Ukrainian Witness | War in Ukraine | If asked to choose between a drone and a tank, I would choose a drone,...

💭 🇺🇦   If asked to choose between a drone and a tank, I would choose a drone, — Pavlo Yelizarov, who was appointed as deputy commander of the Air Force focused on short-range air defense 💬 ❗️   We slightly changed the concept of how we treat 'Shaheds.' Previously, regions thought: if they flew past me and didn’t hit my area — thank God. Now the model is different: Shaheds enter and exit. If they exit, that’s bad. Why did they get out? So now there is control: how many entered and how many exited;💬  We also analyzed all radar coverage. Sometimes groups or those responsible for radars made decisions on their own discretion: “I want to be there because I like it there.” Now it is more structured: radars are placed according to a clear logic and moved based on what happened during the previous strike;💬  In one region we ran an experiment and tried to implement our model. There were 28 crews — and 24 of them did not shoot down a single drone over the past year. We went further. We took all crews under our command — more than 300. Of them, 66 shot down more than 10 Shaheds, others fewer than 10. And 170 crews did not shoot down a single one over the year;💬  Drone interceptors are considered effective and cost-efficient, but require radars, quality drones, and trained pilots;💬  Interceptor drones now reach speeds of up to 700 km/h;💬  Air defense is split into 'large' (traditional systems) and 'small' (countering drones), with the latter needing more structure;💬  The key challenge is personnel quality and well-coordinated teams;💬  Lasar’s Group has about 1,900 personnel, which is sufficient.