How 2 Ukraine Paratroopers Have Destroyed 40 Russian Armored Vehicles

The paratrooper in question - seen in action to the right - and his loading partner may be responsible for a significant percentage of total Ukrainian Javelin antitank hits on Russian armor. 

Skill, experience, tactics and luck all play a part. JL 

David Axe reports in Forbes:

In ground combat, the most skilled - and luckiest - fighters do a disproportionate share of the killing. The 79th Air Assault Brigade missileer - “Gagauz” - working in a two-person team firing American-made Javelin anti-tank missiles, has destroyed more than 40 Russian tanks, armored personnel carriers and engineering vehicles—and damaged another 20. And he has done it along a single sector of the front around Vuhledar. Over 18 months, he hit at least three Russian vehicles per month. It’s possible he blows up a Russian tank or fighting vehicle every week he’s in combat. His is just one of several Javelin teams in the 79th Brigade.

In air combat during World War II, five percent of pilots—the luckiest and most skilled aces—accounted for 40 percent of aerial kills, according to author and historian Mike Spick.

In ground combat in Russia’s 23-month wider war on Ukraine, this truism holds. The luckiest and most skilled fighters do a disproportionate share of the killing.

In Ukraine’s million-person military, few are luckier or more skilled than the 79th Air Assault Brigade missileer who goes by the call-sign “Gagauz.” Working in a two-person team firing American-made Javelin anti-tank missiles, Gagauz reportedly has destroyed more than 40 Russian tanks, armored personnel carriers and engineering vehicles—and damaged another 20.

And he did it along a single sector of the front around Vuhledar in eastern Ukraine. “I do my job effectively,” he said in an official interview translated by the indispensable Estonian analyst @wartranslated.

To put Gagauz’s tally into perspective, his is just one of several Javelin teams in the 79th Brigade, which is just one of roughly a hundred brigades in the Ukrainian ground forces.

Those brigades have received many thousands of the $80,000, 50-pound Javelins, which can strike vehicles from two miles away with an infrared seeker and armor-piercing tandem warhead. The United States alone gave Ukraine 10,000 Javelins before Russia-aligned Republicans in the U.S. Congress cut off aid late last year.

Ukrainian Javelins have taken out thousands of tanks, fighting vehicles and other vehicles out of the roughly 14,000 vehicles Russia has lost Ukraine. The analysts at Oryx keep a running tally of these write-offs.

It’s entirely possible Gagauz and his teammates alone can claim several percent of the Javelin kills in Ukraine.

Gagauz became a Javelin shooter in the summer of 2022. “I was told to prepare, saw the target, made a launch,” he said. “I hit it, then got a taste for blood.”

Over the next 18 months, he hit at least three Russian vehicles per month, on average. More if you subtract whatever time he spent away from the front line. It’s possible he blows up a Russian tank or fighting vehicle every week he’s in combat.

There are other ace Javelin shooters in the 79th Brigade, including one—Junior Sgt. Andrii H.—who hit four Russian vehicles during one January skirmish. But Gagauz might be the most dangerous to the Russians.

“We always work in pairs,” he explained—and usually from existing firing positions in the gray zone between Russian and Ukrainian lines. In a pinch, he said, he’ll switch up positions in order to get a better line-of-sight on attacking Russians.

Gagauz operates the Javelin’s 15-pound launch unit with its day-night optics. His teammate handles the missile rounds. “When I find [and] observe the target, I give the command to the second one,” Gagauz said. “He prepares the rocket while I’m tracking the target—and launch.”

The Javelin is a fire-and-forget munition: once it leaves the launch unit, the crew can pack up and run. And they should, as any well-trained enemy immediately will shoot back. Gagauz even recalled coming under fire from Russian warplanes and Smerch artillery-rockets. “Anti-tank man is a very dangerous job.”

One of the Russian units at the receiving end of Gagauz’s missile-sniping is an unlucky one. For nearly two years, the Russian marine corps’ 155th Brigade has been trying, and so far failing, to capture Vuhledar, one of the towns Gagauz’s 79th Brigade defends.

The roads and fields around Vuhledar are littered with the wrecks of Russian vehicles. At least 40 of them are there because of Gagauz.

As in World War II, the aces in the Ukraine war do the most killing—and may also have a higher rate of survival thanks to the same instincts and finely-honed skills that make them such fearsome killers.

If there’s anything that can defeat Gagauz, it’s the American Republican Party, which for months has refused to vote on additional aid to Ukraine. Aid that would include more Javelin missiles.