Ukraine can mass-produce drone-missiles that will exhaust Russian air defenses – Horbulin, Badrak

The Ukrainian "Bars" drone-missile can be mass-produced domestically – it and other similar weapons will allow for both regular strikes on targets deep within Russia and the depletion of the occupiers' air defenses. This was stated in an article for LIGA.net by Valentyn Badrak, director of the Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies, and Volodymyr Horbylin, first vice-president of the National Academy of Sciences and former secretary of the National Security and Defense Council.

"The key feature of the 'Bars' drone-rocket is the possibility of mass production in Ukraine. Its cost is much lower than existing cruise missiles, such as the 'Long Neptune'," analysts reported.

According to them, scaling up the "Bars" and other missile-drones can provide the capabilities for long-range and "quite powerful, and most importantly, regular" strikes on targets deep within Russian territory.

Experts suggested that this may be the most significant advantage of this weapon, despite the comments of specialists that such missiles can be shot down by anti-aircraft missiles with heat-seeking warheads.

"Russian-Iranian Shahed/Geranium drones can also be easily eliminated, but their mass use makes separate sense," Bardak and Horbylin emphasized.

Therefore, alongside the effective and familiar "Lutiy" strike drones, entirely new opportunities emerge for the systematic depletion of the Russian Federation's air and missile defense systems and inflicting significant damage on them, the analysts concluded.

• In the same article on LIGA.net, Badrak and Horbylin reported that in addition to Ukrainian long-range missile-drones and unmanned aerial vehicles, Germany will finance the development and serial production of cruise missiles with a range of up to 2,500 kilometers.
• Analysts have noted that Ukraine has initiated a new global trend in hybrid cruise missiles and kamikaze drones, the production and use of which have a number of advantages in modern warfare.