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Of the more than 300 Air Force crews, 170 failed to shoot down a single ‘Shahed’ in a year — Yelizarov

Stanislav Sereda
Stanislav Sereda Journalist
Of the more than 300 Air Force crews, 170 failed to shoot down a single ‘Shahed’ in a year — Yelizarov
Air defence
Deputy Commander of the Ukrainian Air Force Pavlo Yelizarov said that his team had analysed the performance of crews operating interceptor drones. He claimed that more than half of them had not shot down a single Russian attack drone in a year.

He said this in an interview with *Ukrainska Pravda*.

He says that in one of the regions, 24 out of 28 crews have not shot down a single drone in the past year. Across the entire Air Force, out of more than 300 crews, 66 have shot down more than 10 ‘Shaheds’, whilst the rest have shot down fewer than 10. A further 170 crews have not shot down a single one in a year.

“When we talk about human resources — whether there are many or few — I believe that even the resources that have already been mobilised are sufficient for us. They simply need to be used effectively, structured and analysed,” added Yelizarov.

According to him, his team has changed its approach to ‘suicide drones’, as previously they allegedly believed that ‘if they flew past me and didn’t strike my area — thank God, no one will tell me off in the morning’.

Now, however, the model is different: they monitor how many drones have entered the region’s airspace and how many have left.

Yelizarov also says that they have managed to organise the radar fields, and now they are positioned according to a specific logic and moved depending on what happened during the previous flight, rather than as before, when those in charge of the radars decided for themselves where to position them.

As a reminder, in February, the Ukrainian Armed Forces established a command for unmanned air defence systems. Colonel Yevhen Khlibnikov was appointed to head the ‘small’ air defence command.

Subsequently, Ukraine’s Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov stated that, thanks to the strengthening of Ukrainian air defence, the interception rate for Russian cruise missiles had reached almost 80%, and for drones — 90%.

As a reminder, ISW previously reported that Ukraine had identified a critical vulnerability in Russian air defence.

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