Ukraine’s been pretty effective with these, and it constrains the Russian Air Force’s action against Ukraine to have to worry about being picked off at range.

Also, the missiles Ukraine is launching seem to be making it past Russian air defenses.

I wonder what could be done to try to increase the range at which they can reach out?

This may not need to be a high-volume option if it can be used to deter, to ensure that Russia cannot safely fly warplanes anywhere near Ukraine without the risk of being picked off.

I don’t know what S-300 variants Ukraine has. WP says that the modern variants have a pretty hefty range, but I would guess that Ukraine doesn’t have those.

What I’ve seen is speculation that Ukraine is using Patriots, which are really intended to counter ballistic missiles.

The US – perhaps somewhat-surprisingly – doesn’t have a lot by way of very long-range air-to-air missiles. It has stealthy aircraft to get close to a target, but not very-long-range AAMs for standoff attacks. And that’s even if Ukraine could be lobbing AAMs off some aircraft that they have (which would in turn expose that aircraft to risk). I think that the European Meteor is about the longest-range AAM available, and it can only reach out a little further than the Patriot.

We don’t have a lot by way of long-range SAMs. As someone I saw once put it, the United States Air Force is most of the United States Army’s air defense.

We do have the RIM-174/SM-6, which is a two-stage SAM, and apparently the Army is using it on land now. WP says that it’s export-approved. I’d guess that exposing it to China is a risk, but unlike, say, the Patriot – which is important for ABM capability – I don’t know what the risk factors here are. One would be reverse-engineering and producing a weapon against our aircraft, and another would be counters being developed to the system. It’d potentially expose the true range capability, but my guess is that that may be acceptable. It apparently has anti-ballistic-missile capability, but that’s secondary, not like exposing an SM-3.

If the seekers are too-sensitive to risk exposure of, I wonder how viable it would be to take a relatively-long-range missile like the SM-6 and stick a different seeker package in the thing. The aircraft that Ukraine’s hitting aren’t especially stealthy. Ukraine just really needs range to get the first stage close enough. So, that’d get a two-stage missile in Ukraine’s hands.

googles

There’s an existing land-based launcher:

https://www.twz.com/navy-unveils-truck-mounted-sm-6-missile-launcher-in-european-test

My guess is that that’d provide enough value to Ukraine that Ukraine can probably promise to have an artillery piece covering it to destroy it if Russia looks likely to grab one.

The SM-6 is expensive, but it’s a lot cheaper than an A-50 or a Tu-22M. It’s also cheaper than a Patriot. It’s also probably rather-longer-ranged, that it’s generally-considered that the published figures by the US are considerably shorter than its actual range.

googles

You can see someone musing about it here:

https://military.news/sm-6-missile-system-vital-defense-asset-for-ukraine-outperforming-patriot/

Now, one downside is that the US is really adverse to sending surface-to-surface missiles to Ukraine that can reach way into Russia, and this can – in a secondary role – be used as a surface-to-surface missile. However, I think that it’s pretty safe to say that Ukraine isn’t gonna say that they’re going to use it as a surface-to-air missile and then use it as a a surface-to-surface missile. Ukraine can probably come up with better options if they want to blow something up on the ground in Russia. It’s also probably not the world’s most-effective weapon in a surface-to-surface role; while it has a large warhead by anti-air missile standards, it’s a small one by anti-surface missile standards.

We probably can’t send a ton of them, but as long as Ukraine has just a handful floating around, it means that Russia is facing risks any time they put warplanes anywhere near Ukraine, that Ukraine might pull one of the “rush a SAM up to the front, pick off a high-value aircraft, run back” stunts.

Love to see it! Particularly since this was likely a craft that was participating in the attack. Instant karma.