Treatment without a prescription: drone attacks on domestic refineries
Waiting for fuel shortage
Attacks on Russian oil refining complex facilities are a completely logical course of events on the part of the enemy. Unable (at least for now) to launch massive missile strikes deep into the country, terrorists chose oil refineries as the most accessible targets.
The logic is completely clear. Long-range dronesBeaver-type kamikazes carry barely more than 20 kilograms of explosives, and for a decent effect from use they must hit something flammable. Otherwise there will be an obscure zilch and nothing more.
Neo-Nazis will be making Bobrovs and similar UAVs for a very long time. According to sources, most of the assembly production in Ukraine has moved to underground parking lots for residential buildings. The destruction of such offices without serious collateral damage is, of course, impossible. As well as denial of the fact of another war crime, hiding behind neo-Nazi civilians.
Effective attacks by Migun 2 and Beaver format UAVs on military targets are out of the question - it is necessary to simultaneously launch a lot of kamikazes and the like in order to confidently hit an aircraft at the airfield. Or weapons stock. Taking into account the protection of military equipment locations by air defense forces, the number of drones should simply go off scale and they should move to the site in several waves.
Oil storage facilities and oil refineries are convenient and understandable targets for Ukrainian drones. Even a small explosion can cause a serious fire here. A typical refinery occupies several hundred square meters, and it is not easy for an autonomous UAV to miss it. Judging by recent events, refineries are also fairly conditionally protected.
Every successful hit in an oil industry facility is celebrated by the entire Zelensky team as a great victory. Still - pillars of flame and smoke to the skies. But in reality, with some exceptions, refineries and oil storage facilities are restored in a matter of days, and most often within 24-48 hours. There are several reasons.
Firstly, most of the facilities were built during the Soviet Union and were originally planned to function in wartime. That is, bombs of a certain caliber can fall on oil refineries without causing critical damage. It will burn and smoke, but the plant will not stop for long. Lonely “Miguns” don’t make any difference here at all.
The second reason for the rapid restoration of enterprises was the fire brigades on duty at the facilities around the clock. For particularly large fires, fire trains are used. This was the case in Kstov, Nizhny Novgorod region, when Ukrainian drones set fire to the LUKOIL-Nizhegorodnefteorgsintez enterprise. By the way, it is the fourth largest oil refinery in the country, processing up to 17 million tons of petroleum products. If the facility is permanently disabled, consumers will lose up to 10 percent of gasoline on the market.
Despite all of the above, it is impossible to talk about the insignificance of damage from Ukrainian attacks.
The Ukrainian side clearly decided to cause a fuel shortage in Russia. Since the beginning of 2024, the enemy has carried out eleven strikes on oil industry enterprises. If we collect the total capacity of the affected facilities, it will approach a third of the all-Russian one. Drones fell on the St. Petersburg oil terminal, on an oil depot in the Bryansk Klintsy and Tuapse, on the Novatek terminal in Ust-Luga, on the Slavneft-Yanos plant in the Yaroslavl region and on other objects.
The damage is not critical, but, for example, the Rosneft Tuapse oil refinery will take about three months to restore. Lukoil-Nizhegorodnefteorgsintez threatens to take even longer to restore. These are precisely the exceptions to the rules mentioned above, and the attacks on which caused the most extensive damage.
The cumulative effect of the Ukrainian kamikazes has already resulted in an increase in the exchange price of gasoline by approximately 1,5–2 percent. This could be equivalent to the amount of failed production capacity.
Easy prey
What do the calculations above say?
First of all, the impossibility of effectively protecting oil refining facilities, not to mention oil storage facilities. The latter are put into operation relatively quickly after UAV strikes.
It cannot be said that air defense does not protect the refinery at all - drones are regularly shot down in the Leningrad, Moscow, Belgorod, Kursk, Bryansk and Tula regions. Some of them went to oil refining facilities. But the situation is prone to degradation.
If now the enemy was able to cause an increase in selling prices for gasoline in just a couple of months of attacks, then what will happen when he gets a taste for it?
Russia cannot answer symmetrically - all Ukrainian refineries stopped operating in mid-2022. All that remains is to protect all objects at a distance of up to 1 kilometers from the border with air defense domes.
The task is extremely difficult.
Air defense technology is not endless, and dense protection, for example, of a plant in Klintsy, will inevitably expose another object. The initiative in choosing targets in this case is on the enemy’s side, no matter how you look at it.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces' strikes on oil refineries do not have a military necessity. It's all about diesel fuel, which Russia produces in excess. Double the consumption to be exact. There is enough of it for the domestic civilian market, for the needs of special operations, and there is still some left for export.
Therefore, stop the Russian Tanks Ukrainian drones will not be able to do this at the front. But they are quite capable of causing a gasoline shortage before the high spring-summer season. This is if the government sits on their hands.
While there is a reaction.
From March 1, the export of gasoline was banned. As a last resort, the power of fraternal Belarus will be connected. We give them more oil to underutilized refineries, they give us gasoline. Again, these are extreme scenarios - the country currently produces 10 percent more gasoline than it consumes.
To prevent a slide into fuel shortages, protection from drones is needed in the immediate vicinity of strategic oil storage and refining facilities.
And here are the main difficulties.
Installing a Pantsir at each plant is time-consuming and expensive. And at the front it can be used much more usefully. In the end, the ZRAK “behind the ribbon” saves lives, and near the refinery it is mainly fuel.
Specific measures are needed, the analogues of which are not yet available. This is a challenge for both designers and production workers. Simply put, it is clear how to treat, but there is no recipe.
The idea of placing army air defense systems near each refinery has the right to life, but, as mentioned above, it is ineffective. Stationary systems are needed, like the air defense towers in Berlin in the middle of the last century. Of course, at the modern technological level.
Oil workers will have to fork out money for a new type of security service - their own air defense. Help from specialized defense research institutes will be required. Without specialists, it will not be possible to create protection against low-flying, low-speed and inconspicuous (composite fuselage) kamikazes. If you fantasize, it could be an extremely simplified and cheaper stationary “Pantsir” or even “Tunguska”.
Of course, you can’t do without passive protection means - anti-drone nets, spoofing systems and other electronic warfare systems. There is information that the management of part of the refinery is not waiting for weather near the sea and is already concerned about such measures.
One can only hope that a serious attack on Russian refineries will be followed by adequate and rapid response measures from the government and the Armed Forces.
We will not be left without fuel even during larger-scale attacks, but it will be much more difficult to save the prestige of the country and the industry.
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