Thread by @PutinIsAVirus

Why the Ukrainian attack on the Voronezh-DM Radar in Armavir makes a lot of sense ?!
Well, it ain’t going to be short so stay with me… 🧵

(1/50)

There are at least 3 main reasons why and I’’ll try to lay them out as clearly as possible since there has been a ton terrible reporting and even worst takes on the event. (2/50)

(BTW, IT IS NOT A OVER-THE-HORIZON radar, it would have taken newsmen 2 minutes of research but I guess that researching the topic they are writing of is way above their pay grade? )
(3/50)

Back to the reasons which will come sort of ordered by probability / confidence :
1) It was an expensive but mostly very important target, Russia will have to repair it and will have to defend it better, it will waste money to do so,
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it will have good engineers busy for a while and it will require them to move precious air defence assets from other locations possibly leaving other juicy targets less guarded.

2) Hitting it could have also been a message to US with multiple implications.
(5/50)

It showed them how those way too worried about “escalation” are constantly miscalculating the result of which is pure appeasement for Putin. Then, to those frightened little creatures,
(6/50)

it provided a bargaining chip “you don’t want us to hit Russia nuclear early warning capabilities ? Cool , let us hit the other stuff we have been begging to hit for years”.
(7/50)

3) That bridge… you might have noticed that bringing down that bridge connecting Russia to Ukraine over the Kerch strait is a pretty important thing for the Ukrainians (this for many reasons which are completely out of the scope of this thread), well,
(8/50)

how do they bring it down ?
Naval drones have failed, way too much to navigate in a narrow and easily defensible amount of water. Possible, but hard.
(9/50)

Aerial drones ?
Well those that might be able to penetrate the air defences can carry way to little explosive to make any relevant damage to such a bridge.
(10/50)

Cruise Missiles ?
Ehm… sort of but even those are pretty easy to shoot down if the area to be protected is relatively small as the bridge is. Radar will come into play soon, but given their speed and flight profiles,
(11/50)

cruise missiles can be shot down by a plethora of systems many of which relying on optical or infra red detection and engagement. Again, possible, but hard.

So, how to bring down the bridge ?
(12/50)

Ballistic missiles !!!
(and quite a few of them) Hard to detect, hard to intercept, brutally fast and bring a big warhead to the party. While defences for them aren’t common, you can bet that at least some of the few assets Russia has which are able to intercept them,
(13/50)

are currently placed in a position to protect the bridge. Systems able to track and intercept ballistic missiles, especially the more modern ones with aero-ballistic (or quasi-ballistic) flight profiles, aren’t many and are extremely precious for Russia.
(14/50)

Having one constantly on would be risky as hell since as soon as they switch on the radar, the Ukrainians will be able to detect it and pinpoint its location, leading to… well… hem… boom.
(15/50)

The Russians need some kind of radar coverage to be warned of ballistic missile launches and their rough trajectories so to then switch on the dedicated (and precious) systems only when and if needed (and move them immediately after use).
(16/50)

In normal situations Russian frigates in the Black Sea and Russian AEWACS on land would be handling a good chunk of this crucial Early Warning role, but… well,
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lets say they had some pretty big issues lately both with staying afloat over the Black Sea and staying in the air up to 200 kms from Ukrainian borders, so the coverage AEWACS and vessels can provide has been brutally limited by Ukrainian attacks.
(18/50)

This leaves the Russian in a rather bad situation when it comes to defend the bridge from ballistic missiles attacks especially from certain potential attack vectors, specifically those coming from the west, north-west ,
(19/50)

where the aewacs wouldn’t be able to provide meaningful early warning and the other Russian EW fixed sites on the north would be of very limited use due to radar horizon / altitude issues. This leaves the subject of so much discussion, the Voronezh-DM radar in Armavir.
(20/50)

Its location and orientation can cover almost exactly the attack vector that AEWACS and other EW systems can’t cover and while its main mission is to detect US submarine launched ballistic missiles, it is more than capable of detecting shorter ranged ones.
(21/50)

Of notice that Russians don’t need for this radar to provide a very accurate tracking, they just need whichever form of Early Warning so to activate the relevant dedicated assets ASAP,
(22/50)

without an early enough warning and not being able to keep their ABM assets powered on constantly, their chances of intercepting anything go the way of the Moskva (down down down).
(23/50)

The various active commentators in this discussion (which btw are either russians or quote only Russian analysts) keep bringing up a couple of points in regards to Armavir radar usefulness in this Ukrainian invasion :

- lack of C3 integration !
(24/50)

