The Buk (“Beech tree” in Russian) came infamously to global public notice when on July 17 2014, a Buk 9M38 system transported from Russia for use by the rebels near Hrabove in Donetsk Oblast led by the now imprisoned Igor “Strelkov” Girkin shot down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 to Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport. All 298 people onboard, including 80 children and 15 crew members perished.
Since then the Buk has become ubiquitous as part of Russia’s front line mobile air defense(AD) in its war with Ukraine. Along with other AD systems, Russia has managed to keep at bay or shoot down a significant number of Ukraine’s legacy Soviet-era fighter jets. But after considerable efforts to finally convince her western allies to provide F-16s, Ukraine cannot allow the Russians to maul the F-16s the way they have done with Ukraine’s relatively small number of Su-27 and MiG-29 fighters, Su-24M bombers and Su-25 attack aircraft. Those precious few F-16s have to be given as much protection as Ukraine can muster. So what to do?
Enter the Ukrainian Special Operation to destroy as many of the Russian Buks in theater as possible. It is not known if the tally from this Spec Ops is included in the daily official tally announced by the Ukrainian Defense Ministry(see annieli’s daily updates). But this discreet project is well underway and is without a doubt going to be intensified and relentlessly pursued. The Kyiv Post has a write up on this … as do a few other news outlets.
www.kyivpost.com/...'s%20fire%20control%20unit.
Wikipedia indicates that:
A standard Buk battalion consists of a command vehicle, target acquisition radar (TAR) vehicle, six transporter erector launcher and radar (TELAR) vehicles and three transporter erector launcher (TEL) vehicles. A Buk missile battery consists of two TELAR (four missiles apiece) and one TEL vehicle, with six missiles for a full complement of 14 missiles.
Here’s hoping this Ukrainian effort is crowned with success so that when the F-16s do finally make their appearance in theater, they can really get jiggy with it.
Slava Ukraini! Heroyam Slava!