Forbes:

The Ukrainian air force had around 72 Buk surface-to-air missile systems when Russia widened its war on Ukraine back in February 2022.

While the self-contained Buk—a four-person tracked vehicle with a built-in radar and a launcher for four two-ton missiles, each with a 20-mile range—wasn’t Ukraine’s most numerous air-defense system, it was one of the best.

Individual Buks, roaming just behind the front line, have accounted for many of the roughly 250 fighters, helicopters and drones Russian forces have lost over Ukraine in 14 months of hard fighting.

“The most effective Ukrainian SAMs against Russian fixed-wing aircraft have consistently been … Buk systems operating transporter-erector launcher and radar vehicles as individual pop-up threats rather than as formed batteries alongside the usual target-acquisition radar and command vehicles,” Justin Bronk, Nick Reynolds and Jack Watling from the Royal United Services Institute in London wrote in their definitive study of the Ukraine air war’s early months.

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