Russia is running out of precision-guided missiles.
But here’s the thing, while many view this as a good thing, in reality, this could be
bad news for Ukraine, and could cause more terror and suffering for the Ukrainian people.
Moreover, some American military analysts believe that Russia running low on missiles
may force them into escalation.
You see, this whole headline of “Russia running out of missiles” is in fact a
much more complicated topic than you would think, which requires serious debunking to
understand what’s actually happening.
According to Russia, they have sufficient stockpiles of precision-guided weapons and
their factories are pumping them out non-stop.
With that said, Russians never disclosed how many missiles they have used and how many
remain.
So is Russia running out of missiles?
And if so, which ones?
And why is this a bad thing for Ukraine?
But hold on a minute, dude, this is bullshit American propaganda.
How on earth is Russia running out of missiles if just recently they had a massive missile
attack that destroyed 30% of the Ukrainian electrical infrastructure?
Yes on, October 10th, 2022, Russia launched a massive attack on Ukrainian infrastructure
which consisted of 84 missiles and 24 Iranian made Shahed loitering munition drones.
President Putin called this attack retaliation for the attack on the Crimean bridge that
happened on October 8th.
But according to Ukrainian and western intelligence, the preparations for this massive attack began
on October 2nd, before the Crimean bridge was hit.
Ukraine reported that they shot down at least 43 missiles out of the 83, while Russia claimed
that they fired 70 missiles with every single one hitting its target.
As a result of the attack, Ukrainians experienced prolonged blackouts, as their energy facilities
and other infrastructure facilities were hit.
At least one missile ended up hitting a children's playground and an intersection in Kyiv.
It is unclear whether those missiles landed there after being shot down, or not.
Forbes estimated that the attack cost Russia somewhere between $400 and $700 million dollars.
Following the missile attack, British Defense Intelligence issued a statement that “these
attacks represent a further degradation of Russia’s long-range missile stocks, which
is likely to constrain their ability to strike the volume of targets they desire in the future”.
And they are right because missile attacks, just like the last one, are quite rare.
In fact, the last missile attack of similar size happened months ago on June 25th to 26th,
as Russia expended as many as 80 missiles during those two days.
Prior to that, Russia used that many missiles only during the first days of the invasion.
The fact that missile attacks of this size are infrequent points to Russia running low
on its key missiles.
So let’s take a look at Russia’s Missile Arsenal.
On October 12th, 2022, Ukraine issued a graphic of the approximate Russian high-precision
missile arsenal remaining based on their intelligence.
The ground launched Iskander missile is arguably the best missile in Russia’s arsenal.
This short range ballistic missile has a range of up to 500 kilometers, travels at a hypersonic
speed of Mach 6 at an elevation of about 50 kilometers above ground.
The missile has a warhead capable of destroying everything in an area of about two football
fields and has an accuracy about the size of a building’s window when launched from
tens of kilometers away.
Because this missile is ballistic and travels at hypersonic speed, it's incredibly difficult
to intercept.
It is unlikely that Ukrainians managed to intercept any of the Iskander missiles, and
if they did, the number would be a handful.
According to Ukrainians, Russians have fired close to 800 Iskanders since the start of
the invasion, with only about 14% of their original stock left.
Whatever Iskander missiles remain, are only going to be used for high value targets.
In contrast to the low stocks of Iskander Missiles, Russia has more than half of its
Kalibr missiles remaining.
But there’s a reason for that.
Kalibr is a family of Russian cruise missiles that are primarily launched from the sea,
either from warships or submarines.
Depending on the model, Kalibr has a range from 600 to 2,500 km.
But for most of the flight, Kalibr missiles travel at subsonic speed of about Mach 0.8,
which makes it much easier to intercept.
For this reason, Kalibr missiles are often launched in salvos.
Ukrainians claim that they intercept anywhere between 50% to 100% of the kalibr cruise missiles,
depending on the launch platform.
If launched from a warship, it's much easier to intercept the missile because you know
the launch location.
Afterall, it is much easier to track a warship than a submarine.
In contrast, if launched from a submarine submerged 50 meters, the starting location
of the missile may not be known early enough or at all, thus making it much harder to intercept.
Finally, according to Ukrainians, Russia still has about a half of its air-launched cruise
missiles.
Missiles such as X-101 and X-555 are launched from either Tu-160 Blackjack or Tu-95 Bear.
These missiles have a range of up to 3,000 km and travel at subsonic speed of about Mach
0.75.
Similar to the Kalibr cruise missile, these ones are also easy to intercept.
All in all, according to Ukrainians, Russia has just over 600 precision guided missiles
left, but only 20% of those, the Iskander missiles, are the biggest threat.
The rest can be easily intercepted.
According to Oleksiy Arestovych, current Ukrainian air defenses, which consist mostly of S-300
surface-to-air missile systems, are capable of intercepting over 70% of missiles when
they are launched in small amounts, but the intercept percentage drops to 50% during mass
attacks.
It is believed that once Ukrainians receive sufficient quantities of IRIS-T and NASAMS
air defense systems, they would be able to intercept over 90% of cruise missiles and
even intercept Iskander ballistic missiles.
But is there any other proof that Russians are running out of their precision guided
missiles besides the tweets from Ukrainian officials?
Yes, the fact that Russians began to use some incredibly old soviet missiles, and that they
acquired weapons from Iran.
The biggest sign of Russia running out their precision-guided missiles is the fact that
they have resorted to using older S-300 surface-to-air missile systems to strike ground targets.
That’s because they have up to 10,000 of these missiles in their arsenal.
