Black Forest brigade's aerial reconnaissance unit destroys entire Russian air defence regiment – videos

The 15th Separate Artillery Reconnaissance Brigade (Black Forest) has already destroyed an entire Russian air defence regiment – 30 air defence systems – during Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Source: Ukrainska Pravda article, "God's eyes. How Ukrainian artillery reconnaissance made the leap towards the destruction of "state-of-the-art" Russian equipment"

Quote from Brigade Commander Colonel Oleksandr Popov: "We have found and destroyed a lot. But what pleases me is that these assets cannot be repaired or rebuilt from scratch, even in a year. It doesn't really matter how much these systems cost. What matters is that it is very technologically complicated and time-consuming to repair them. This is, in fact, the true value of our work. 

Many such systems have already been burned down – both electronic warfare systems and super-modern radar stations. There were also developments from 2023 that hadn't yet gone into production, but we have already destroyed them."

Details: At the beginning of the Russian full-scale invasion, there were few UAV operators and drones, so the main mission of artillery reconnaissance was to control the front line. However, by the summer of 2024, infantry units at the front were so saturated with their own short-range reconnaissance UAVs that the Black Forest pilots were able to focus on operations deeper behind Russian lines.

This is what the artillery reconnaissance personnel refer to as low deep strike (30 km and beyond). The Black Forest Brigade has concentrated on priority targets – Russian air defence systems.

As described in the article, the story of the destruction of the 2023 Russian development, a Predel-E experimental over-the-horizon radar, revealed several interesting nuances of the new war. 

Firstly, the mere fact that such a radar was destroyed – failing to detect a drone above it and calmly waiting for the missile that burned it down – speaks volumes about the quality of the development.

Secondly, there is an understanding of how dangerous the desire to quickly boast about results during such operations can be. 

The reconnaissance team hadn’t even landed the aircraft before a video was published online. The next day, the Black Forest Brigade destroyed a Buk anti-aircraft missile system, and that video was also instantly shared. After this, the Russians realised the significance of these actions and, within a week, they destroyed three reconnaissance plane-type drones using S-400 systems.

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