As of: February 19, 2024, 4:31 a.m
By: Karsten Hinzmann
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Russia's new super bird: The Russian Su-57 fighter jet also carries longer-range cruise missiles, making it a real threat to NATO.
(Archive image) © IMAGO/xaarrowsx/Pond5 Images
Ukraine is threatened with losing control of its skies.
This makes NATO nervous - its technical advantage over Russia is melting away.
Moscow – The signs point to a storm: Ukraine is apparently in danger of losing sovereignty over its own skies.
The Americans have largely lost the optimism of earlier days due to reports of Ukrainian successes, because Vladimir Putin is apparently firing on all cylinders, and Russia is using the latest generation of missiles in the Ukraine war - this is what the
militarywatch
magazine reports .
Accordingly, the Russian Air Force fired the new Kh-59MK2 cruise missiles to support the fighting on the ground in Ukraine.
The new weapon was developed specifically for use by the fifth-generation fighter-bomber Sukhoi Su-57.
militarywatch
is based on Ukrainian sources, according to which such missiles were first used in Ukraine at the beginning of February.
It is possible that Russia is using the Ukraine war, in addition to its primary military goals, to arm itself against a future conflict with NATO.
Since the beginning of the year, the magazine has been speculating, based on Russian sources and intelligence reports from Western countries, how many Su-57s are already in use, or how many Russia can produce in what time.
The use of the new cruise missile is so threatening because Ukraine is apparently confronted with the fact that, contrary to previous assumptions, Russia can also launch the new missile from other carrier aircraft.
Putin's cruise missile: blind in bad weather
The Kh-59 is an air-launched cruise missile type designed for tactical warfare and can be used in its various versions on aircraft such as the Su-24M, Su-30, Su-34, Su-35 and Su-57 , as
DefenseExpress
magazine
reports.
There are three basic variants of this missile: Kh-59, Kh-59M and Kh-59MK2 - which also come in two sub-variants.
The launch range of these modifications varies between 45 kilometers, 110 kilometers and up to 285 kilometers.
DefenseExpress
suspects that the current focus on the current version is
not only due to its greater range, but also to the fact that its guidance system appears to have overcome the limitations of the Kh-59 and Kh-59M variants: the previous two versions were apparently very sensitive to the weather and blind in fog and rain.
Since the first weeks and months of the full-scale invasion, the Russians have been using Kh-59 missiles to attack Ukraine's civilian infrastructure.
Ukraine suffered the most serious attacks shortly before the New Year: Ukraine said it reported deaths in Dnipro, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Odessa, Lviv and the capital Kiev.
At least nine people are said to have been killed in the capital alone.
In total, more than 30 people were killed and more than 150 injured.
The
German Press Agency
quoted the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry as saying that in view of the many civilian victims, a “genocide” was to be feared and that the international community was urgently called upon to react.
The ministry explained that Russia would not stop the talk about war weariness and a possible ceasefire, about Ukraine temporarily giving up territory and about negotiations: Moscow's goal is the destruction of Ukraine.
Russia's new technology: so far only usable during the day
According to DefenseExpress,
the Kh-59MK2 missile was
first tested in Syria in 2018 using Su-57 pre-production models.
The fighter-bomber's primary air-to-ground armament is optimized for neutralizing small, hardened targets at long distances of almost 300 kilometers - it can be used against a wide range of strategic and tactical targets, such as anti-aircraft defenses, ships, transport facilities, traffic facilities and bunkers.
The missile has a 320 kilogram warhead, but can also be equipped with a smaller multiple warhead that spreads further.
The weapon is a subsonic missile, which allows it to cover a longer range despite its relatively small size, and it can change targets during flight.
Due to its size, only one or two missiles can be fired by a single fighter aircraft at a time.
It is unsuitable for night attacks, and its optics are intended to respond only to high-contrast targets.
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militarywatch
sees the possible proven use of the SU-57 fighter-bomber with the Kh-59MK2 cruise missile as an increased threat scenario for NATO.
The integration of a strategic cruise missile into the Su-57 has a particularly significant impact on Western defense capability due to the breadth of use of this aircraft type.
Since production in 2023 was around a dozen aircraft, it is expected that it will increase to more than 20 aircraft per year by 2027.
Since the aircraft will form the backbone of the combat fleet, Russia's ability to be prepared for strategic attacks at almost intercontinental distances will increase.
militarywatch
assumes that a direct confrontation with the USA would then be possible.
Moscow's new aviators: threatening to the heart of America
The Russian fighter-bombers would have the ability to operate over the Pacific, close to the airspace over Alaska, and even directly to targets in the Americas after refueling in the air.
While strategic bombers have long been able to do this, fighter-bombers will be able to operate in much greater numbers from a much larger range of bases without the need for extensive airfields - the operational range will also be increased by missiles flying further.
With the SU-57,
militarywatch
has virtually proclaimed the new ruler of the skies: “The Su-57 has proven to be by far the most thoroughly combat-tested fighter aircraft of its generation, with missions not only for air-to-ground attacks, but also for more complex air defense suppression and air “Include air combat beyond visual range,” the magazine writes.
The plane should also be a real bargain.
At around 33 million euros per aircraft, the Su-57's flight cost is also less than half that of its much lighter single-engine American competitor, the F-35, even though it is a much larger twin-engine fighter with a longer range.
This was achieved, for example, through innovations such as a skin made of fiberglass that absorbs radar rays.
The F-35 achieves its stealth capability through coatings that are said to be particularly difficult to apply and maintain.
Western misconception: Russia and China are behind technologically
However, the American Patriot air defense missiles have clearly proven their effectiveness in Ukraine.
According to the
Kyiv Post,
Ukraine's successes compared to modern Russian missile technology are clear: According to it, Ukraine has been able to shoot down around a third of all missiles fired into the country since February 2022.
As
Focus
recently reported, engineers at the Ukrainian Research Institute for Forensic Expertise have long been in the process of extracting secrets about their weak points from the wreckage of launched rockets.
“What we see in the use of Russian so-called high-precision weapons is that there is a lack of accuracy,” says Andriy Kultshitskyi, the head of the institute.
As an example of this, he cites the shelling of Kiev at the beginning of January, in which a rocket hit next to an apartment block near the main train station, killing four people.
“If they state a target accuracy of seven to ten meters and the rocket then hits at a distance of 50 to 100 meters, that means that there are production problems in the Russian industry.” This doesn’t necessarily have to do with missing components – the Russian defense industry is still powerful.
As the French magazine
Meta-Defense
summarizes, the West has been under the misconception for decades that Russia's defense industry would be in ruins forever.
China's capabilities were also underestimated, as the Pentagon analyzed in a report to Congress at the end of 2023.
This statement may seem surprising given that the West, led by the United States, has been portrayed for more than 30 years as having such technological advances in defense that that alone would suffice, its numerical inferiority to the two to balance potentially hostile centers of power.
This “illusion,”
Meta-Defense
argues, appears to have opened up space for the Russians to recover from the delay caused by the collapse of the Soviet bloc and for China to now match the technological prowess of the Western defense industry.
Meta-Defense
sees a real hurricane approaching the West.
(Karsten Hinzmann)