The hit on the Armavir early warning radar was apparently the second such attack on Russia’s early warning system. Newsweek, citing Ukrainian media reports in an April 18 article, reported that Ukrainian drones had struck a facility housing a 29B6 Container, an over-the-horizon radar in the Russian republic of Mordovia, citing sources in Ukraine’s military intelligence agency. It cites the VchK-OGPU Russian Telegram channel as having reported that “the attack was successful and now the Russian over-the-horizon station is out of action.”
The 29B6 radar is of a different type than the Voronezh DM radar at Armavir and several other locations. It consists of 2 arrays of 34-meter tall masts, a transmitter array and a receiver array, about 15 km apart. It’s difficult to see how drones could cause substantial damage to such a structure as each part of the two arrays are hundreds of meters long. Nonetheless, “It will be extremely difficult to fill the gap” left by the radar’s absence, the VChK-OGPU Telegram channel claimed.
