americans.
The U.S. Department of Defense has repeatedly overturned the issue of the prediction of the use of ballistic missiles and cruise missiles by the Russian army, after the Russian military intensively played hundreds of cruise missiles and ballistic missiles in the first week of military operations, the US military immediately came forward to say that the Russian army's long-range missile stock should not be very much, and it is necessary to be cautious about the target to use in the future, and by mid-March, the Americans also estimated that the Russian military's cruise missile and ballistic missile reserves were only enough to support until around March 20. By the time around March 20, the U.S. military, which found that the situation was not quite right, issued a new briefing to update the Russian missile stock to about half; it is enough to show that the stock of advanced long-range precision strike weapons of the Russian army has far exceeded the actual estimates of the US military.
It is not surprising that the US military from the Gulf War Tomahawk missile first actual combat, in fact, the number of cruise / ballistic missiles used in each operation is very limited, the Gulf (Desert Storm) only hit 297, the air strike Yugoslav Federation used more than 300 heads, only the use of cruise missiles for Iraq and Libya two operations exceeded 400 rounds, but compared with the number of Russian troops has exceeded 1400, it is still only a fraction. If you look at the number of tomahawk purchases by the US military in the past decade, it is quite understandable that the US military is about to empty the ammunition depot; and the Russian military can be extravagant enough to use ballistic missiles to strike a beech launcher, which itself also has the meaning of showing that its advanced weapons stock is very rich, which is a disguised conventional combat capability deterrent.
Of course, from another point of view, you can also say that this is a considerable manifestation of the lack of actual strike capabilities of cruise missiles and ballistic missiles, and it also shows that the Russian military is now in fact in a desperate need for modern air campaign tactical strike capabilities. This led to the use of a record number of long-range precision guided weapons, but still could not completely solve the entire node target of the Ukrainian army.
For the US military, after they used some tomahawks or air-launched ALCM to destroy some radar and other key nodes in the early stage of the war, they basically relied on tactical aircraft to drop guided bombs and iron bombs to perform subsequent strike tasks, relying on massive bomb use to complete most of the missions of deep strike; and although the Russian army used a large number of Iskander series, caliber series and air-launched KH-55/101 series, the use of bombs in the tactical air force is still quite far behind. Therefore, it is really not surprising that a large number of fish have slipped through the net now, and it is necessary to emphasize the importance of the air force's campaign strike capability at this time, and this retaliatory action of the Russian army precisely reflects that its own air force is not strong enough to strike at various important targets of the Ukrainian army, and the offensive ability of the campaign is insufficient.
Relying on hard-stacked missiles to fight this record-setting record is of course very cool, and the program of using ballistic missiles to hit mobile air defense vehicles is also quite good, but the problems exposed behind it are also very serious, which is also a reminder for many people who despise direct air force strikes with heavy long-range missiles; next time don't do it.