What happened to the all the Javelins and other hand held anti-tank weapons? Have they all been used / captured / sold on black market, as we used to hear about them all the time and now silence
The War in the Ukraine
- Thread starter SampanViking
- Start date
They got a lot of problems with Javelins because of battery life vs untrain troops. Probably that a lot of them are just laying around with discharged battery or just by distrust. You don't carry these huge weapons if it's not sure that they will help you.
It has never happened in history that killing a population makes them more likely to surrender to the killers because their defenders "didn't succeed in protecting all of them".
Also the Ukranians keep hitting city centers with no russian troops or military installations in sight to even give them some plausible deniability about them being punitive actions against eastern ukranians. Then the news about ukranian troops rounding up colaborators in recaptured areas won't exactly endear them either.
And a lot of people like to pretend all of this is recent, and not like the Ukranian government has been dishing out collective punishments in the East since 2014.
Stugna and Javelin are not comparable weapons. Ukraine had no Javelin equivalent. Stugna should be compared to the TOW which they appear to have only recently started to receive.
In other news, the first NASAMS battery was delivered to Ukraine:
That should help against cruise missile strikes.
That doesn't jive with the manufacturer's claim that the would only start delivering them in 2024 unless someone gave up theirs which means they likely are Gen 1 systems with a limited AN/MPQ-64.
And will it?. It still based on the AMRAAMS so physics dictate its performance will be hampered and a single battery that will most likely used to defend Zelensky himself won't make much of a difference cruise missile wise.
Also the fact that it is a towed system, not a self propelled one will limit its mobility if deployed in the field near the frontline.
These drones are a game changer. Up until now the only thing Russia had for deep strikes in Ukraine were ballistic and cruise missiles. Both are expensive.
Even if no shahed drones hit their targets and all are intercepted, it's still worth it to keep firing them. They are decoy drones that can't be ignored. It'll cost the Ukraine far more to intercept these than for Russia to launch them. Sooner or later they will run out of air defence missiles and then Russia can deploy VVS properly.
You mean like the RK-3 Corsar ATGM? Also in service in Ukraine?
The main thing with the Javelin and the other missiles NATO provided is the amounts that were made available more than how effective the missiles were in practice. With that many missiles available you do not need to be judicious with regards to their usage.
As for NASAMS it looks worse on paper than Buk.
I wont quickly make that decision tho. There are some advantages compared to Buk's.
-First it's Active radar homing, means it has no limits on target channel, thus it can engage multiple targets simultaneously.
-Second, it can take designations from practically any sources including NATO AEW's in more direct manner. Suppressing the AN/MPQ-64 sentinel that might be linked to it would be helpful. However As we see in the naval field, you dont need X-band or other band typically used for fire control radar to help designate target for active radar homing. It can work just fine with maybe P-18.
-Third the launch can be completely devoid of any radar emmission. You only know when it's already launched. It creates risk for Russian aircraft as it may fly into Ambush and too late to activate its countermeasures. The differences is that it can reach hgher altitude not normally reachable by MANPADS.
It's basically a giant Manpads with more performance. The inferior range compared to Buk is of a little concern than the ability to engage multiple targets simultaneously. That assumes AMRAAM is provided.. it can however contain AIM-9X Thus it will perform basically same as Ground based IRIS-T.
The best thing Russian can do would be use drones to bait the NASAMS..and then lay the pain with Kh-59's The weaknesses of the NASAMS is that at current shown configuration..it's not as mobile. Unless Ukrainian decided to go Australian way and put it on their MRAP's.