The Russian Armed Forces have been reported on November 7 to have launched a profitable strike utilizing an Iskander-M ballistic missile system to neutralise a Ukrainian drone regiment within the Kramatorsk-Druzhkovka path of the disputed Donetsk area, inflicting main losses of personnel and tools. The Russian Ministry of Defence revealed footage of the strike, observing: “After additional reconnaissance of the goal, the operators of the Russian reconnaissance unmanned aerial automobile determined to launch a strike utilizing the Iskander-M operational-tactical missile system.” Unmanned aviation has performed an more and more central function within the Russian-Ukrainian Warfare, with Ukrainian drone assaults having struck targets deep into Russian territory previously, most notably on June 1 after they have been used to trigger unprecedented injury to the nation’s strategic bomber fleet. This has made drone models excessive precedence targets for Russian strikes, at a time when Western officers have strongly inspired Ukraine to proceed such assaults.
The most recent strike follows affirmation in mid-October that an Iskander-M strike had struck one other drone launch web site in Martovoe, northeastern Ukraine, destroying as much as 65 Lyuty class drones, 4 vans and 5 launchers and inflicting roughly 30 Ukrainian casualties. The system had lower than three weeks prior been used to destroy considered one of Ukraine’s small variety of indigenous Neptune cruise missile launchers. Russian missile strikes have prioritised focusing on not solely Ukrainian drone models and missile techniques, but in addition defence industrial services contributing to those packages, with the focusing on of 4 missile services in mid-August inflicting a serious setback to the Ukrainian Sapsan ballistic missile program. The Iskander-M has bene used to strike a variety of different excessive precedence targets, together with a number of MIM-104 Patriot lengthy vary surface-to-air missile techniques, in addition to personnel concentrations.
An Iskander unit is extensively purported to have been chargeable for a latest strike on a Ukrainian awards ceremony, which neutralised a number of dozen of the nation’s most elite personnel inflicting an irrevocable loss. The system has been used to single out excessive worth personnel and models for focusing on, with a notable instance being a strike in January 2024 on predominantly French European fighters in Ukraine, inflicting at the least 80 casualties, 60 or extra of whom have been killed. Russian state media reported that these personnel have been “extremely educated specialists who work on particular weapons techniques too complicated for the common Ukrainian conscripts,” which “put a number of the most deadly and long-range weapons within the Ukrainian arsenal out of service till extra specialists are discovered” to switch them. Ukrainian officers have steadily lamented the very restricted capability of the nation’s air defence techniques, together with the MIM-104 Patriot, to intercept Iskander-M strikes, with enhancements to the Russian missile system having additional diminished interception charges.
