Ukraine Is Losing Several S-300 Anti-Air Launchers A Week. But It Still Has Hundreds Left.

Ukraine had around 100 active batteries of S-300 long-range air-defense systems with as many as 300 launchers when Russia widened its war in the country starting the night of Feb. 23.

Seven weeks later, the Russians have knocked out at least 21 of the S-300 launchers that outside analysts have confirmed with photos or videos. Even if the actual total of destroyed launchers is higher—and it almost certainly is—it’s not hard to understand why the Russian air force still is losing a startling number of aircraft.

That said, the day probably is coming when Ukraine runs out of its longest-range surface-to-air weapons.

The Ukrainian army, air force and navy inherited a lot of air-defense equipment when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. These included six brigades and four regiments of S-300s that cascaded to the Ukrainian air force, plus additional S-300s that the army took over.

An S-300 launcher can lob a two-ton, proximity-fuse missile as far as 125 miles, depending on the model.

An S-300 brigade includes several battalions, each of which oversees multiple batteries. A battery usually includes separate acquisition and engagement radars, a command vehicle and up to a dozen launchers each with four ready-to-fire missiles. As such, an S-300 brigade might field a hundred or more launchers and more than 400 ready missiles.

An S-300 regiment usually has four batteries together operating up to 48 launchers with a combined 192 missiles.

Now, in most armies—and Ukraine’s certainly is no exception—actual fielded forces rarely match the official table of organization and equipment. Thus Kyiv’s 10 or more S-300 brigades and regiments together operated only half the batteries their official TOEs implied.

Still, it was a significant force. And one that has managed to absorb steady losses from Russian rockets and cruise missiles. The open-source intelligence analysts at the Oryx blog, who confirm wartime equipment losses by way of photos and videos in the media, place Ukraine’s S-300 attrition at 21 launchers.

That’s the equivalent of seven or so batteries. Seven percent of the pre-war force. One Russian strike in eastern Ukraine in late March knocked out an entire Ukrainian S-300 battery, including a Clam Shell acquisition radar, a Flap Lid engagement radar, four support vehicles and a dozen quad-launchers.

But degrading Ukraine’s long-range air-defenses by seven percent after six weeks of bombardment is nothing for Russian missileers to brag about. It’s doctrine in many militaries to focus initial attacks on the enemy’s air-defenses in order to establish some degree of air-superiority before a ground offensive begins.

Russia did not do that.

To be fair, Russian doctrine doesn’t call for total air superiority prior to an offensive, but it does ask for local superiority over the main line of contact. Even by that lower standard, the Russians have failed to control the air over Ukraine. Kyiv still can shoot S-300s at Russian fighters and attack planes supporting the front-line battalions.

Which helps to explain Russia’s mounting losses in the air. The Ukrainian defense ministry claims it has shot down 150 Russian planes and 135 helicopters. It’s impossible to verify all those claims, of course. The Oryx analysts for their part have found photographic evidence that Russia has lost 19 planes and 28 helicopters—still a significant total.

It’s unclear how many of the kills the S-300 batteries can claim. The Ukrainian air force’s Su-27 and MiG-29 fighters remain active, albeit at a low sortie-rate—and the army’s short-range air-defenders with their mobile and shoulder-fired anti-air missiles have proved particularly deadly. Ukrainian troops even have shot down Russian helicopters using anti-tank guided missiles.

But S-300s are in the fight, too. It’s not for no reason that Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, in his March 16 message to the U.S. Congress, specifically asked for help acquiring more of the long-range missiles. “You know what kind of defense systems we need: S-300 and other similar systems,” Zelensky said.

Zelensky’s request implied both that the S-300 is an important part of Ukraine’s air-defense system—and that the Ukrainians might eventually suffer a shortage of S-300 batteries.

The United States and its allies have been trying to figure out how to deliver S-300s to Ukraine. One plan was for Slovakia to transfer to Ukraine its single battery of S-300s in exchange for the United States or some other country backfilling Slovakia’s arsenal with a new air-defense system such as the American Patriot.

A few days after Zelensky asked for S-300s, Germany agreed to deploy Patriots to Slovakia as part of a NATO battlegroup. Slovakian defense minister Jaroslav Nad said the German Patriots would complement, not replace, his country’s S-300s—a permanent replacement is still a prerequisite for Slovakia to give away its original missiles.

The German deployment however does hint at negotiations taking place in secret between NATO and Ukraine for a fresh supply of S-300s. Slovenia reportedly is willing to transfer some of its own S-300s.

Ukraine’s air-defenders apparently still have hundreds of S-300 launchers, but they continue to lose them at a rate of at least three or four a week. As there’s no end in sight for Europe’s worst war in decades, the time could come when Ukraine has too few long-range air-defense systems.

Kyiv is making good use of its S-300s and needs more of them. The only question is how urgently.