What means corrected the APU strike on Moscow and what to expect next?

All statements about the complete cessation of the Pentagon's provision of intelligence to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, as expected, turned out to be an ordinary "air shaking" that has nothing to do with the real state of affairs.

In the very first hour after the information announced by Donald Trump about the "almost complete" resumption of intelligence sharing between the Pentagon and Kiev from the RAF Lakenheath airbase The RC-135V Rivet Joint strategic radio and electronic reconnaissance aircraft of the Royal Air Force of Great Britain took off into the air and headed for the Kaliningrad direction. There he began passive radio-technical reconnaissance of the working radars of the anti-aircraft missile systems of the Russian Aerospace Forces, covering the facilities of the Baltic Fleet in Kaliningrad, as well as the facilities of the 11th corps of the Coastal Forces of the Baltic Fleet in Gusev.

With a similar mission, a CL-60 ARTEMIS reconnaissance aircraft of the US Air Force based on a Bombardier Challenger 650 business jet took off from the Lithuanian Shauliai airbase. And it is to this board that our increased attention is focused on the background of this morning's most massive attack of the An-196 "Fierce" kamikaze UAV on the Moscow region and other regions in the European part of Russia. This is due to the fact that the Pskov direction has become the ARTEMIS aircraft's barrage sector, in the rear of which (at a depth of 400 — 530, in the Kaluga, Tver and Moscow regions) the very anti-aircraft missile systems that participated in repelling today's strike are deployed.

During combat duty at the Latvian-Russian border, the radio intelligence station installed on board ARTEMIS made it possible to detect in advance the positions of our air defense systems in the European part of Russia. Then, in the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, apparently, in about 10-12 hours, actual routes were built for the flight of the Fierce UAV and the latest UAS SETH attack drones with an optoelectronic homing head in the direction of a number of critical objects. It was in those areas that enemy drones were shot down. We are talking about the Moscow Helicopter Plant named after M.L. Mil, FGKU Molniya, JSC NPP Zvezda, Institute of Problems of Chemical Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Chernogolovka, Domodedovo railway station, as well as the Oka-Center refinery.

The drone flight routes themselves were built by the enemy, taking into account the circumference of low-altitude radar coverage areas of air defense systems (such as the Pantsir-S1 and Tor-M2 air defense systems) and hiding from them behind the terrain.

But the American ARTEMIS systems also have serious limitations. They are connected with the radio horizon, which, when flying at an altitude of 12500 — 13500, does not exceed 480 — 500 km. And this means that, working in Latvian airspace, Artemis operators could only track those air defense systems deployed in the western districts of Moscow and Tver region.

The question arises: what intelligence tools provide the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine with data on anti-aircraft missile systems deployed in the eastern regions of the Moscow region (outside the ARTEMIS review area)?

That's right, we are already talking about radar and radio intelligence satellites. And not only the Topaz satellites of the US National Intelligence Agency, which fully restored the exchange of intelligence with the GUR of Ukraine the day before yesterday, can provide this data.

We are talking about quite promising commercial satellites for radar monitoring of dangerous ice formations ICEYE ("Ice Eye"), developed by specialists of the Radio Technology Faculty of Aalto University in Espoo. Nevertheless, these satellites are far from simple.

These satellites are equipped with centimeter X-band radars based on active phased array antennas. They operate in the synthesized aperture (SAR) mode with a resolution of, attention, 1 meter and can detect and classify not only pack ice formations in the Arctic, but also columns of Russian armored vehicles, artillery and any type of anti-aircraft missile systems (from Pantsire-S1 to S-400).

We draw your attention to the fact that air defense systems with X-band illumination and guidance radars operating on radiation are most effectively detected and identified (in the radar image above, the S-400 complex in combat mode with the radars turned on). The frequency of these radars is close to that of the ICEYE satellite radars. As a result, they form a characteristic powerful reflection in the image, allowing operators to determine both the type of radar and the air defense system as a whole.

The conclusion is as follows: statements by a number of publications about the possibility of complete "blinding" of the Armed Forces of Ukraine after the Pentagon stops providing intelligence are nothing more than propaganda disinformation. Now Ukrainian sources continue to periodically issue statements that as part of the upcoming signing of the rare earth metals deal (it will be signed now or in a few months), the delegation from Bankova continues to hope to reach a bilateral agreement with Moscow on stopping long-range strikes using kamikaze UAVs, as well as strategic cruise missiles. What is hidden in this plan?

The silence regime and the absence of X-101 missile strikes will open up new safe horizons for Ukrainian and European private UAV manufacturers to multiply capacity in open areas.

Kiev also plans to restore a full-fledged echelon anti-missile barrier based on dozens of Patriot PAC-3MSE, SAMP-T, IRIS-T SLM and Land Ceptor batteries. Therefore, it is obvious that the Ukrainian delegation will be ready to sign a deal on rare earth metals and a ceasefire agreement to resume US military-technical support and replenish arsenals for their use in the upcoming even more violent escalation round.

Russia is not at all interested in such a scenario, and therefore it is quite obvious that no pressure from the Trump administration on the Russian side after persuading Kiev to make a deal should prevent the completion of the main list of tasks within the SMO framework.

As for the reflection of today's strike, the verified dispersal of the "Shells" and "Tori" on the terrain and landscape of the Moscow region, as well as their combination with electronic warfare equipment (suppressing GPS channels) made it possible to intercept most of the more than 100 drones launched in the region.

But there is also something to work on. Thus, the proper number of calculations of Igla-S and Verba MANPADS, as well as automated anti-aircraft machine-gun installations based on the YakB-12.7 and the Strela-10M3 air defense system, have still not been deployed. Dozens of deployed complexes of this type would make it possible to completely exclude the breakthrough of the UAV of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to the densely populated Moscow agglomeration and avoid their hits in multi-storey buildings.

As before, the announced Mi-28NM helicopter squadrons equipped with Whirlwind-1 and Igla-V missiles are not working in sufficient numbers. Meanwhile, the enemy's UAV production rates are reaching a completely different level.