The Daily Populous Friday May 10th, 2024 evening edition
Authored by forbes.com and submitted by eaglemaxie

A month after Ukraine began bombarding targets inside Russia with explosives-laden sports planes modified for remote flight, one of the do-it-yourself drones has struck an oil refinery in the city of Salavat, more than 800 miles from the front line of Russia’s wider war on Ukraine.

It is, by far, Ukraine’s longest-range raid—and an escalation of Ukraine’s deep-strike campaign targeting Russian refineries, factories and strategic military sites.

And it’s at least the fourth attempted deep strike involving Ukraine’s sport-plane drones. Videos shot by people on the ground in Salavat clearly depict the wide straight wings, fixed wheels and propeller that are typical of an inexpensive sport plane, the kind a middle-class pilot can build at home from a kit costing as little as $90,000.

The Ukrainian intelligence directorate, working in conjunction with the country’s special operations command, has turned two locally-made plane types into drones: the Aeroprakt A-22 and Aerosor Nynja.

It seems both types have inexpensive video cameras, simple onboard computers, servos connected to the flight controls, plus satellite radios to transmit video to a distant operator and control signals back to the plane.

The A-22 apparently carries its explosive payload inside its cabin. The Nynja carries a 220-pound bomb under its belly. Both planes cruise at around 100 miles per hour and blend in with civilian air traffic, making them difficult to intercept.

Eight hundred miles is at the very edge of a sport plane’s endurance on a typical 20-gallon fuel tank, so it’s possible the Ukrainians have added extra tanks—willingly adding weight in exchange for additional range. Every mile of range the drones gain grows the number of targets they can strike.

So far, those targets include the Shahed drone factory at the Alabuga Special Economic Zone, 600 miles from the border with Ukraine, struck by at least one A-22 on April 2—and an over-the-horizon radar in Kovylkino, 300 miles inside Russia. Back-to-back strikes by apparent A-22s around April 17 may have damaged the radar’s masts or a control building.

A third sport-plane raid, this one involving a Nynja, failed on or just before April 27, when the drone crashed 600 miles from the Russia-Ukraine border. The attack on Gazprom’s Salavatnefteorgsintez refinery in Salavat, two weeks later, was more fruitful for the Ukrainians. The refinery is one of the bigger oil facilities in Russia.

Exactly what Ukraine is trying to achieve with its deep-strike campaign is a little unclear. The raids have somewhat throttled Russian gasoline production, but probably not enough to have an immediate impact on the economy—and thus on the long-term war effort. “These are spot strikes,” energy expert Hennadii Rіabtsev told Ukrainian Pravda. “They are painful and affect logistics, but they do not significantly impact annual total refining volumes.”

It’s possible the raids are meant to stress Russia’s air defenses—by forcing them to protect hundreds of potential targets across Russia. The more the air defenses spread out, the less they protect any one base or industrial site. “You can’t defend everywhere,” retired U.S. Army general Mark Hertling noted.

If that’s the aim, then it’s best to think of the deep strikes as complementary to Ukrainian strikes closer to the front line, including attacks on airfields and training grounds by ground-launched rockets and shorter-range aerial drones.

In that way, those sport planes winging deep into Russia are helping thin out defenses for raids with more immediate and obvious impact. For example, the May 1 rocket attack on hundreds of Russian trainees in Luhansk Oblast in eastern Ukraine—an attack that may have killed more than a hundred Russians.

Character-Error5426 on May 10th, 2024 at 02:33 UTC »

That planes cruising speed is 100mph, which means it flew for EIGHT HOURS without being detected.

SoundWaveReborn on May 10th, 2024 at 02:11 UTC »

Bro Russia come on. Literally the ONLY Thing they were supposed to be comparable or better than the west at was Air Defense systems. YOUR IADS CANT STOP A FUCKING CESSNA??? WAT

BcDownes on May 10th, 2024 at 01:16 UTC »

What air defence doing?