On the night of March 17, the AFU destroyed 14 drones of the Shahed-131/136 type in the sky over the Odessa region, the Ukrainian Air Force reported. Russian troops have developed a new tactic of launching kamikaze drones - the flight paths of kamikaze drones are designed in such a way that when flying over Odessa itself, the UAVs fly over residential areas and high-rise buildings. Oleksandr Kovalenko, a political and military observer from the Information Resistance group, wrote about this.
"The choice of such routes complicates the process of interception by mobile groups, both because of the difficulty of maneuvering between high-rise buildings and the use of residential buildings as cover by the occupants. High-rise buildings near the coast in a number of areas also complicate the process of interception and make it easier for the occupants to enter and fly over the city," Kovalenko said.
According to Kovalenko, kamikaze drones approach the city at ultra-low altitudes and only gain altitude near the coastline to overcome the slopes. The military-political observer believes that in order to destroy UAVs, it is necessary to create new conditions for Ukrainian air defense forces.
"All this, once again, points to the need to create conditions in Odessa to destroy Shahed-131/136 kamikaze drones on the approach to the city itself - over the sea. Creation of areas along the coast, about 30 km long, for deployment of short-range mobile SAMs," analyzes Kovalenko. In his opinion, Odessa needs L3Harris VAMPIRE, Crotale SAMs and the British FV4333 Stormer HVM for this purpose. However, such a defense is likely to be difficult to implement due to insufficient support for Ukraine from partner countries.
