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The Ukrainian Air Defence Forces (Ukrainian: Війська протиповітряної оборони України, romanized: Viysʹka Protypovitryanoyi oborony, Viyska PPO) were an anti-aircraft military service of Ukraine, active from 1992 to 2004.
They were established on the basis of the former Soviet 8th Air Defence Army, and the last commander of that army, Lieutenant General Mikhail Lopatin, became the first commander of the Ukrainian Air Defence Forces.
History
From January 24, 1992, after the collapse of the USSR, 28th Air Defense Corps, previously subordinate to 2nd Air Defence Army was transferred under the 8th Air Defence Army of Ukraine.[1] Units stationed in Moldova were transferred to the Moldovan Armed Forces (275th Guards Anti-Aircraft Rocket Brigade, battalions and companies from the 14th Radio-Technical Brigade).
There were approximately 67,000 air defense troops in Ukraine in 1992. The new Air Defence Forces headquarters was formed on the basis of the HQ 8th Air Defence Army. There were three air defence corps: the 28th (Lviv), 49th (Odesa), and 60th (Dnipropetrovsk). All three air defence corps were taken over by Ukraine on 1 February 1992. The 28th ADC became the Western AD Region on 1 June 1992.
The Military Balance 95/96 said that six fighter regiments had been disbanded. (p. 71)
The Air Defence Forces expanded in July 1996 through the transfer of the air defence brigades and nondivisional air defence regiments of the Ukrainian Ground Forces in order to centralize the control of air defense assets. This shift transitioned away from the Soviet practice of placing some air defence units under ground forces control. These units included the 68th and 77th Separate Radio-Technical Brigades, the 138th, 223rd, 46th, 156th, 108th and 55th Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigades, the 1046th, 1067th Anti-Aircraft Missile Regiments, and the 1094th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment.[2]
After the accidental shooting down of Siberia Airlines Flight 1812 in October 2001, the commander of the Ukrainian Air Defence Forces, Colonel generalVolodymyr Tkachov, first offered to resign and then was dismissed from his post.[3] An anti-aircraft exercise being run from a training area in the Crimea had gone wrong, and a surface-to-air missile destroyed the plane.
In 2004, the Air Defence Forces were amalgamated with the Ukrainian Air Force, becoming the Anti-Air Defence Missile Artillery of the Ukrainian Air Force (Ukrainian: Зенітні ракетні війська протиповітряної оборони ПC, romanized: Zenitni raketni viysʹka protypovitryanoyi oborony PS). The merger of the services thus enabled the Armed Forces of Ukraine to adopt the tri-service structure, common to most modern armed forces in the world, in a historic break with the Soviet precedence. In that capacity as a speciality of the force, Ukrainian Air Defense became involved in the long Russo-Ukrainian War from the 2010s and onward. The modern day AADMA-AF reports as a operating service arm under the office of the Commander of the Air Force with units operating all over the country.
Units in the early 1990s
The first issue of the International Institute for Strategic Studies' Military Balance after the Soviet collapse, 1992–93, listed one Air Defence army, 270 combat aircraft, and seven regiments of Su-15s (80), MiG-23s (110) and MiG-25s (80).[4] By March 1994 Air Forces Monthly reported three air defence regions:
the Southern with the 62nd and 737th Fighter Aviation Regiments,
the Central with the 146th (Vasylkiv), 636th (Kramatorsk, disbanded in 1996 and its Su-15s broken up for scrap),[5] and 933rd Fighter Aviation Regiments.[6]
Аt the time of the formation of the Air Defence Forces of Ukraine, the ADF-UKR was organized into:
General Command of the Air Defence Forces of Ukraine (Kyiv)[7]
228th Separate Mixed Air Regiment (Kyiv-Zhuliany), the liaison unit of the service, flying An-26, An-24 and Mi-8
ATC and radar units supporting the flights of the fighter aviation:
60th Corps of Air Defence (Odesa),[10] formed in 1989 from the 1st and 21st AD divisions.
Separate Transport Air Detachment (Odesa-Shkolniy Airfield), flying An-26 and Mi-8
62nd Fighter Aviation Regiment AD (Belbek), flying Su-27P and Su-15TM
737th Fighter Aviation Regiment AD (Chervonoglinskaya-Artsiz Air Base), flying MiG-23MLD (came from Afghanistan, disbanded in 1990)
738th Fighter Aviation Regiment AD (Zaporizhzhia-Mokre Air Base), flying MiG-25PDS (disbanded in 1990, aircraft transferred to the 152nd FAR AD at Ak-Tepe Air Base, Turkmenistan SSR)
100th Missile Air Defence Brigade (Zaporizhzhia)
160th Missile Air Defence Brigade (Odesa)
174th Missile Air Defence Brigade (Sevastopol)
208th Guards Missile Air Defence Brigade (Kherson)
1014th Guards Missile Air Defence Regiment (Feodosiya)
Bofors 40 mm Automatic Gun L/70 towed or truck mounted short range anti-aircraft guns, can also be operated on fixed sites for defense of air force bases and installations [16]
Retired from both the Ukrainian ADF and/or the Air Force:
S-75 Dvina, S-200 truck-towed anti-air defense long range surface-to-air missile launchers
2K11 Krug tracked mobile anti-air defense medium range surface-to-air missile launchers
Future purchases by the Air Force Anti-Air Defense:
Tkachuk, P.; Popko, S.; Kharuk, A.; Slobodanyuk, M.; Slyusarenko, A.; Solyar, I.; Kutska, O.; Muravsky, O. (2022). Нарис історії Сухопутних військ Збройних Сил України [Historical outline of the Ground Forces of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, 1991–2021] (PDF) (in Ukrainian). Lviv: NASV. ISBN978-617-7689-01-9.
