Ukrainian forces are desperately short of long-range air defenses that can protect Ukraine’s cities from Russian missiles. Unable to shoot down all of the incoming missiles, the Ukrainians are doing the next best thing—they’re blowing up the munitions on the ground, before Russian air force bombers can launch them.
On or just before Wednesday, Ukrainian attack drones flew nearly 240 km into western Russia and hit the air base in Shaykovka, which houses some of the Tupolev Tu-22M bombers that routinely lob Kh-22 cruise missiles at Ukrainian cities. Satellite imagery from NASA, the US space agency, registered the fires burning at the base.
“In addition to the other military targets currently burning in Russia, Shaykovka air base in the Kaluga Oblast,” the Center for Strategic Communication and Information Security of Ukraine reported on Wednesday.
It was the second attack on Shaykovka in six weeks. Ukrainian drones previously struck the base on 31 March.
It’s apparent that, during that raid, the Ukrainian drone operators meant to blow up the Kh-22s stored at the Shaykovka base.
“As a result of the attack, a technical room for servicing and preparing missiles before launch was destroyed, and another was damaged by shrapnel,” the analysts at CyberBoroshno concluded after scrutinizing satellite imagery of Shaykovka.
Going after the missiles
The Wednesday drone attack may have followed the same plan. After all, the 6-ton Kh-22 missile—an aging munition first deployed in the late 1960s—is uniquely vulnerable to shrapnel damage.
“The Kh-22 has a liquid-propellant rocket engine, for which the rocket’s tanks must be filled with 3,000 liters of extremely toxic fuel, the main components of which are asymmetric heptyl and concentrated nitric acid,” US-base think tank Globalsecurity.org noted.
Merely flying with a Kh-22 can be dangerous for the bomber crews. “Nothing says fun like flying around with an ancient missile containing [around] four tons of hypergolic fuel,” aviation expert Bill Sweetman mused.
In the 39 months since widening its war on Ukraine, Russia has lost around five of the 42-m, four-person Tu-22M bombers. Some to crashes. Some to Ukrainian drones and missiles.
Repeatedly striking Shaykovka and its missiles, Ukrainian forces are further raising the cost of Russian raids on Ukrainian cities—and taking some of the pressure off Ukrainian air-defense batteries. That could buy time for the Ukrainian air force to deploy that additional Patriot surface-to-air missile battery it’s getting from Israel.
The mathematics are simple: every missile destroyed on the ground is one less threatening Ukrainian civilians. As air defense ammunition runs low, Ukraine has found its answer in offense—striking at the source rather than waiting for the threat to materialize in its skies.
