Pentagon analyzes invasion
Russia fires a dozen missiles a day
03/05/2022 08:17
According to the US, Russia is currently firing around a dozen rockets at Ukraine every day. However, this obviously does not eliminate the military objectives. A “very large part” of the Ukrainian air force is still operational, says a Pentagon official.
According to the US, the Russian military has fired more than 500 rockets at targets in Ukraine since the war began. That shares that Pentagon in an analysis with the current situation. “In the past few days, it’s been about a dozen missiles of all types and systems per day.”
The missiles were supposed to knock out military targets, especially in the first days of the war, but they were obviously unsuccessful: Ukraine still has a “very large part” of its air force, said another Pentagon employee who wished to remain anonymous. Some Ukrainian planes were destroyed. “The majority of aircraft, helicopters, drones and air defense systems are still available,” he said. The Russian Air Force has to fly through contested airspace.
“War in its most brutal form”
The USA and NATO assume that the Russian military is currently making changes in order to still achieve its goals in Ukraine and take over the country. They fear that Russia will keep firing rockets at cities and civilian targets until the Ukrainian leadership surrenders.
In the past few days it has been reported several times that the Russian military has changed its strategy in order to still reach its targets. At the beginning of the attack, Moscow avoided collateral damage, said Elie Tenenbaum of the French Institute for International Relations. “In the first few days, the Russians used their modern weapons, long-range strikes with cruise missiles and Iskander ballistic missiles.”
In view of the massive resistance of the Ukrainians, the army will now mainly use unguided rockets. “That could crush the Ukrainian armed forces, claim a great many civilian casualties and intensify the flight,” says Tenenbaum, and prophesies “a war in its most brutal and violent form.”
“Saw use of cluster bombs”
NATO also sees evidence of this type of warfare. The defense alliance is convinced that Russia is using cluster munitions. “We have seen the use of cluster bombs,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in Brussels on Friday. There are also reports of the use of other types of weapons that violate international law.
Stoltenberg did not give any details. Most recently, Russia was accused of using so-called thermobaric artillery weapon systems, which cause a particularly destructive combination of heat and pressure waves.
Cluster munitions are rockets or bombs that burst while still in the air over the target and release a large number of small explosive devices, the so-called submunitions. These mini-bombs, about the size of a soda can or aerosol can, then fall to the ground within a radius of several tens of meters. They can penetrate even lightly armored vehicles and not only fatally injure people nearby with their fragmentation effects.