For weeks now, Ukrainian drones have been harassing Moscow almost daily, without the anti-aircraft defense having yet managed to protect the Russian capital. In response, the Russians began erecting steel towers topped with Pantsir, an anti-aircraft system equipped with short-range missiles, high-firing cannons and an array of sensors intended to detect, track and lock on targets.
These new buildings were filmed for the first time last week on Russian state television Rossiya 24. Several versions, identified by the specialized site Defense-Blog, emerge: some towers look like large electricity pylons raised by a platform horizontal; others look more like a metal access ramp leading to a promontory; simple cinder block mounds of concrete still appear on screen.
It did not take less to resurrect the German word “flakturm” (“flaktürme” in the plural), which can be translated as “air defense tower”. This is how eight blockhouses of the “Flak” – the name of the German anti-aircraft defense, which was a component of the Luftwaffe during the Second World War – had been baptized – built from 1940 in Berlin, Hamburg and Vienna.
They were, however, constructions that were more spectacular than those that appear today around Moscow. The original “flaktürme”, up to 50 meters high and 70 meters wide, looked like big concrete castles. Dozens of “flak” of different calibers – this time, in the masculine, the name of the anti-aircraft guns – were perched on top of the towers. At the time, it was a question of fighting against the waves of American and British bombers who dropped their tons of bombs on German cities so as to destroy the vital infrastructures of the Third Reich.
The scale of drone attacks on Moscow to date is unmatched. Today they are Ukrainian suicide drones, carrying limited charges of a few kilograms of explosives, which roar at low altitude and at low speed in the Moscow sky. On their own, these machines, some long-range and fired from Ukraine, others more modest fired by Ukrainian partisans near Moscow, cannot cause significant damage in the Russian capital and are similar more to symbolic attacks aimed at showing the Russians that their capital is an integral part of the battlefield. Many of these suicide bombers targeted buildings in the Novo-Ogariovo business district, where the Russian elite meet every day.
Since May – the date of the first attacks on Moscow – Pantsirs had been perched using cranes on the roofs of the most strategic buildings in the Russian capital, in particular those depending on the Kremlin or the Ministry of Defense. The new images of the “flaktürme” show some Pantsir equipped with tracks and not wheels, and decorated with white paint. These are “Arctic” versions designed for snow and extreme cold, which are generally seen near Murmansk or Severodvinsk, and not Moscow.
Proof that, for the Russians, anti-aircraft systems are a valuable asset, available in large quantities, but nevertheless limited. According to the Oryx website, confirmed losses of Russian anti-aircraft missile systems already amount to 150 in Ukraine.
With their new anti-aircraft defense towers, the Russians want to protect the outskirts of their capital to better anticipate the threat, while the Ukrainians have announced the development of a new cruise missile with a range of 700 kilometers, derived from the Neptune, used in particular to sink the Russian cruiser Moskva. Such a new long-range weapon could reach the capital “Moskva”, after which the flagship was named. In the midst of the Ukrainian counter-offensive in the South, the challenge for the Russians is also not to lose the battle of the air in Moscow.