Russia could change war tactics against Ukrainian missiles

A spate of anti-tank missiles sent to Ukraine has potentially turned the tide of the war, putting pressure on Russia to find enough capable troops for the grueling urban combat that is now more likely.

For some military analysts, the number of state-of-the-art anti-tank missiles shipped to Ukraine in recent weeks is staggering, giving Ukrainian soldiers an arsenal of these weapons that may be unprecedented in a major modern war.

The UK alone says it has fielded 3,615 of its new generation anti-tank light weapon (NLAW) missiles, with launchers. Germany said it was sending 1,000 anti-tank weapons from its inventory, Norway 2,000, Sweden 5,000 and the United States an unspecified number of Javelin missile systems. Others have also sent weapons. Many are not state-of-the-art, but the threat they pose is considerable.

The Javelin missiles are among the $3.5 billion the US government recently secured from Congress to replenish weapons as they are shipped to Ukraine. According to the Pentagon’s annual budget request, the 10 Javelin missile launch units and 763 missiles it bought in 2021 cost $190.3 million.

“The armies that sent these things would certainly have gotten less per soldier than Ukraine was promised,” said Phillips O’Brien, a professor of strategic studies at St. Andrews University in Scotland. “Basically, people seem to be stripping almost completely naked to get these things to the Ukrainians.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion is not proceeding according to plan largely due to Ukrainian resistance and Russian miscalculations. State-of-the-art anti-tank weapons arriving in Ukraine are also a factor.

Even Russia’s most modern tanks have proven vulnerable to “San Javelin,” as a Ukrainian meme has called American-made weapons, according to Pavel Felgenhauer, a Moscow-based expert on the Russian military for the Jamestown Foundation. , an American think tank. Russia does not make a third-generation anti-tank weapon, he added.

Both Javelin and NLAW missiles hit a tank from above, where its armor is weakest. They are also called fire-and-forget missiles, which allow attackers to move away as soon as a shot is fired. That reduces the risk of them getting hit by a counterattack with their position revealed.

Oryx, a project that records independently verified losses during the conflict, has so far counted six of Russia’s most advanced T-90 tanks among the 76 destroyed by Ukraine’s military. In total, Russia has lost 214 tanks to attack, capture or abandonment, and 1,292 vehicles in total, according to Oryx’s tally.

Ukraine maintains that Russian tank losses have been higher, while the Russian Defense Ministry does not publish figures. Ukraine has lost 65 tanks, 22 of them destroyed, among 343 vehicles in total, according to Oryx.

In addition to supplies from abroad, the Ukrainian army already had anti-tank weapons from the Soviet era and, more recently, from domestic production. Although less sophisticated than Javelins and NLAWs, they are still effective against most other armored vehicles.

What all this implies is evident in several Ukrainian videos widely shared on social media, including one of an attempt to enter the kyiv suburb of Brovary last week by dozens of Russian tanks and other armored vehicles. Ukrainian troops destroyed several before the column withdrew.

Russian commanders will learn from such experiences, just as Israel’s defense forces had to adapt during the 1973 Yom Kippur Arab-Israeli war, according to Felgenhauer.

Faced with losses inflicted by Egypt’s newly acquired wire-guided anti-tank missiles, then state-of-the-art, the Israelis moved their infantry from behind their tanks to in front of them, so that they could first clear an area of ​​any potential threats.

“When storming cities, the main thing is not just to hit them with bombs, you also need to get the infantry moving while the defenders are still in shock. If you don’t do it, you don’t get anywhere.Felgenhauer said. “Will the Russian infantry be good enough to do the same? I dont know.”

Urban warfare demands a large amount of human resources. In the last week, Russia has withdrawn military deployments from elsewhere and recruited mercenaries from the Middle East to generate new reserves for its “special military operation”.

An assessment of the conflict by the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War on Monday said Russian-conscripted mercenaries and Russian reinforcements are likely to begin arriving near the capital this week. On Tuesday, kyiv city authorities imposed a two-day night curfew during which anyone found outside their homes without special passes would be considered a member of Russian subversive units.

“The lack of serious movement into major cities is notable, and it may be that the Russian high command is concerned with pushing reluctant troops into urban warfare for which the Ukrainians have made elaborate preparations.said Lawrence Freeman, professor emeritus in the Department of War Studies at King’s College, London, in a recent blog post. If so, that may make a negotiated settlement more likely, according to Freedman.

However, if a ceasefire does not emerge, Ukraine’s success in preventing Russian tanks from pushing their way into urban centers could also produce a more protracted and brutal conflict.

Virtually all of the Russian generals currently in Ukraine served in Syria, where Russian forces have been fighting since 2015 and have encountered similar problems, according to Felgenhauer. After Russian planes attacked cities like Aleppo and Homs from above, the Syrian regime army failed to follow up, leading to a harsh two-year campaign of inconclusive sieges.

The solution was time consuming and vicious. First, Russia had to train special Syrian units that were willing and able to fight in an urban environment. They then used thebomb of void” thermobarics that have already been seen in various places in Ukraine.

The cloud of fuel mist they release on impact penetrated tunnels and bunkers that Syrian opposition fighters had dug to protect themselves from air and artillery strikes, according to Felgenhauer. When that mist detonated, creating a ball of fire, it would consume the available oxygen and kill those trapped in the bunkers.

“There is a belief in the West that a city cannot be taken if it is well defended. But that is not the case. You just need to know how and have the right weaponry, and basically the Russians know that.he said, adding that the port city of Mariupol, under intense siege for two weeks, could be an early test. A success there would free Russian forces to join the advances towards kyiv and the key southern port city of Odessa.

The big question, he added, is whether Russia’s leaders will be willing to use Syrian tactics in kyiv, turning the war decisively in their favor before spring turns frozen ground to mud and Ukraine’s military has time to arm and integrate. the vast number of reserves crying out to help repel the invasion.