Russian airstrike escalates in Ukraine: F‑16s hunt cruise missiles

Russians, in recent days, have conducted massive airstrikes on Ukraine using their entire available arsenal. One of the most important means of attack, aside from ballistic missiles, were cruise missiles, which the freshly delivered F-16 aircraft were also supposed to hunt. Here’s how they did it.

The Russians launched hundreds of objects at Kyiv, including ballistic missiles Iskander-M, cruise missiles Ch-101 launched from Tu-95MS strategic bombers and 3M14 Kalibr missiles fired from the surface or underwater units, as well as numerous Shahed drones.

The latter served as a distraction to complicate Ukrainian air defences in dealing with more difficult targets and were also used for mapping Ukrainian activities.

The real threat was the aforementioned cruise missiles, which, aside from a more precise guidance system with a declared accuracy of about 6 metres (in wartime production, it will be worse), have a much stronger warhead. For example, the standard Ch-101 has an approximately 400-kilogramme high-explosive or penetrating warhead, but recently, an improved model with an additional cluster warhead has appeared.

Missiles from the Ch-101 family are adapted to fly at low altitudes, often relying on terrain depressions such as canyons or riverbeds. Combined with a design incorporating stealth features, this significantly hinders the hunt for them using ground-based air defences. Physically, Ukrainians would have to practically deploy radars every 40 kilometres across the entire border due to the so-called radar horizon.

This is unfeasible, so the best solution is to use aircraft that can supervise a vast area. Currently, the Ukrainian Air Force has a handful of MiG-29s and Su-27s, which are, however, a worse choice as cruise missile hunters than the received F-16s.

These have significantly better radar for detecting more difficult targets even when flying at low altitudes and targeting pods adapted for detecting and tracking such objects. Subsequently, cruise missiles or drones are destroyed with AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missiles or even with the onboard six-barrel M61A 20-millimetre calibre gun.