Key Points and Summary – Russia’s strategic bomber fleet remains alarmingly vulnerable to Ukrainian drone strikes, with recent satellite imagery revealing at least 40 Tu-95MS bombers parked wingtip-to-wingtip and unprotected at the Ukrainka air base.
-This glaring lack of protection comes just months after Ukraine’s “Operation Spiderweb,” a daring drone attack that destroyed numerous high-value bombers at other bases deep inside Russia.
-While Moscow is rushing to build new shelters, its most critical long-range assets are still “sitting ducks,” presenting juicy targets for Ukraine’s increasingly sophisticated and long-range unmanned systems.
Vladimir Putin’s Struggling Bomber Fleet Exposed Again
The Ukrainians excel at blowing up Russian aircraft sitting exposed on the ground.
Ukraine’s successful drone missions into Russian territory are a contingency Russian President Vladimir Putin and his generals never foresaw when they planned their initial invasion.
Russian leaders thought there was no way the Ukrainians would be able to engage in strikes deep into Russia, but the friendly forces have pulled off numerous raids to prematurely end the lives of grounded Russian fighter jets and bombers.
These Are Juicy Targets
Now, an intrepid civilian defense analyst has used publicly available satellite images to identify more “fat targets” for Ukrainian murder drones to hit. According to imagery provided by AviVector, there are at least 40 Tu-95MS Bear-H bombers sitting outside hangars at Ukrainka air base, in Amur Oblast, 3,700 miles from Ukraine.
Ukraine Gives a Master Class on Drone Warfare
Three thousand seven hundred miles might be too great a distance for even the most long-range Ukrainian drones to cross, but unmanned loitering munitions have swarmed over Russian air bases and hit majestic paydirt in the recent past.
Ukraine destroyed seven Tu-95 and four Tu-22M bombers on June 1. Open-source military expert David Axe reckons only 40 Tu-95s are left in the Russian fleet, and by that reckoning, they might all be sitting, unprotected and precarious, outside the hangars in Ukrainka.
Tu-95MS Have Been Busy
The Russian Tu-95s are workhorses. They have been instrumental throughout the war, flying numerous sorties to launch deadly glide bombs at Ukrainian military and civilian targets. The Tu-95s may have flown as many as 12 missions per month this year. They can each deploy eight Kh-101 cruise missiles – stand-off weapons with a 2,200-mile range and 900-pound warheads.
The June 1 Operation Spider Web raid by Ukraine was a master stroke by Kyiv’s war planners. It was executed to perfection. Ukrainian drones were snuck deep into Russia on cargo trucks and then launched to hit five Russian Air Force bases.
Military air strips at Olenya and Belaya suffered the heaviest losses, with Tu-95s and Tu-22Ms roasted in an inferno on the ground. These were up to 2,700 miles from Ukraine.
Vulnerabilities Still Exist for TU-95MS Bombers
It appears the Russian have not learned their lesson from Spider Web. They are still not taking full precautions and are leaving their valuable bombers outside hangars. It might be the case that the Ukrainka air base simply does not have the infrastructure needed to house all of these big propeller-driven airplanes.
Meanwhile, Russian engineers and construction crews are feverishly working to improve protections for aircraft on air bases closer to Ukraine.
“At Khalino air base, previously targeted by Ukrainian forces, Russian troops appear to have completed or nearly completed around 10 reinforced shelters with soil cover, 12 concrete shelters without it and eight hangar-style structures positioned on the aprons,” Frontelligence Insight explained on X.
The Russians never expected their air bases would be this vulnerable. Who on Putin’s side would have predicted that combat drones could carry out devastating long-range attacks? Russia was supposed to have air dominance in the war, meaning their bombers could fly without worrying about enemy air defenses shooting them down. Now, the Russian Air Force is in a bad way. Precious resources are being expended to improve the defenses at air bases.
The installation at Ukrainka is especially unprotected.
Protective Construction Takes Time
The Russians are trying to make “concrete bunker-style structures,” but this doesn’t happen overnight. It appears they are working on the air bases that are closest to Ukraine first, then expanding the construction to installations that are farther away from the border.
That’s just fine with Ukraine, as President Volodymyr Zelensky is having his mission planners collect all the swarming drones that it can muster, improve their range and payloads, and destroy even more Russian airplanes.
One satellite image from AviVector showed 15 Bear bombers crowded onto the hard deck. They were jumbled “wingtip to wingtip.” These could easily be blown up by drones again. Ukraine’s longest-range drones have a 1,200-mile combat radius, so the loitering munitions would have to be snuck in by truck again to complete another such operation. Russia is likely ready for such a contingency. It will be watching out for cargo vehicles and searching them at checkpoints.
But it is embarrassing that the Bears are just sitting out in the open where they are easy pickings.
Putin has probably told his generals to hurry construction to protect the airplanes, but building these thick, reinforced bunkers takes time. The Russians must also prepare better air defense systems to shield the air bases, but the best surface-to-air missile systems are already protecting cities such as Moscow and St. Petersburg.
There are just not enough interceptors to go around.
This war has been full of surprises that have plagued Russian military planning. No one could have predicted just how much kamikaze drones have changed the facts on the ground. This time Russia will be ready for the truck transportation scheme, but Ukraine is likely cooking up another surprise.
The Kremlin may have to speed up its protection efforts so that its airplanes are not sitting ducks, vulnerable to another drone attack.
About the Author: Dr. Brent M. Eastwood
Brent M. Eastwood, PhD is the author of Don’t Turn Your Back On the World: a Conservative Foreign Policy and Humans, Machines, and Data: Future Trends in Warfare plus two other books. Brent was the founder and CEO of a tech firm that predicted world events using artificial intelligence. He served as a legislative fellow for U.S. Senator Tim Scott and advised the senator on defense and foreign policy issues. He has taught at American University, George Washington University, and George Mason University. Brent is a former U.S. Army Infantry officer. He can be followed on X @BMEastwood.
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