At least 140 miles behind Ukrainian lines, an attack on a Russian air base began in August. Satellite imagery released the next day showed a scene of destruction, with at least nine Russian warplanes completely destroyed. The attack put more than half of Russia's Black Sea Fleet naval aviation combat jets out of use, which would raise the total number of destroyed or damaged aircraft to at least 13.
The second confirmed hit took place one week later, on August 16th, when a Russian munitions depot exploded 120 miles away from Ukrainian lines. The electricity substation in the same area was destroyed.
The provenance of these attacks has been unclear.
The Ukrainian government initially refused to confirm that its military was behind the explosions, mocking Russian claims that the air base went up in smoke because of cigarette smoking in the area. The Ukrainian defense ministry continues to poke fun at that excuse.
A number of anonymous Ukrainian officials have claimed responsibility for leaking differing explanations to Western reporters. On the day of the strike, one person told the New York Times that a device exclusively of Ukrainian manufacture was used. The suggestion that the Ukrainian Special Forces were responsible was more suggestive than the first one.
The Ukrainian Defense Secretary told the Washington Post that the attacks in the peninsula were the result of a new strategy to degrade Russian forces. A group of saboteurs, called the Resistance Force, had been cobbled together in January and were now working with the Ukrainian Special Forces to target Russian command centers.
It is convenient for our American partners because we didn't use American weapons.
Based on publicly available evidence, former U.S. Special Forces operatives and military analysts don't believe that ground forces planted the bombs.
Chuck Pfarrer, the former squadron leader of Navy SEAL Team 6, told Yahoo News that the craters are 10 meters across. Each is similar to the explosion of 500 pounds of C4. Two ounces of C4 is enough to destroy an aircraft.
There is a suspicion that timed devices were used to blow up the airfield. Timers are good but not great.
There were no reports of gunfire or civilian-shot videos of the air base attack, which is a problem for the Special Forces theory. At 10 a.m. on a weekday, Russian holiday-makers at a nearby beach saw the explosions and were frightened. Special operations are usually done at night in order to avoid detection by the enemy.
A former U.S. special forces officer said that the strike was a missile. Special operators could have been on the ground reconnoitering the targets. It's definitely true. The images don't tell me that Ukrainians were setting things off.
What kind of missile would it be? Intelligence sleuths and weapons experts have been asking that question for two weeks.
The Ukrainians don't know anything in active service that can fly hundreds of miles. The Tochka-U tactical missile has a maximum range of 115 miles, which is 25 miles away from Saki Air Base.
There is no range in the publicly disclosed weapons packages provided by the United States. M31 GMLRS rockets have a maximum range of 50 miles and have been supplied with the most advanced Western-supplied artillery system.
The Army Tactical Missile System is believed to have been used for the attack. It can be fired from either the M142 HIMARS or the M270MLRS. The range of the M31 GMLRS rockets is 190 miles, which is more than enough for the Ukrainian military.
The M31 GMLRS rockets are more destructive than the ATACMS. As a larger single munition, it takes up an entire Pod in the Launcher as opposed to six M31 GMLRS. All 500 pounds of the warhead were put on a single target and traveled at a supersonic speed. It's not possible to intercept with air defenses or capture on video. When a strike explodes, it's hard to see.
Even though it has range, speed and power, the ATACMS is not the likely culprit for the strike on the air base.
Jake Sullivan, the U.S. National Security Adviser, said at the Aspen Security Forum in July that President Biden wasn't going to send a team. The U.S. has been hesitant about providing weapons that could hit targets in Russia, even though an assault rifle or anti-tank missile could do that. The Ukrainians have been very careful not to use U.S.-supplied weaponry to hit outside of their own territory. Sullivan said that American security assistance needs to make sure that we don't end up in a situation where we're heading down the road towards a third world war.
In a war that has only been going on for six days, a lot can change. When the Russians arrived in February, security assistance to Ukraine was expected to take a long time.
Weapons that Western military analysts thought would never find their way onto the battlefield were included in a shopping list compiled by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense. Either these platforms were seen as too provocatory, or it was believed that Ukrainians couldn't be trained up fast enough to maintain the systems on the war's front lines. The absorption capacity for NATO-standard armaments has been demonstrated byUkrainians.
The shopping list included NASAMS air defense batteries, as well as Harpoon anti-ship missiles. The entire thing has been made public and given to Ukraine.
It is possible that the United States has covertly supplied these missiles, or that they have invented an artful solution to allow a third party to provide them.
The country had received 54 missiles. Turkey is a supplier of the Bayraktar TB2 drone fleet. Poland is thought to have received the same thing. Washington needs to approve the transfer of these U.S.-made weapons to another government if they are to be received by all three.
For the last week and a half, Yahoo News has reached out to a host of Ukrainian military and intelligence officials, asking if the Ukrainian military now possesses a weapon of mass destruction. The responses have been very vague. One senior official said they were not ready to talk about it. One person said that they are limited by their official position.
Maybe this is just a psychological game designed to prompt this sort of speculation aboutUkraine's newfound artillery capability, and set nerves aflutter in Kremlin military bases within range of such attacks. Ukrainians may have been told not to reveal something by their supplier.
Since the beginning of the war, American security assistance has evolved in secret. The Pentagon admitted sending the anti-radiation missiles to Ukraine only after they appeared on the battlefield and on Russian social media.
Washington has been obliquely creative in how it has dispatched new warplanes toUkraine, especially after the well- publicized early debacle surrounding Poland's canceled decision to donate MiG-29 fighter jets to its next-door neighbor. In spite of the Pentagon's insistence that it hasn't sent any new combat airframes to Ukraine, Foreign Policy reported that a team in Eastern Europe connected to European Command has helped disassemble Soviet-era Su-25foot 'Frogfoot' aircraft and Mi 17 helicopter so they can be shipped What isn't said is more revealing than what is The Pentagon stated in the latest announcement of the $775 million U.S. security package for Ukranian that there would be more bullets for high mobility rocket systems. The type of bullets was not named.
The first piece of evidence suggests that the Ukrainians may be using an unacknowledged Western munition.
A video posted on August 19 appeared to show a Ukrainian Army HIMARS with a mounted launch Pod that appeared to be different from the ones previously seen. The position of the vehicle was determined byYahoo News.
According to Thomas Theiner, a former member of the Italian Army's Alpine Troops Command, there are two different types of ammunition for the M270 MLRS platform. The Launch Pod Container contains six GMLRS rockets, which have been seen toting around the battlefield for weeks. Up until now, Ukraine has not been shown to deploy a missile, but that is about to change.
Theiner said thatEALPs are camouflaged to hide their valuable contents. They come from a facility in Camden that has plastic covers on the front and back of the Pod. To improve operational security, troops can place a solid plate on the back of their vehicles. In this video, what we see is the former.
In an interview with Politika, a Ukrainian news outlet, an adviser to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed that the country has long-range weaponry. Arestovych claimed the missiles were smaller and faster than theATACMS.
Two missiles are known to fit that description.
The ER- GMLRS is a more advanced version of the M31 GMLRS that is currently being used in Ukrainian service. The Precision Strike Missile can fly up to 400 miles at an even faster speed. The ER-GMLRS does not need the disguise of maskirovka technique of transportation, and the PrSM only allows two missiles to be housed in a single HIMARS Pod.
In any case, it looks like Ukraine is now using longer range missiles. All but one of them came from a different country. That would be the textbook definition of Western covert action assistance according to a former CIA official.
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