Frag Out! Magazine
Issue link: https://fragout.uberflip.com/i/1493095
It was just bad luck, that the remains fell on the ground in the proximity of the grain drying facility, killing two persons. It was also probable that the Russians launched an S-300 missile, willing to destroy a ground target close to the Polish-Ukrainian border. The missile missed the target, and we know what happened next. Given the short range of the S-300, the aforesaid effector would have to have been launched from Belarus. This would not have been unusual, since the Russians do use the Belorussian territory as their backup. A majority of missile strikes targeting Kyiv and western Ukraine originate from Belarus. Crisis Disappointment Four days after the incident, the above scenario was ruled out by the Poles. It was stressed, however, that the Russians are the ones to blame anyway. Their barbaric missile strike targeting the Ukrainian cities, including Lviv, located close to the Polish border, provoked a relevant reaction from the Ukrainian air defenses. The Ukrainian missile would not have been launched if no necessity to do that emerged. The rest boils down to an unfortunate coincidence. The stance of the Ukrainian authorities, who were still claiming that the Russians were the ones to blame, has met a common disappointment among the Poles. When I am writing these words, I have no idea how this crisis in Polish- Ukrainian relations would play out - the first one, since February 24th. It is also difficult to overlook another disappointment, related to the capabilities of the Polish, and more broadly speaking, NATO air defense assets. The common knowledge here combines the facts with an unrealistic set of expectations, with some spicy details added here, thanks to the "always strong and ready" rhetoric. And the reality? Our skies are still full of holes. This stems from more than 2 decades of backlog, postponed modernization, and the careless "whatever happens, happens, we'll get by somehow" philosophy. Happily, we are on the way to changing this status quo, but it will take years. But here we are referring to the border, where radars and sensors monitoring the airspace are deployed continuously, to have a good awareness of what is happening in the skies over western Ukraine. The monitoring mentioned above has since been reinforced, as NATO reconnaissance aircraft have been patrolling the border since February 24th. Secondly, as South-Eastern Poland has become a hub for logistics supporting the provision of military aid to Ukraine, the Americans have deployed a Patriot air/missile defense system there - with more radars on location. In other words, anything airborne beyond the border, flying over Lviv, Lutsk, Ivano-Frankivsk, and other Ukrainian cities, appears on the radars stationed in, and flies over Poland, right from the moment when those threats or assets take off or enter the monitored airspace. Regardless of whether the airborne objects come from Russia or Ukraine. We did see the missile, that fell in Przewodów. It was being tracked, from the very launch to the crash site. Why wasn't it shot down? It only was flying in Polish airspace for mere two-three seconds. It fell less than 10 kilometers from the ANALYSIS