Desperate to avoid surface-to-air missiles in the lethal air space over Ukraine, Russian and Ukrainian pilots have revived a classic tactic—flying really, really low.
Low flying allowed Ukrainian crews to continue supplying the garrison at the Azovstol steel plant in occupied Mariupol, in southern Ukraine, for weeks after Russian forces fully surrounded the port city back in early March.
A pair of Mi-8 transport helicopters would fly through Russian air-defenses at 130 miles per hour as close as 10 feet from the ground."We had to fly over the power lines sometimes, and that was a risky maneuver given the speed," one pilotThe Russians eventually caught on to the Ukrainians’ flight profiles and began positioning SAMs to interdict the Mariupol resupply missions, shooting down several helicopters and compelling Kyiv to halt the flights.
Super-low flying now is standard across the Ukraine war zone. But while it might protect crews from missiles, itincreases the risk from accidents. It surely doesn’t help that the Russian air force in particular appears to be having problems training and retaining skilled pilots. It’s not for no reason that more and more Su-25s in particular are being flown by aging ex-servicemembers who now work for the Wagner Group, Russia’s shadowy mercenary company. At least two Wagner pilots have been shot down over Ukraine, an indication that Moscow is throwing money at its manpower problems.
Flying low and fast, safely, takes a lot of practice. And that takes time. As losses mount, time-consuming training is a luxury neither the Russians nor Ukrainians can afford. The back-to-back crashes of two Russian Su-25s might imply that crews, in their urgency, are trading one danger for another.kill you—than to fly higher and risk catching a missile, which almost certainly
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