C3 in this contexts stands for Command Control and Communications which to sum it up describes the integration between various military assets, how they talk to each other and share data.
(25/50)

The claim here is that the poor Armavir radar doesn’t know how to talk to other assets relevant to short range ballistic missile defence, it isn’t able to provide a radar track to them etc. Aside from this being an assumption they are making,
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and even assuming crappy Russian engineers couldn’t be able to fix the issue in 2 years of conflict, for this specific need all the C3 that could be needed could be handled by a phone call

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(“Dmitry, Pyotr here from Armavir, switch on your radar and check this bearing”, C3, done )

- RADAR HORIZON !!!
Guess what ? Radar horizon will limit also the detection of the very missiles this radars have been designed for, but it doesn’t matter.
(28/50)

What matters is being able to provide the EARLIEST possible warning. So, if a ballistic missile is detected only when 50 kms high, so what ? Way better than NOTHING and would still provide precious minutes of warning for other assets to be called into action.
(29/50)

Other than ATACMS which when shot at maximum range will reach altitudes around 75kms, Ukraine is also working very actively on their own aeroballistic missile, Hril-2,
(30/50)

which will has a reported range between 500 and 700 kms meaning their apogee will be between 125 and 175 kms when shot at max range, much higher if shot at lower ranges.
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Armavir radar would be able to detect a 60 kms high target up till frigging Moldova…

Have seen also some other missconceptions being posted on this topic, those annoying the most are :

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- “The Voronezh-DM radars have an altitude filter at 150 kms which would avoid tracking targets lower than that."
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https://x.com/russianforces/status/1794473973075390525

Ehm... this filter is software based and is there only because at peace times anything lower than that is not worthy of any form of attention. But… I’m sure that no matter how terrible, Russian programmers can adapt those filters to current war needs in very little time,
(34/50)

completely moot point.


- “A Russian analyst reports that the Armavir radar has 2 degrees of inclination further limiting the radar horizon !”
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https://x.com/james_acton32/status/1796253860115398746

Well, aside from the fact that other sources report 0 degrees of inclination for that same radar, Voronezh-DM are “phased array” radars which rely on the delay between multiple signal emitters to effectively steer the radar beam (plane wave) electronically.
(36/50)

( wikipedia page does a good job at laying it out)
If there really was a 2 degree inclination in its operation it would once again be…. SOFTWARE and once again such limitation would be (relatively) easy to overcome.
(37/50)en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phased_ar…

- “but planes fly lower than that” -
duh… so ? We are talking about ballistic missiles here,
(38/50)

plus there is (even if very remote) the possibility that Ukraine has some sort of indigenous ISR drone program (or bought some from third parties) which in specific occasions they might want to fly closer to Crimea for... reasons.
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- “Armavir radar isn’t the best solution to track SRBM, radar X or Y would be better and the Container OTH radar in Kovylkino would cover the area”

So, radar X and Y aren’t there yet, and the Container OTH radar was in fact ….
(40/50)

Already hit :)

- “Field of view of the radar is limited to southern Ukraine”
This again comes from Russian analysts, and it is using a 120 degrees fov applied to radar physical location & orientation.

(41/50)

120 degrees is the optimal field of view of phased array systems as the Voronezh-dm radars but, losing precision, way larger angles can be easily reached via software.
Once again,
(42/50)

Russia doesn’t require much precision in this suggested use as SRBM early warning, they would just need to know if missiles are launched and the general direction, and know it ASAP. In general, especially when it comes to ballistic missiles defence, every second matters,
(43/50)

especially so for Russia which can’t afford to keep its dedicated ABM systems switched on at all times because they would be easy targets.
(44/50)

Ukrainian assets have been able to successfully hunt down most other systems Russia could use in the area and the Armavir radar was there already and could help in protecting Crimea and its infamous bridge, it would be stupid for Russia not to use it.
(45/50)

I’m not even super convinced BM strikes and the Kerch bridge where truly an important reason for the Ukrainians to target the site, but the motivations being brought against the possibility are rather …. Ill conceived.
(46/50)

Russia decided unilaterally to start a war unprovoked and whichever the reason, Ukraine has every right to strike whichever military targets it deems worthy. Ukraine IS NOT A NUCLEAR POWER so the various strategic balance argument you might hear have absolutely no value.
(47/50)

It is actually almost poetic that Ukraine, who was guaranteed territorial integrity (& protection for it) by US, UK and Russia for renouncing its nuclear arsenal, is now hitting its invader strategic EW assets, and pissing US at it.
(48/50)

(Was working on a neat map to accompany all this but ... time ... might come at a later time)

#SlavaUkraïni , Fuck Russia and her appeasers !