21/03/2026
🖥 Lessons US and Gulf could learn from Ukraine’s air defence warriors
👥 Over the four years of the great war, Ukraine has actually become one of the strongest countries in the world in the field of air defense. It is the Ukrainian experience that can be useful today not only to Europe, but also to the US and the Gulf countries, which are increasingly faced with strikes by Iranian Shahed. The Times writes about this.
📌 In fact, Ukraine has built one of the most complex air defense systems in the world, combining:
🟡Soviet and Western systems;
🟡Multi-level defense;
🟡EW means;
🟡Fighters, helicopters and Patriot-type air defense systems;
🟡Interceptor drones;
🟡Mobile fire groups with machine guns.
💬 Despite Donald Trump's public statement that the US does not need help from Volodymyr Zelensky, the US Central Command, according to The Times, has nevertheless invited Ukrainian advisers. President Volodymyr Zelensky previously also stated that Ukrainian specialists are already working in Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, helping with missile and drone defense.
🔫 Ukrainian officers were surprised by the tactics of the allies in the region:
➡️"I don't understand what they were doing, what they were looking at during our four years of struggle"
➡️"Often they [the US and its allies] fired thoughtlessly"
➡️"For example, they used SM-6 missiles - from a ship, a very good anti-missile missile. This missile costs about $ 6 million, and they used it to shoot down the Shahed, which cost $ 70,000."
The Ukrainian military notes that they often use one or two Patriot missiles to destroy even ballistic missiles, while in the Persian Gulf countries they spend up to eight interceptors on one target.
🗓 On March 1, three American F-15E fighters were shot down by their own air defense in Kuwait while pursuing drones. Ukrainian officers called this gross negligence.
➡️“In any war, there are times when fire happens beyond one’s capabilities, but in this particular case it was obvious negligence”
➡️“It is very difficult to confuse an airplane with a UAV, in principle. It is absolutely unclear where they were looking. After all, not all systems are automated”
Experts suggest that the difference in approaches lies in the fact that Ukrainian calculations work in manual mode and remain near the systems, while in the region they more often rely on the automatic operation of batteries.
➡️ It is also reported that the US AN/FPS-132 early warning radar worth a billion dollars was damaged, as well as at least one Terminal high-altitude air defense system radar, each worth about $300 million. The radars were clearly visible on publicly available satellite images.
➡️“They stood in exactly the same place for two months. Then the Shaheds arrived. Three Shaheds worth about $70,000 each. And that’s it”
🗒 Among the main lessons that Ukraine can teach its partners:
🛑do not waste super-expensive missiles on cheap Shaheds;
🛑constantly maneuver and camouflage air defense batteries;
🛑protect expensive radars and launchers;
🛑work harmoniously manually at a critical moment when automation can fail.