So no rationing is required.
The thing is, the S-300 missiles are designed to intercept air targets, so they don't have
sufficient punch to destroy hardened military targets.
But they can destroy civilian buildings, which they do … almost every other day in Zaporizhya.
Although, when used in ground attack mode, S-300 missiles are very inaccurate, because
they can't hit the target they want to hit.
It's basically firing the missile and seeing where it ends up.
The fact that they are using S-300 missiles is a clear sign that Russia is running low
on their more advanced missiles.
Besides S-300, Russians have also used older air-launched X-22 missiles that were produced
back in 1962.
Leave us a comment if you were alive in 1962!!
The X-22 is incredibly inaccurate, to the extent that they can land in a 600-meter radius
from their intended target, only 50% of the time!
For example, on June 27th, 2022, two X-22 missiles were used in an attack on Kremenchuk.
One missile landed on a shopping mall, which killed 21 people and injured 59.
The second missile landed at the edge of a Concrete factory, injuring 2 people.
Finally, Russians are starting to rely more on Iranian drones rather than their own missiles.
Hundreds of Iranian drones have been delivered to Russia to be used against Ukraine.
If anything, it's a sign of weakness for the Russian military industrial complex.
The most widely used Iranian drone, the Shahed-136 is a low cost loitering munition drone which
became known as the “kamikaze drone”, because it can be programmed to hit a specific
GPS location.
They fly quite low and have a range of over 1000 kilometers.
Ukrainians call them “moped”, because they are super loud, like a moped!
The weakness of Iranian drones is that they can only strike stationary targets, thus they
are not a big threat to mobile forces on the battlefield.
For example on October 17th, 2022, Russia launched 62 Iranian drones, from which, 36
were intercepted.
The thing is, intercepting those drones uses a lot of surface-to-air rockets and Ukraine
only has so many.
Since it’s believed that Russia has up to 2,400 Iranian made drones, they can terrorize
Ukraine for months to come.
Besides the drones, Russia is also acquiring several hundred Fateh-110 and Zolfagar missiles,
most of which are yet to be built.
It is interesting how Russia, being one of the largest arms producers in the world, has
to rely on Iranian drones and missiles.
It could be that Iran has more experience living under sanctions and knows how to bypass
them in order to get whatever western components they need for their weapons.
You see, Russia can’t simply mass produce their most advanced missiles since all of
the electronics needed are basically western-made.
In an in-depth report, Reuters examined downed Russian Iskander and Kalibr missiles.
It turns out that most - if not all - of the chips inside those missiles are made by Altera,
Texas Instruments, Intel and AMD, all of which are American.
Because of sanctions, Russia cannot simply order those chips directly anymore, although
they can order 1000 microwaves and harvest those exact same chips out of them.
Anyway, you get the point, which is why Russia can only produce three X-101 missiles per
month.
Simply put, Russian manufacturers can’t make what the Russian defense ministry wants,
and thus, they have to shop outside the country, from Iran.
Now the question is, how were the Russians able to convince Iran to send them so many
drones so quickly.
What did Iran ask for in return?
I don’t know, but I do think that Israel would not be fond of it.
Before we conclude, we’ve got to talk about missile accuracy.
Prior to this war, Russian missiles such as X-101, Iskander and Kalibr were marketed as
high-precision missiles, with a margin of error of just a few meters.
But even in 2017, it was pointed out that Kalibr had an accuracy of 30 meters and X-101
had an accuracy of 5 to 50 meters.
But an accuracy of 30 to 50 meters is not considered precision-guided.
Hitting a shoe box-sized target is, like HIMARS can do.
In addition, Armenia, who had acquired Iskander-E missiles from Russia, reported that during
testing, missiles were only able to successfully hit the target 10% of the time.
But that claim was later retracted, probably because Armenia didn’t want to piss off
Russia, who was their main supplier of weapons.
From the very beginning of the Russian invasion, the Pentagon pinpointed that Russia was experiencing
a significant amount of missile failures.
On March 25, 2022, the pentagon stated that the Russian missile failure rate is 20 to
60 percent on any given day.
The air-launched cruise missiles had the lowest kill rate.
The missile failures were described as failure to launch, failure to hit the target, or failure
to detonate upon hitting the target!
One thing is for sure: the large missile expenditure that Russia is experiencing was not planned,
as they expected a quick victory in Ukraine.
The fact that they are running out of precision-guided missiles means that Russia will have to resort
to using more and more of their inaccurate missiles, such as S-300 and X-22.
And that could benefit Russia, because using inaccurate missiles in Ukraine can drive up
the levels of panic, pushing Kyiv toward peace talks, which Russia so badly wants, so they
can rebuild their army prior to resuming their invasion again.
Russia's efforts to replace their arsenal of missiles will be difficult due to cost,
production limitations and the impact of sanctions.
Worse, there are significant problems with the performance of Russian cruise missiles.
They are nowhere near as accurate as that of their Western counterparts.
But they were never supposed to be.
That’s because the Russian Iskander, Kalibr and X-101 missiles were designed for dual
use, meaning they can carry both conventional and nuclear warheads.
Of course with nuclear armed missiles, accuracy is … less of a concern, since even a small
tactical warhead is enormously more powerful than a large conventional warhead.
Some American military analysts in fact worry that Russia’s experience with lack of accuracy
and high failure rate of their conventional missiles, could push Moscow toward the wrong
conclusion.
Instead of improving accuracy on conventional missiles, Russia may choose the easier option
of arming their missiles with small nuclear warheads, which are not prone to accuracy
problems.
And that would be a big problem.