COLUMN-Ukraine ups strikes, defences against Kremlin drones, missiles: Peter Apps

Ukraine initially avoided comment on what were widely suspected to be long-range drone and missile strikes on Russian territory early in the war, but the last two weeks have seen officials not just acknowledging such strikes but describing them as key to their strategy. "The main task for us and our partners today is to eliminate the capabilities of the Russian military-industrial complex to produce weapons for further attacks on Ukraine," head of the Ukrainian President's Office, Andriy Yermak, posted on Telegram on Sunday.

As suspected Ukrainian drones struck a microchip factory outside Moscow on Friday, nearby civilian airports cancelled flights in the latest sign that Kyiv believes striking the heart of Russia is critical to victory. Ukraine initially avoided comment on what were widely suspected to be long-range drone and missile strikes on Russian territory early in the war, but the last two weeks have seen officials not just acknowledging such strikes but describing them as key to their strategy.

"The main task for us and our partners today is to eliminate the capabilities of the Russian military-industrial complex to produce weapons for further attacks on Ukraine," head of the Ukrainian President's Office, Andriy Yermak, posted on Telegram on Sunday. As Ukraine’s summer fighting season draws to a close, military officials have claimed several battlefield advances, suggesting Kyiv’s troops might finally have broken through ferocious Russian defences at key points.

Such claims, however, are not new. And amid reports of Western frustration over the speed of the advance, the war appears to be becoming an even wider industrial confrontation. August saw UK defence firm BAE Systems announcing that it would set up a manufacturing hub in Ukraine to build artillery pieces, with other Western firms including Finland's Patria and Germany’s Rheinmetall also expressing interest.

Shortly after Friday’s drone strikes near Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned any BAE factory would become the object of “special attention” from Russia’s military. The expansion of Western defence firms into wartime manufacturing within Ukraine and heftier Ukrainian strikes against Russian industrial targets mark both a significant but predictable escalation 19 months into the war.

The Netherlands is also reported to be pushing forward with long-delayed Western plans to train Ukrainian pilots on Western F-16s, which Ukrainian officials say could enter battle early in 2024. The war has so far seen both sides struggling to source sufficient missiles, drones, artillery shells and armoured vehicles for the fight, prompting the largest expansion in Western artillery shell manufacturing since the Korean War ended in 1953.

But it has also seen a mounting and increasingly complex high-tech race by Ukraine and its Western backers to build what may be the most sophisticated multi-layer anti-aircraft, anti-missile and anti-drone capability ever deployed in battle. As Ukrainian attacks appear to increase within Russia, the Kremlin too will likely be increasingly desperate to develop that capability. The resulting battle has its parallels in the long-range bomber offensives of World War Two, where Nazi Germany’s Luftwaffe attempted to smash Allied industry before U.S. and British air offensives struck back with even greater force. That contest saw a ferocious race to manufacture both fighter and bomber aircraft, as well as devise other means such as radio jamming to disrupt each other’s actions.

“FRANKENSAMS” DEFENDING KYIV In Ukraine, the defensive element of that battle has seen a furious Western effort to weld what Ukraine’s defenders call a mixed “vinaigrette” of different systems together.

Systems used include the U.S. Patriot, Hawk and Avenger missile systems, the French-Italian SAMP/T, Germany's IRIS-T and Gepard and the U.S.-Norwegian NASAMS. Ukraine and its allies have also scoured the world for components and rockets for Ukraine’s Soviet-built systems such as the S-300. "All these air-defence systems work and yield results, complementing the Soviet-era equipment," Ukrainian air force spokesman Yuriy Inhat said this month, adding that the old Soviet systems themselves still operated "quite effectively".

Keeping Ukrainian air defences in the game has required some unusual fixes, including a joint Ukrainian-U.S. effort to pair U.S. Sparrow and Sea Sparrow surface-to-air missiles with Ukraine's Russian-built "Buk" missile launchers, dubbed “FrankenSAM” by its builders. From the first months of the war, such systems have been relatively effective in keeping Russian aircraft out of Ukrainian airspace, which as an active war zone is also largely out of bounds to civilian aircraft.

Whereas almost all Russian missiles got through to their targets in the first weeks of the war, by late 2022 the capital Kyiv was sufficiently protected for Ukraine to be bringing down up to 80% of Russian missiles before they reached their targets. This year, there have been several days when Ukraine says it has successfully destroyed 100% of Russian missiles heading towards Kyiv. BROADENING WAR

Ukraine’s relative success in defending the capital is likely one factor behind Russia’s decision to broaden where it hits, including Ukrainian export facilities in Odesa and ports along the Danube near Romanian territory. That puts Ukraine in a race against time to defend additional locations with similar air defences, just as Moscow too realises it will need to put more resources into defending the locations if Ukraine keeps up attacks.

For both sides, that also means pressuring international partners for more supplies, as well as building their own when possible. Last month, Russian documents leaked to the Washington Post showed a plan to build up to 6,000 drones modelled on Iran's Shahed-136, which is capable of travelling more than 1,000 km and which analysts say are already being thrown into attacks against Ukraine as fast as they are built.

Ukraine is similarly hoping to position itself as one of the world’s largest makers of new combat drones. For both sides, sourcing of microchips for drones and missiles has also been a challenge. Earlier this year, Russia announced it was investing almost $40 billion to increase its microelectronics capability by 2030, including a major effort to build capacity by the end of 2023.

Ukrainian attacks on manufacturing infrastructure will obviously slow that process. That is unlikely to upset Eastern and Central European NATO members like the Baltic states and Poland, which, like Ukraine, have been increasingly open about their desire to see Russia’s military industrial capability permanently damaged and degraded. "Every day the war continues is another day for the Baltic states and NATO's eastern front ... to prepare," Baltic Defence Fellow Lukas Milevski wrote in July for the Foreign Policy Research Institute. "Every loss Russia suffers ... is one which will have to be replaced after the war."

* Peter Apps is a Reuters columnist writing on defence and security issues. He joined Reuters in 2003, reporting from southern Africa and Sri Lanka and on global defence issues. He has been a columnist since 2016. He is also the founder of a think tank, the Project for Study of the 21st Century, and, since 2016, has been a Labour Party activist and British Army reservist. 

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