[Goose]

It's not realistic for Ukraine to be able to develop an Iron Dome over its entire country, but air defense systems still would be mighty useful.  We previously talked about the population and geographic size of Ukrainian cities.  The top 8 cities in Ukrainian control right now had a pre-war population in the range of 500k-3MM (which is obviously much lower now due to all the refugees leaving).  Those cities are what you'd want to protect, mainly, because they have essential infrastructure and dense population.  Fortunately, those cities are geographically small, so they could be defended reasonably well.  After those somewhat dense areas, there are a dozen or two dozen towns of 100k-300k, which probably are not realistic for Ukraine to defend with SAMs.  But it's also not very efficient for Russia to target civilian structures in such towns, which consist mostly of single family homes and low rise commercial/industrial buildings.


Edit:  Unfortunately, you may be too optimistic about the delivery date.  According to John Kirby, it's likely going to be "a year or more" for the remaining NASAMS systems after the first two.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/202...734USFJFPA

I do agree the two NASAMS will be useful. Against Kalibr and similar missile types they can provide a big help. However, as I have pointed out they are virtually useless against KH-22 (and derivative) missiles. Russia's recent big attach featured Kalibr type missiles, of which they may have not many. Whatever cities get the two NASAMS will simply not be targeted that way in the future. KH-22s are fine for basically "area attacks". Not very accurate, but who cares?

Russia is also using missiles of the S-300 family type 9M96 and derivatives. These missiles are relatively short range and are probably not a big threat. How well an NASAMS performs against these missiles I don't know.

One has to consider there are many significant infrastructure targets, such as power plants, rail and road bridges, and industrial facilities that are outside metropolitan areas. These are the targets that Kalibr missiles should be hitting, if Russia has any left. NASAMS will not be useful in those cases for the reasons you mention.

The IRIS-t systems are to me a question mark. Do they include the TRML-4D radar or not? If not, they won't do much good as their target acquisition performance will be lacking. If so, how well does that radar actually work? These are somewhat untried systems so we really don't know how well they work. The missile itself is higher performance but shorter range than an AMRAAM-ER. It used an infrared optical tracker to "lock on" to the target and has a radar based fusing system. How well does that combination work against the various Russian missiles? How was that tested? I don't know, so I can't say much about how this will work. I also don't know if the Ukrainian operators are trained yet or if that will occur now. The lack of information doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy. We will just have to see what happens.

The lack of any more NASAMS for a year is just a travesty. I wonder when we told the Ukrainians that? I would imagine they were quite disappointed. Well, at least we delivered four more HIMARS today.

[Goose]

It's not realistic for Ukraine to be able to develop an Iron Dome over its entire country, but air defense systems still would be mighty useful.  We previously talked about the population and geographic size of Ukrainian cities.  The top 8 cities in Ukrainian control right now had a pre-war population in the range of 500k-3MM (which is obviously much lower now due to all the refugees leaving).  Those cities are what you'd want to protect, mainly, because they have essential infrastructure and dense population.  Fortunately, those cities are geographically small, so they could be defended reasonably well.  After those somewhat dense areas, there are a dozen or two dozen towns of 100k-300k, which probably are not realistic for Ukraine to defend with SAMs.  But it's also not very efficient for Russia to target civilian structures in such towns, which consist mostly of single family homes and low rise commercial/industrial buildings.


Edit:  Unfortunately, you may be too optimistic about the delivery date.  According to John Kirby, it's likely going to be "a year or more" for the remaining NASAMS systems after the first two.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/202...734USFJFPA

I do agree the two NASAMS will be useful. Against Kalibr and similar missile types they can provide a big help. However, as I have pointed out they are virtually useless against KH-22 (and derivative) missiles. Russia's recent big attach featured Kalibr type missiles, of which they may have not many. Whatever cities get the two NASAMS will simply not be targeted that way in the future. KH-22s are fine for basically "area attacks". Not very accurate, but who cares?

Russia is also using missiles of the S-300 family type 9M96 and derivatives. These missiles are relatively short range and are probably not a big threat. How well an NASAMS performs against these missiles I don't know.

One has to consider there are many significant infrastructure targets, such as power plants, rail and road bridges, and industrial facilities that are outside metropolitan areas. These are the targets that Kalibr missiles should be hitting, if Russia has any left. NASAMS will not be useful in those cases for the reasons you mention.

The IRIS-t systems are to me a question mark. Do they include the TRML-4D radar or not? If not, they won't do much good as their target acquisition performance will be lacking. If so, how well does that radar actually work? These are somewhat untried systems so we really don't know how well they work. The missile itself is higher performance but shorter range than an AMRAAM-ER. It used an infrared optical tracker to "lock on" to the target and has a radar based fusing system. How well does that combination work against the various Russian missiles? How was that tested? I don't know, so I can't say much about how this will work. I also don't know if the Ukrainian operators are trained yet or if that will occur now. The lack of information doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy. We will just have to see what happens.

The lack of any more NASAMS for a year is just a travesty. I wonder when we told the Ukrainians that? I would imagine they were quite disappointed. Well, at least we delivered four more HIMARS today.