The airfield at Taganrog, in southern Russia fewer than 100 miles from the front line in Ukraine, is a favorite target for Ukraine’s growing arsenal of deep-strike munitions.
The Ukrainian army, air force and intelligence directorate may have struck the base, and the adjacent factory belonging to airplane-maker Beriev, with a mix of U.S.-made Army Tactical Missile System rockets, ex-Soviet S-200 air-defense missiles modified for ground attacks and long-range strike drones.
It’s possible the most recent attack, on Tuesday night, involved Ukraine’s newest attack drone, the turbojet-propelled Palianytsia. Videos from the ground in Taganrog depict something—actually, multiple somethings—exploding in and around the Beriev campus.
Taganrog was a logical choice for a Palianytsia raid.
The apparently GPS-guided drone, which ranges as far as 430 miles, lacks the range of Ukraine’s farthest-flying deep-strike weapons—its converted A-22 sport plane drones. Nor does the Palianytsia with its approximately 100-pound unitary warhead capable of the widespread destruction inflicted by an ATACMS rocket scattering hundreds of lethal submunitions.
But if you want to damage a bunch of fairly flimsy buildings—for example, hangars housing A-50 radar planes like the kind Beriev builds—and the buildings are fewer than 500 miles away, a volley of Palianytsias is just the thing.
Each turbojet drone costs as little as $100,000. That’s cheap for what amounts to a small cruise missile. The type’s simplicity is the key to its low cost. A Palianytsia arrives from the factory in a large crate. The seeker and wings bolt onto the body right before launch.
The drone motors down a runway on a wheeled trolley, abandoning the trolley as it gains lift. Assuming the guidance is by GPS, a Palianytsia should be accurate enough to reliably hit a large building such as a hangar.
There’s still a lot we don’t know about the Tuesday raid. We might have to wait for commercial satellites to make a few passes before we can assess any serious damage.
But it’s apparent the Ukrainians are still keenly interested in striking the Taganrog airfield—and are fully capable of doing so with something.
If it was a Palianytsia raid, it may be a harbinger of additional raids to come. Ukrainian industry has been producing Palianytsias in small numbers since this summer. But according to Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, a new start-up recently launched full-scale production of the drone.
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