A division of Bal missile systems has been relocated to the Bryansk region of the russian federation, the National Resistance Center of Ukraine reports with a reference to sources in the resistance movement. The division belongs to the 11th Coastal Missile and Artillery Brigade of the Coastal Troops of russia's Black Sea Fleet.
The Bal system fires Kh-35U missiles primarily designed against enemy ships. But now, according to the NRCU, these missiles have been upgraded to match the Bastion anti-ship complex in terms of range and the capability to strike land targets.
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A brief reminder, K-300P Bastion-P (or simply Bastion) uses the P-800 Oniks supersonic missile, and despite being an anti-ship missile, it was previously used against Ukrainian cities: they were almost regularly launched on port cities Odesa, Mykolaiv, and Ochakiv around May last year, and later in December.
Bal systems were employed for missile attacks on land, too. In spring and summer of 2022, russians shelled Mykolaiv and Odesa while the launchers were situated in Crimea, technically covering the entire south of Ukraine.
Now a Bal division is also deployed in the Bryansk region. The NRCU states that russians managed to increase the range of the Kh-35U missile from 260 km to 500 km.
The way russians previously guided Kh-35Us for attacks on Ukraine can be compared to how they applied Kh-22 air-launched missiles: a missile seeks a target by its radar cross-section, the use of an anti-ship missile against land targets usually results in low accuracy of the strike and collateral damage.
The Kh-35U travels at subsonic speed searching for a target with an active radar homing head. The missile has a fuselage of 5 meters long with a wingspan of 1.33 meters, its warhead weight is only 145 kg out of the total launch weight of 670 kg.
From the perspective of Ukrainian air defense, it is a manageable target; although in practice, intercepting it might be tricky due to the relatively small size of the Kh-35U. For comparison, a Kh-101 air-launched cruise missile is 7.45 m long, the figures are 6.4 m for Kh-555 (air-launched) and approximately 6.2 m for 3M14 Kalibr (sea-launched).
Based on the declared specifications of the Kh-35U, it would be logical to expect russian forces to use Bal systems deployed to the north of Ukraine for missile strikes on the territories they didn't reach from the occupied Crimea. It puts Ukraine's capital Kyiv among the potential targets.
A Bal fire unit (also referred to as division) consists of four launchers carrying 8 missiles each, thus one full salvo may be up to 32 missiles. The system can aim based on either the data provided by its radar or received from an aerial drone. Although we should note the parameter of 500 km of range might be unreasonably overstated. The reason to believe so is, even the russians themselves initially claimed they raised the range to 500 km after the Kh-35U modernization in 2021; but then became "more modest" and reported this missile having a maximum range of 300 km.
As of January 2023, the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine issued an overview of the estimated russian arsenal, it mentioned that russian forces had launched 144 P-800 Oniks anti-ship missiles on Ukrainian cities and 638 tactical cruise missiles in general, including Kh-35/Kh-35U.
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