[u10]

?

There have been plently of reports of Russia using S-300 missile systems in the ground attack configuration.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-63247287

And it is not unreasonable that the missiles may have originated from Belarus, since Russia has sortied out of the country throughout the war.

[vbezhenar]

S300 is defensive missile. It makes no sense to waste it like that when you have plenty of other missiles in your arsenal. Those reports were from ukrainian rockets which failed to intercept attacking rockets. Ukraine does not want to accept this fact that they kill their own citizens with their own missiles, so they spread that kind of misinformation. BBC is not trustworthy source as UK fights on Ukraine side.

Don't you think it's kind of ironic to have title "Russia’s stock of weapons running low" just when Russia bombarding entire Ukraine with hundreds of rockets as I write it.

This BBC article has "Posts on social media have claimed these S-300 missiles have been repurposed by Russia to hit land targets" source. Sorry, this is nonsense source in my opinion.

[u10]

What does or doesn't make sense doens't really matter if there is literal evidence of Russia firing S-300 missiles in ground to ground strikes.

> Those reports were from ukrainian rockets which failed to intercept attacking rockets

This doesn't track either, if that were the case it would be incredibly suspicious that these intercepts are failing and just through sheer bad luck that the failed intercepts consistently land on Ukrainian forces or residential areas at incredibly high rates.

> Don't you think it's kind of ironic to have title "Russia’s stock of weapons running low" just when Russia bombarding entire Ukraine with hundreds of rockets as I write it.

No, whatever Russia may constitute necessary reserves to actually fight a war with NATO and simply running out of missiles are two different things. Much like the reports of Russia going to the DPRK to ask for assistance in providing artillery shells, it is literally not the case that Russia is running out of artillery shells, but more likely Russia seeks to backstop the current usage to maintain necessary strategic reserves.

And it doesn't really contradict the notion that Russia is in fact running out of PGM's, given that the S-300's are being used for ground attack, which Russia has massive stockpiles of and aren't really needed in the current conflict.

[rsj_hn]

Correct, the S-300 is a sophisticated missile designed to intercept highly maneuverable airplanes that have a number of defenses. The idea that you would shoot such an expensive missile at a fixed ground target - in this case, a farm along the Polish border, where it hit a tractor and killed the tractor driver -- is crazy, and of course completely incompatible with the "Russia running out of missiles" narrative.

What is much more likely is the simple explanation that these are AA missiles that Ukraine fired, trying to intercept a Russian missile or drone, and they missed their target, hitting the farm.

That an AA missile failed to intercept and caused damage to infrastructure is completely normal for AA systems and has happened several times before -- an AA missile missed its target and hit an apartment building in Kharkov and another hit an office complex in Kiev. AA systems don't have a 100% interception rate, and those that don't intercept fall and cause damage in inconvenient places.

As is usually the case, the simplest explanation is often the most plausible, whereas the most inflammatory explanation is what is promoted in media. Note that even Poland is urging people to remain calm and wait for an investigation, so they are actually more responsible than Western media.

[celsoazevedo]

> completely incompatible with the "Russia running out of missiles" narrative

I haven't seen anyone saying that Russia is running out of S-300. Other precision systems yes, but not S-300, which would explain the reports of them using S-300 to target land targets both in Kharkiv and Kherson.

No idea what happened here btw, just pointing out why they might be using them. Also, mistakes and malfunctions happen.

[rsj_hn]

There are no credible reports of S-300 being used to target any land system. The S-300 would be a very poor missile to use this way, and it would make no sense to waste it blowing up unimportant targets, when Russia is still sending large waves of cheaper-to-produce missiles at strategically important systems like power plants.

You would need to believe that an expensive missile is intentionally being used to blow up a city intersection somewhere or an office building while cheaper missiles are being used to knock out transformers and military barracks. That fails basic internal consistency checks.

There are, however, plenty of credible reports of Ukrainian S-300s damaging random infrastructure in these areas (and in other areas), always in the aftermath of drone attacks and cruise missile attacks when the AA systems are activated. The randomness of the targets and their distance from any strategic target is evidence that they are AA misses that missed.

Then we have the physical evidence, that this is an S-300 missile.

[celsoazevedo]

The reports of S-300 being used to target land targets originated from the same sources saying that a fragment found is from a S-300 missile. It's people on Twitter and Telegram, some of them "analysts" or people that seem to have sources in the different militaries (at least the ones that are usually right about what they say). I'm not saying that they are credible sources, but it's not like the picture of the S-300 fragment was released by an official source. We should keep this in mind when deciding what to (or not to) believe.

I think it's a mistake to assume they wouldn't use S-300 because of its cost. It also doesn't make any sense to use expensive missiles to hit kid playgrounds, but it happened before Russia had cheap swarms of Iranian drones. It doesn't make sense to launch salvos of not very precise rockets from helicopters, but that's exactly what both sides are doing for close-ish combat support. Point is, and without knowing for sure if Russia is using S-300 for land targets or not, both sides have used expensive weapons even when it didn't make sense financially.

On a side note, many of today's strikes seem to have used Kh-101 (edit: I meant to write 3M-54, not Kh-101) cruise missiles, which are not cheap ( https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/yw737b/the_m... ). They're using expensive stuff too, not just "cheaper-to-produce missiles".

Regarding the damage from S-300 systems, yes, I've seen videos from Ukraine and Russia (Belgorod) where air defence damages some stuff. I agree that it's possible that what hit Poland was an Ukrainian S-300 or a mix of a Russian missile/drone and Ukrainian S-300. And yes, it could be a Russian missile too... even if it was not done on purpose, shit happens sometimes.

I'm not a weapons expert or have special sources, so this is where I'll leave the thread. I just wanted to point out that the "running out of missiles" narrative was about other weapon systems, not about S-300s, of which they probably still have lots because it was an important part of the Soviet Union air defence.

[bryanlarsen]

British Military Intelligence is a credible source claiming Russia is using S-300 to attack land targets: https://defence-blog.com/russia-uses-soviet-era-air-defense-...

[rsj_hn]

British Military Intelligence is a credible source in the same way the Ukraine MOD is a credible source - they are participants in the conflict and have a propaganda mission to fulfill. In that case, you must believe that Russia was shelling its own nuclear power plant and that a Ukrainian woman destroyed a drone with a pickle jar.

If that's credible to you, knock yourself out, I am not going to try to convince you, but it's not credible to people in most of the world, who would consider, for example, non-aligned sources such as Indian/Mexican/Brazilian to be neutral, rather than looking to nations that are arming/subsidizing one side of this conflict as being neutral.

I have lived through a lot of wars, and seen a lot of cheerleading for wars, especially in Western media. I remember the stories of Iraquis taking incubators out of Kuwait, of viagra being given to Libya's soldiers to rape women, etc. Western media and government institutions are often a spin machine for war - not all, there are anti-war outlets and reporters doing good work, but when you are talking about ministry of defense statements, you don't look for nations waging proxy wars as sources of reliable info about the conflict in question.

I would apply the same level of credibility to Russian MoD statements as I would to British MoD.