At grid reference 36T WK 59820 35491 (44.6672°N, 33.5703°E), the Belbek military airfield sits approximately 12 kilometres north-northeast of Sevastopol’s city centre in Russian-occupied Crimea. On the night of 16-17 May 2026, as part of a 600-drone operation spanning nine locations from Moscow Oblast to the Crimean peninsula, Ukraine’s SBU Alpha Special Operations Centre and the broader Defence Forces struck a series of targets at the base. Imagery published three days later by the Telegram channel Dosye Shpiona documented damage to the RSP-28ME aircraft landing radar complex: specifically the DRL-27SE air traffic control radar module and a command module mounted on a KamAZ-6350 military truck chassis.

The RSP-28ME, first supplied to Russian armed forces in 2021, is a mobile precision approach radar system. Its core function is to manage aircraft movements around an operational airfield and to guide pilots during the landing sequence, providing radar coverage of the approach corridor, monitoring of flight trajectories, and precise glide-path and runway course alignment data. The system operates with a crew of three. Losing the DRL-27SE dispatch radar module removes the surveillance radar element that tracks all traffic in the airfield control zone. Losing the command module removes the processing and communication nerve centre through which that radar data is relayed to controllers. The two components together are the eyes and the brain of the approach control function at Belbek.

The imagery also shows that Russian forces had attempted to protect elements of the system using anti-drone netting structures, a passive countermeasure Russia has deployed increasingly across Crimea since 2024. The netting was insufficient. Whether this reflects a penetration above the netting (the DRL-27SE antenna must be unobstructed to function, creating an inherent tension between radar availability and overhead protection), or a strike on the mobile command truck which cannot be easily netted while in operational configuration, is not resolved from published imagery alone.

The 16-17 May operation was among the most geographically dispersed Ukraine has executed in a single night. Over 600 strike UAVs were involved, according to SBU and Defence Forces statements. In Moscow Oblast, four targets were struck: the Moscow Oil Refinery, the Solnechnogorsk fuel pumping station, the Volodarsk fuel pumping station, and the Angstrem semiconductor plant in Zelenograd. The Angstrem plant is under United States sanctions for supplying chips and electronic components to Russia’s military-industrial complex and has been targeted multiple times in 2025 and 2026, suggesting Ukrainian planners regard it as a strategic priority rather than an opportunistic target.

At Belbek, the SBU enumerated the night’s confirmed targets in a statement reported by Ukrainska Pravda on 17 May: a Pantsir-S2 air defence complex, a storage facility containing radar equipment for an S-400 system, an Orion UAV control system, a Forpost UAV ground control station, a ground-to-air data transmission point, the air traffic control tower, and a hangar. The RSP-28ME damage documented by Dosye Shpiona three days later adds one more confirmed system to that list, though it is possible the RSP-28ME damage was captured in the SBU’s broader reference to infrastructure and radar assets.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy publicly thanked the SBU and Defence Forces for the night’s precision strikes on Moscow Oblast, a statement reported by Ukrainska Pravda on 17 May. The cross-theatre simultaneity of the operation, hitting Russian fuel and industrial infrastructure north of Moscow at the same time as Belbek’s sensor architecture, is consistent with a strategy of forcing Russia to divide its defensive resources between protecting the capital region and protecting occupied Crimea, neither of which can be done adequately with the current Russian air defence posture over both zones.

Destroyed command module of the RSP-28ME complex at Belbek, mounted on a KamAZ-6350 truck chassis. Photo: Dosye Shpiona / Telegram.

Belbek is the home base of the 38th Fighter Aviation Regiment, equipped with Su-27SM and Su-27SM3 fighters and, since the autumn of 2023, MiG-31 interceptors deployed covertly to the peninsula. The airfield’s significance lies in its geography: positioned on Crimea’s northwestern coast, its aircraft and radars extend Russian combat and surveillance coverage far out across the Black Sea and provide a second defensive layer against Ukrainian long-range strikes approaching from the west. That significance has made it a persistent target.

Mapping the confirmed losses since December 2025 illustrates a systematic dismantling rather than opportunistic attrition. The first major wave in December 2025 removed long-range surveillance capability, taking out two Nebo-SVU radars alongside the S-400’s 92N6 fire-control radar and the Pantsir-S2 close-in defence system. That wave also destroyed a MiG-31 and two Su-27s. The April 2026 raid added further Belbek infrastructure damage alongside Black Sea Fleet warship strikes. The May 16-17 operation removed the remaining Pantsir, the S-400 radar storage hangar, the UAV control architecture for both Orion reconnaissance and Forpost ground observation platforms, the air traffic control tower, and now the precision-approach landing radar. Each loss is operationally distinct: the Nebo-SVU loss blinds long-range tracking, the Pantsir loss removes point defence, the UAV station losses degrade persistent ISR, the control tower loss complicates sortie management, and the RSP-28ME loss complicates all-weather landing operations.

Russia began hardening Belbek in 2024 with aircraft shelters and camouflage measures, steps documented in satellite imagery at the time. The passive measures have had partial effect in some instances: aircraft moved into shelters have survived attacks that would otherwise have destroyed them on open aprons. The RSP-28ME netting, however, reflects the inherent difficulty of protecting radar systems that must radiate to function. A radar under a solid roof cannot scan. A radar under netting may resist debris from a near-miss, but the netting structure offers no meaningful protection against a direct-impact one-way attack drone of the type Ukraine has employed across the Crimea campaign.

Damaged building at Belbek air base following the 16-17 May 2026 strike. Infrastructure damage across the base extended beyond the radar complex. Photo: Dosye Shpiona / Telegram.

The Dosye Shpiona Telegram channel, which has a consistent record of publishing post-strike imagery from occupied Crimea that has subsequently been confirmed against SBU statements and commercial satellite analysis, published photographs on 20 May 2026 captioned as showing the aftermath of the strike on Belbek. The images show damage to at least two RSP-28ME components: the DRL-27SE air traffic control radar module, which is the survey radar element responsible for tracking all aircraft in the airfield’s control zone, and the command module mounted on a KamAZ-6350 heavy-duty military truck. The KamAZ-6350 is the mobility platform for the RSP-28ME’s command and control element, providing the power generation and processing infrastructure through which radar data is processed and transmitted to controllers.

⚠ SINGLE-SOURCE: RSP-28ME COMPONENT ID

The specific identification of damaged components as RSP-28ME elements of the DRL-27SE and KamAZ-6350 type rests on the Dosye Shpiona imagery and the United24 Media report at this stage. Strategy Battles has not independently located satellite imagery of the 16-17 May strike area at Belbek that would permit independent equipment identification. The SBU statement confirms a strike on Belbek’s radar infrastructure on the same night, which is consistent with the Dosye Shpiona imagery, but the SBU does not name the RSP-28ME specifically in its published statement.

The RSP-28ME complex also includes a PRL-27SE or PRL-27SM precision landing radar module, an automatic radio direction finder, and a diesel power station in addition to the components shown as damaged. Whether these were also struck is not established from the published imagery. Russia introduced the RSP-28ME to service in 2021 as a modernised successor to the Cold War-era RSP-6M2 series, which used broadly similar architecture. The crew requirement of three operators means the system is not simply a piece of hardware: destroying it also removes trained specialists from the Belbek establishment, whether through casualties or the operational disruption of retraining and redeployment.

Damaged radar element of the RSP-28ME landing system at Belbek. The DRL-27SE dispatch radar module requires a clear overhead field to function, creating an inherent vulnerability no netting structure can fully mitigate. Photo: Dosye Shpiona / Telegram.