Ukraine War Day #843: How The Russian Army Blinded HIMARS, Created A Drone Army, Deceived Starlink, and Tested Tsar-Bomb – Part V

“For our God is a consuming fire.” (Epistle to the Hebrews, 12:29)

Dear Readers:

Today continuing (and finally concluding) my review of this piece by Russian war correspondent Dmitry Steshin. And, by the way, since I am quoting scary Bible verses, check out the Lancet photo below, which I randomly found on the internet. Is it just me, or is there a demonic face embedded in the warhead? Either it’s just an optical illusion, or they buried Groucho Marx inside that bird. But never mind about that, we shall resume with the section called

Operation Lancet

Steshin: The strike drone “Lancet” was first shown to the public back in 2019. Within a year it was added to the arsenal, and in 2021 it was used against Syrian militants in Idlib. Lancet has an electrical engine and can reach a speed of 300 km/hour. But its main distinction from the Western analogs: Our Lancet does not require satellite navigation. It can maneuver on its own in the air for up to 30 minutes, avoiding anti-air systems. Its ability to leave the strike zone and return to base is also an important distinction from rockets. Lancets can be launched from moving catapults, even from the back of a truck. The Lancet operates according to the high-explosive fragmentation principle, but if it crashes into an armored vehicle, a cumulative effect occurs – and the armor is burned through.

Russian Lancet kamikaze drone

Western experts were driven into a tizzy when Lancets began to be used massively in the course of the Special Military Operation (SMO). Hundreds of monographs were written on the topic. All of this signaled that the Lancet was a success.

In the fall of 2023, analyzing the failure of the Ukrainian offensive, analysts from the USA wrote: “The Lancets destroyed around 200 units of Ukrainian armor, and the number of damaged vehicles cannot even be counted. 15% of these targets were Ukrainian anti-air devices, which guaranteed Russia air supremacy.”

But the real shock for the West came in September 2023, when a Lancet destroyed a Ukrainian MIG-29.

Horror From The Sky

There is another monster out there which can swoop in at any moment, and even a concrete bunker will not necessarily save you. It’s called the Kalibr. These winged Kalibers had already been tested under fire, in the Middle East. I recall how people at the time were astonished by the very fact of launching these rockets from the Caspian Sea all the way to distant targets in Syria. The Kalibr has a distance of over 2,000 km. Some people believe the distance is actually much greater than that, but the real number is not disclosed.

As we speak, Kalibrs are decimating Ukrainian military air fields, which were under preparation to receive NATO F-16’s. Even if these F-16’s are moved to fields in Romania or Poland, it’s not like the Kalibers cannot also reach them there.

And let’s not even speak about the hypersonic Kinzhal, for which a concrete shelter is no obstacle. The Kinzhals debuted in the SMO on March 18, 2022: In the Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast an underground cache of aviation supplies was obliterated. This warehouse was built in the USSR times, its purpose was to store nuclear weapons, and it was considered unbreakable. The magazine The American Conservative expressed its concern that the Russians had succeeded in creating weapons that could defeat the American arsenal. This was a catastrophic defeat for the West.

The Kinzhals continue to operate against the hidey-holes of our opponent. If a Kinzhal gets tired, then it can be relieved by a Tsyrkon, a similar type of entity.

And still one more star of the SMO: Long-range winged rockets X-22. These were in development back in USSR times, their intended purpose was anti-ship. But the Ukrainian fleet has long ceased to exist, therefore these rockets are now used against land targets. Several times per week, in fact. And for them the cherry on top is their speed: The X-22 can fly 3,600 km/hour and in principle cannot be intercepted by the anti-air currently available to our opponent.

We Are Learning To Win

Besides the Lancet, we also have the Geranium, the Orlan, the Tachyon, the Eleron, and the Forpost. An entire brood of drones. And our own “peoples drone”, the Vampire (Upyr‘), which was invented by hobbyists, and now is manufactured on an industrial scale.

“Let us know when you’ve had enough…”

We also have this unique system called the Solntsepek (“Sunburn”), which inspires nightmares in our enemy, but it is constantly being reworked and improved, to become better and longer range.

Our helicopters KA-52 and MI-28 are beautiful not just in themselves, but also because of their teamwork with the Vikhr and the “Product-305“. But there is no resting on the laurels, the work of improvement continues unrelentingly.

And this is the main conclusion that I wanted to make: Our Defense complex never just settled for things that already existed, using them up until the bitter end. No, the work always continues, ever testing, testing in battle.

Of course, it goes without saying that not everything is wonderful, and we should not exaggerate our successes. There are definitely areas in which we have stagnated, in which we have lagged behind NATO. It’s no secret, everybody at the front knows it, that our weakest area is Communications and Electronic Warfare. And since we know this, then we have to fix this. It’s always been our way. And at the end of the road, when this SMO is over, then Russia will find that it possesses a very strong, super-modern, fire-tested army.