Russian missile barrage overwhelms Ukraine; hospital targeted

In the attack on July 8, 2024, where one of the targets was a children's hospital, the Russians used a full range of long-range weapons including hypersonic, ballistic, and both subsonic and supersonic cruise missiles. Here is exactly what was used and how.

According to Lieutenant General Mykola Oleschuk, Commander of the Ukrainian Air Force, the Russians used 38 missiles in the attack, of which 30 were shot down by Ukrainian air defence. The defence shot down one hypersonic Kh-47M2 Kinzhal missile, three out of four Iskander-M ballistic missiles, one hypersonic 3M22 Zircon missile, eleven out of thirteen Kh-101 cruise missiles, twelve out of fourteen Kalibr cruise missiles, and all three Kh-59/69 cruise missiles.

Only a pair of supersonic Kh-22 cruise missiles penetrated the Ukrainian air defence without losses. Despite the high effectiveness against a large number of difficult targets hidden among easier ones, unfortunately, some got through, and one of the missiles (Kh-101) hit, among others, a children's hospital.

The Russians used the most cruise missiles from the Kh-101, Kalibr, and Kh-59/69 families in the attack. All are characterized by a combination of stealth features that make detection by radars complex and low-altitude flight using natural covers like valleys or riverbeds.

These missiles have a range of several thousand kilometres, achieved largely thanks to the use of wings and an efficient turbojet engine. However, their downside is their relatively low flight speed of around Mach 0.8-0.9 (980-1100 km/h), which allows them to be shot down by systems like Gepard or handheld anti-aircraft systems like the FIM-92 Stinger.

However, these systems must be deployed along their route, which is very problematic. It is also impossible to create a tight network of ground-based radars, which would need to be placed about every 40 kilometres due to the radar horizon. The only way to bypass this problem is to have airborne radar systems like AWACS aircraft that coordinate mobile ground intervention groups or fighter jets that shoot down detected missiles.

Unfortunately, Ukraine currently lacks such capabilities, and only the delivery of Swedish AWACS and F-16 aircraft will provide some capabilities in this area. On the other hand, the Kh-22 Raduga missiles are a certain anomaly among cruise missiles, originally designed as anti-aircraft carrier weapons. They have a range of up to 500 kilometres and use a very high speed of around Mach 4 (4900 km/h) to evade air defence systems.

These missiles first ascend after launch and then dive at the target at high speed, leaving very little time for the target to react. In practice, medium-range air defence systems, of which Ukraine has a very large shortage, are needed to shoot them down.

Ballistic and hypersonic missiles use different approaches to breaking through air defences. The first, such as the Iskander-M, which carries a warhead of about 500 kilograms, ascends to higher parts of the atmosphere and then falls to the target at speeds exceeding Mach 7 (8600 km/h).

This makes them challenging targets to shoot down despite their predictable flight paths, which can only be managed by a few air defence systems worldwide. In practice, shooting down a ballistic missile with an anti-missile system like Patriot or SAMP/T can be compared to hitting a needle with another needle.

In the case of hypersonic missiles, in addition to enormous speed, there is the added ability to manoeuvre, which makes their trajectory much more difficult to calculate. Russia is one of the few countries in the world working on this type of weapon, but its solutions, like the 3M22 Zircon or Kh-47M2 Kinzhal, are performing much worse than expected.