Military and political analyst of the Information Resistance group, Aleksandr Kovalenko, told Unian how many air defense systems we need to protect ourselves from strikes.
"How many million-plus cities do we have? Each million-plus city should have at least one Patriot air defense system. Each Patriot system should be equipped with medium-range defense capabilities, such as IRIS-T and NASAMS. These, in turn, should have short-range defense, including Alvis Stormer, Crotale air defense systems, even Soviet models like Buk, Kub, Tor-M2, Osa-10, and, of course, Gepard, and so on.
In essence, each million-plus city should have a complete tier of such defenses. And this is a minimum requirement. This is to create a kind of anti-aircraft defense umbrella over the million cities. Then, after securing the million-plus cities, especially those near the front line and potential breakthrough directions in our airspace from Russia, create a safety buffer.
It should gradually happen. Currently, we have a fully tiered air defense system only in Kyiv and the Kyiv region.
In addition to strengthening air defense, we must also focus on protecting production facilities and warehouses, not only in the public sector but also in the private sector. Many of these facilities are located in large cities, so air defense forces must protect them, which is clear. On the other hand, what else should be done? Creating alternative means of protection, in my opinion.
If we place objects in the military-industrial complex, important production facilities, and start manufacturing, we should locate them in safer places. These should be, for example, underground complexes that are difficult for missiles to reach (and that's the end of production if a missile hits). We need to transition to the concept of moving all crucial production (and not only that) into an underground format, making it much more challenging for Russian missiles to hit important targets."
