LONDON, July 21st. /TASS/. Russia’s tactics of launching massive strikes against Ukraine using large numbers of UAVs have led to more effective results, The Financial Times reported, citing official Ukrainian data.
According to Ukrainian sources, the effectiveness of Russian strikes has tripled over the past few months compared to previous averages, reaching the highest level since February 2022. Kiev estimates that approximately 15% of Russian UAVs reached their targets between April and June, up from just 5% during the preceding three months.
"The problem is not [that] the Ukraine air defense is getting worse. Instead, what we see is that new swarming tactics and drones are now flying in higher altitude, [which] makes them more effective," said Yasir Atalan of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who has compiled Ukraine’s dataset on Russian air attacks. "The increase in sheer size in launches saturates the defense systems which increases the hit rate," Atalan added.
The article also notes that "Russia’s tactical innovations" have enabled the development of UAVs that can "fly faster and beyond the range of the truck-mounted machine guns that Ukraine typically uses to down them.".