To Survive Ukraine’s Air-Defenses, Russian Pilots Fly Low And Lob Rockets. It Might Not Be As Inaccurate As It Seems.

It’s one of the weirdly iconic images of the Ukraine war: Russian and Ukrainian helicopters and attack jets flying low over the battlefield then abruptly nosing up and loosing unguided rockets in high, ballistic arcs.

As the rockets disappear into the distance, destined to impact somewhere along the front line, the firing aircraft dives low and turns hard—all in order to stay outside the range of the enemy’s most dangerous short-rance air-defenses.

The lob-and-pray attack method continues to befuddle many Western observers of the Ukraine air war. Observers who are accustomed to watching U.S. and NATO warplanes fly high over the uncontested air space of, say, Iraq or Afghanistan and leisurely drop precision-guided bombs.

To Westerners, the pitch-up rocket attacks—while justified by the comparative crudeness of Ukrainian and Russian warplanes and the sheer density of air-defenses along the Ukrainian front—might seem like a waste. Those rockets surely are flying wide and hitting nothing of value. How can inaccurate rocket attacks justify the risk attack crews face flying anywhere near the edge of battle?

Alexander Shishkin, a retired Russian navy officer, recently explained the tactic—and the thinking behind it—on his blog. It turns out these rocket attacks aren’t necessarily inaccurate.

“A lot of unflattering words have been said about the launches,” Shishkin wrote. “But it seems that their circular-error-probability is no worse” than with other attack methods.

To be clear, Shishkin is a pro-Russia propagandist. In the same post where he explained the ballistic rocket attacks, he also labeled Ukraine an “historical and geographical misunderstanding.” Essentially aping the lies the Kremlin tells to justify an unjustifiable war.

But there’s no reason to doubt Shishkin’s technical analysis. Russian air force Sukhoi Su-25 attack jets, operating in pairs from a constellation of air bases east and north of the Ukrainian border, typically fly high-low-high profiles while packing a pair of underwing fuel tanks and two rocket pods, each with five 122-millimeter S-13 rockets.

The loadout lends an Su-25 just enough range to travel the 400 miles or so to and from the front. A dangerous, one-hour mission just to fire 10 unguided rockets.

The risk is evident in the growing list of losses. The Russian air force has written off 25 Su-25s since Russia widened its war on Ukraine back in February. That’s a tenth of the Russian Su-25 fleet. Ukraine for its part has lost 15 Su-25s—potentially half of its pre-war fleet.

Of course, the Ukrainian air force since February has received enough secondhand Su-25s from its NATO allies to make good all its losses. The Russian air force, too, could replenish its Su-25 regiments by pulling old airframes out of storage.

The Russians’ S-13 raids can be pretty accurate, Shishkin explained. The flight-control systems in Russian attack helicopters include a mode that, given accurate locations for the enemy and the launching aircraft, calculates the release attitude for ballistic attacks with unguided rockets. Crews just have to follow the cues on their heads-up displays in order to loose the rockets along the right arc.

There’s no reason to doubt the flight controls in an Su-25 include the same mode, Shishkin wrote. Launched at a 20-degree angle between 2.4 and 3.2 miles from the target, a volley of S-13s should deviate no more than 50 feet from the aim point, he explained. “It is guaranteed to create a continuous zone of destruction from the spread of 10 high-explosive fragmentation” warheads.

The ballistic rocket attacks work, according to Shishkin. But that doesn’t mean they’re not a compromise. Russian attack jets would be a lot more accurate if they could fly higher and drop bombs from level flight, he wrote.

But unless and until the Russian air force can suppress Ukraine’s air-defenses, medium flight is suicide for Russian pilots. And to be clear, the Russians have been trying, and failing, for months to suppress Ukraine’s air-defenses.

So the rocket attacks will continue.