![]() For that reason, an S-300PS/PT crew is happiest taking on targets closer than 50 miles away. The Ukrainians had to detect the Su-35, perhaps using a 200-mile-range Tin Shield surveillance radar, then engage with-say-an 5V55R missile assisted by a Flap Lid tracking radar.Īll of these systems have limitations. That makes a kill over Nova Kakhovka even more impressive. More likely, Ukrainian forces deploy their S-300s miles from known enemy positions. Of course, an S-300 battery is too vulnerable, and too valuable, to set up at the line of contact. The months-old line of contact between Russian and Ukrainian forces along the Inhulets River is only slightly closer: 35 miles or so to the north of Nova Kakhovka. Nova Kakhovka is 50 miles east of the main territorial salient that, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for the Study of War, Ukrainian troops have carved out north of Kherson as they slowly advance toward that port city. It’s also possible the battery managed to creep to within comfortable firing distance of Nova Kakhova. If it was an S-300PS that took down that Su-35, it might have done so at the edge of its range. Ukraine’s best S-300PS, which fights in batteries each with several wheeled launchers and associated command and radar vehicles, has a range of just 50 miles or so. By “ground air-defense,” the Ukrainian air force almost certainly is referring to its S-300PT/PS air-defense systems, dozens of batteries of which it and the Ukrainian army inherited from the Soviet Union on the latter’s dissolution in 1991.
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