Ukraine’s Mid-Term Strategic Objectives

Posted on December 17, 2024

Ukraine’s long range missile and drone strategy has developed dramatically over the course of the war. They started with what amounted to nothing, yet have managed, with extraordinary pace and innovation to build one of the world’s most extraordinary medium-long range drone capabilities.

The war has forced Ukraine to develop weapons it would likely never have imagined before. To the point where it’s a salutary lesson to every other military in the West. Between Russia, Iran & China they too have developed and learnt to understand the drone war in ways we in the west still don’t seem to entirely comprehend.

Speed and agility of development have been vital for Ukrainian drone success

The speed of drone development is so fast that western militaries seem to be standing there wondering what to do as the development pace is beyond their ability to understand where to start. This is where a post-war Ukraine could potentially lead NATO and the west and give it jump start into training, design, manufacturing and countering drones at every level, because long range air and sea drones stand to have a huge impact on future warfare, let alone the tactical battlefield drones of which there are so many varieties.

Ukraine has quickly learned to understand that the speed of development and finding a new edge is key. And that means being flexible and capable and willing to dump what no longer works and move on – in fact it’s learned that about several potentially important systems that just don’t work as expected anymore. Some of them were important western weapons – the small diameter glide bomb and the Excalibur round among them.

Ukraine’s ability to produce new and more capable drones – especially the new ‘hybrid’ cruise-drone type like the ‘Hell’ and Palianytsia , a whole new category entering mass production, is exemplary and awe inspiring.

In order to decide on the development of such projects there’s been a longer term decision that these weapons need to be built.

Ukrainian drone hits a Chechen special forces barracks last week

The original longer range drones were everything from light aircraft (one of which was used to attack Chechnya only last week, clearly seen smashing into a barracks), to slow longer range types used to attack the cracking towers of oil refineries.

One of the points the US used to deny use of ATACMS in 2024, was that Ukraine seemed more than capable of reaching these targets by itself, a slightly disingenuous but not entirely invalid argument as the Palianytsia was deployed at an almost inconvenient moment politically.

The targeting of oil refineries has without any question, had a huge impact on Russia’s economy. The cracking towers being disabled on as many as twenty refineries has upset not just oil refining but the storage and supply system. Its driven Russia to have to import diesel and resulted in record high prices for the principle fuel that drives Russia’s military, as recently as December 9th 2024. Then there’s the cost of repairing the refineries which runs into billions of dollars, if they can even be repaired.

Drone damage can be spectacular and impactful

Targeting military production factories, is clearly an obvious thing to do, and entirely valid, but these have gained more air protection of late. It’s similar to attacking Moscow, the one area that Putin is seemingly obsessed by and has a powerful anti-air defense ring – seemingly placed there at the expense of other important sites in western Russia.

The most important and pressing targets however have become those that retard the Russian advances in Ukraine. These are everything from supporting airfields to ammunition depots, local fuel storage, command centers, repair sites, training and assembly sites, rail yards and rolling stock. As time has gone on these have become increasingly more important.

When the US first provided ATACMS, they were the shorter ranged older versions that proved ideally suited for attacking – and effectively neutralizing – operations in Crimea. Those missiles soon ran out. Since then the use of ATACMS with the longer range versions has caused Russia a massive headache. Major ammunition depots have detonated spectacularly, although it was noted from Crimea and again recently that the S-400 was capable of shooting them down and has done so.

That’s now resulted in the Ukrainians adopting and adapting Russian tactics when they attack Ukraine’s electricity grids. Waves of drones go in first, because the S-400 has been found to be unable to cope with more than 36 separate targets. The drones then suck up the air defense capabilities, both in missiles fired and tracking efficiency. That leaves the ATACMS to be fired in coordinated timings and get through to their targets.

The attacks on Mariupol depots in the last week were spectacular, although there is little video, other data suggests the sound was heard over 100km away and the blast light somewhat similar. It seems to match the earlier detonations in some of Russia’s Kursk-supporting depots. What seems amazing is that Russia still uses depots with this much in storage and no defenses to match.

It is very difficult to assess what these attacks really do to affect the front lines, because it’s more about denying a capability. You cannot see something that’s not being used. But you can estimate what might have been in the depot, where it was supplying and how it was supplying it. You assess the transport capacity locally and where it comes and goes, the weight it can carry, and that gives you an educated idea about what isn’t getting to the front. From that you can tell how much activity units on that front can manage and deploy your own forces to either counter what they are going to do, or move them away, knowing that the enemy will be weeks away from being fully active in that region again.

That’s how these attacks generally have to be measured. Lately Ukraine has stopped attacking the refineries directly, but has gone in for making the storage and distribution depots targets, aiming to cut off flows of fuel to different sectors of the front.

One of the things the Russians always were good at was fuel distribution. They even have their own fuel pipelines and support troops that can lay tactical pipelines as they advance. Much as they also have dedicated railway engineers. I don’t think any western army has such a capability. NATO relies on a now rather dated strategic fuel pipeline supply system (NPS) that reaches into western Germany and later Czechia (as the CPS – Central Pipeline System). However only in October this year were meetings held to extend the system into Eastern Europe and no plan is even close to reaching fruition to get the NPS into eastern Germany and Poland, let alone Slovakia or Hungary/Romania and the Baltics. All this matters, because when peace comes and eventually Ukraine is brought into the alliance, it will need to extend the NPS eastward.

The one thing I believe Ukraine should be willing to target is Russia’s thermal power stations. there are several in range and they assist in supporting military operations on the front line. It would also have the happy consequence of bringing the war home to more Russians – adding to the realization that the core of their everyday problems is the war.

Overall Ukraine’s strategy using drones and missiles is to hit either tactically important depots and command posts, in a denial of supply and command capabilities, or military air fields to reduce tactical support on the front lines (although they have also attacked strategic bomber bases used for cruise missile strikes). Longer range drones have gone after anything economic that supports the war effort – oil refineries and weapons factories.

Ukrainian naval drones have successfully seized almost complete control of he battle space in the Black Sea from the Russians, in a spectacular move that has rendered larger surface warships in confined spaces almost obsolete – a warning for every navy on the planet.

Unquestionably effective and incredibly costly for the Russians, it must have come as a shock to the regime that Ukraine would ever be capable of such a long reach and be so effective at it. The Russian insistence on defending Moscow (which Ukraine avoids for the most part because of the defenses)has unquestionably cost it many other important targets, but they seem oblivious to the results.

Ukraine’s extraordinary development of long range Neptune missiles, Palianytsia , Hell, and a raft of others has been driven by determined and relatively young minds, using new techniques and processes to take a concept and identify it from the design stage into production as fast as possible. We could all learn from how they have done this, because we know why they have had to.

Western corporate defense industries are slow and feeble by comparison. We need to learn and employ now what Ukraine has achieved to be ready – because only by being ready can we deter a war from ever starting.

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