It was one of the biggest single-day losses for Russian air power in the Ukraine war
David Axe
Forbes Staff
May 17, 2024
The Ukrainian army’s Tuesday night rocket raid targeting Belbek air base, just outside Sevastopol in Russian-occupied Crimea, destroyed at least four Russian air force and navy warplanes on the tarmac.
It was one of the biggest single-day aircraft losses for the Russian military in Russia’s 27-month war on Ukraine. The only bigger loss may have occurred in May 2023, when a Ukrainian air force Patriot surface-to-air missile battery shot down at least four, possibly five, Russian fighters and helicopters over southern Russia.
Belbek, which lies 150 miles south of the front line in southern Ukraine, hosts Russian air force Sukhoi Su-27 or Sukhoi Su-30 fighters as well as Russian navy Mikoyan MiG-31 interceptors and, it seems, navy Mikoyan MiG-29K fighters.
The MiG-31s are some of the most dangerous warplanes in Russia’s war on Ukraine. Firing radar-guided R-27 missiles farther than 200 miles, the MiG-31s have shot down several Ukrainian warplanes—and forced many others to abandon their missions.
Belbek airfield is protected by a Russian air force S-400 long-range surface-to-air missile battery. It’s apparent, however, that the S-400 misses as many incoming Ukrainian munitions as it intercepts.
On Tuesday night, the Ukrainian army fired a salvo of 190-mile range M39A1 Army Tactical Missile Systems rockets from the tracked launchers donated to the army by the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy—or the wheeled launchers it got from the United States.
The M39A1 is the farther-flying version of the 100-mile M39 ATACMS. The first batch of precision-guided ATACMS that the United States shipped to Ukraine last fall only included M39s. The second batch of more than 100 rockets, which shipped in April, included at least a few M39A1s.
An M39 scatters nearly a thousand grenade-sized bomblets. An M39A1 sacrifices warhead size for a larger rocket motor—and scatters just 300 bomblets.
According to one popular Russian military blogger, the Ukrainians fired 10 of the two-ton ATACMS at Belbek on Tuesday. Belbek lies beyond the range of the M39 but within the range of the M39A1. That means as many as 3,000 bomblets pummeled the base.
The damage was extensive. A radar and two launchers from the S-400 battery were destroyed. A fuel depot burned through the night. And while the blogger claimed a MiG-31 and three Su-27s were damaged, satellite imagery from Colorado-based Maxar told a dramatically different story.
The imagery revealed that two MiG-31s, an Su-27 or similar Su-30 and what appears to be a MiG-29K burned to the ground in their roofless revetments. It was the first time the Russians had lost a MiG-31 or MiG-29K in combat in Russia’s wider war with Ukraine.
As the extent of the damage became clear, Russian commentators grew furious. “Why weren’t protective structures erected?” one blogger asked. “Why, 27 months after the start of the air defense system [in occupied Ukraine], are our air defense systems still standing in open spaces?” “Since last fall, we have been warning that the armed forces of Ukraine will concentrate all their forces on attacks on Crimea,” the blogger seethed. Russian commanders “treated this threat carelessly.”
David Axe – Forbes Staff. Aerospace & Defense. He is a journalist, author and filmmaker based in Columbia, South Carolina. Axe founded the website War Is Boring in 2007 as a webcomic, and later developed it into a news blog. He enrolled at Furman University and earned a bachelor’s degree in history in 2000. Then he went to the University of Virginia to study medieval history before transferring to and graduating from the University of South Carolina with a master’s degree in fiction in 2004.