On 3 July, Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) reported that overnight it had successfully attacked two Russian military air bases on the illegally occupied Crimea peninsula. The Ukrainian service stated that this drone strike had damaged or destroyed at least seven military aircraft in what was the second reported attack on the Saki air base within a week.
Details of the attack provided by the SBU stated that Ukrainian drones had impacted seven hangars at the Saki air base, where the Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) operate a mix of Sukhoi Su-30SM, Su-30 fighter aircraft, and Su-24 fighter-bomber aircraft. Other reports stated that some of the more modern Su-34 fighter-bombers were also eliminated.
Su-34 Fullback Airshow Photo Creative Commons Image
Su-34 Fullback from Russia. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
Sukhoi Su-34 Heading Into the Sky. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
The Su-30SMs that are manufactured at the Irkut plant are operated by the Russian Navy’s (XMF) 43rd Independent Naval Attack Aviation Regiment. The Ukrainian intelligence service stated that it had proof that this attack had destroyed or damaged at least seven of these aircraft, including more than one of this model.
After the attack, a fire was recorded in the hangar where a Su-30SM fighter was reportedly located.
This would indicate a successful hit on the target, reports the Ukrainian news service United24 Media.
The estimated value of each of the different aircraft types reportedly destroyed ranges from $30 million to $50 million, each depending on configuration, according to the same news service, making the total loss in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Vantor satellite images taken after the attack showed serious damage to the aircraft hangars.
Four of the hangars had their huge protective gates torn off by the explosive blasts of the Ukrainian drones.
Other structures suffered structural damage. But how many aircraft were inside those hangars at the time, or what specific damage they sustained, remains impossible to ascertain.
The SBU attack also reported strikes on two hangars at the Hvardiiske air base in Crimea. At this facility, Russia stores Shahed attack drones and other aviation equipment. The SBU has designated the Saki and Hvardiiske aerodromes as two of the most important military air bases in occupied Crimea.
Tactical aircraft have regularly flown missions from these sites to launch strikes against southern Ukraine in support of Russian military operations. During the Soviet period, the base in Saki was the primary training facility for carrier pilots assigned to operations on the Kuznetsov-class aircraft carriers.
The facility was so crucial for that purpose that it was later duplicated by the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) for its carrier training program.
Making Crimea Untenable
“The SBU continues to carry out the tasks assigned by the president of Ukraine and systematically reduce Russia’s military potential,” said Vasyl Maliuk, the head of the security service. These attacks, as one Ukrainian defense enterprise director who spoke to National Security Journal explained, “is to make Crimea untenable for Russia – both for the Russian population and business that moved there to expropriate Ukrainian property, but also Moscow’s military.”
By way of example, Ukraine conducted long-range drone strikes on the same night to hit the railway bridge on the Kurmanskyi (previously known as the Krasnohvardiiskyi) Canal, which is a branch of the North Crimean Canal system that is a critical inland waterway network in the central part of Crimea, as the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces reported.
The General Staff explained that Russia has been using the bridge for military logistics, and it was the main artery for transporting personnel, weapons, fuel, and ammunition. The extent to which the bridge had been rendered unusable was still being assessed by the armed forces as the battle damage assessment (BDA) was being conducted.
On the same day, the Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces announced that the number of successful drone and missile strikes against Russian targets has increased by 1,150 percent since the beginning of the year.
In June, the Unmanned Systems Forces, in conjunction with together with other military units, reported that they had destroyed or caused considerable damage to 172 Russian defense industry and fuel and energy facilities.
An additional 3,000 smaller military facilities were also hit in the same month.
Degrading Air Power
A good deal of reporting to date has covered how much of Crimea’s fuel, energy and transportation networks have been destroyed by these Ukrainian attacks. In January of this year, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had already declared the objective of expelling all Russian forces from all the regions in Ukraine, including Crimea.
Military experts agree with the Ukrainian president’s position that the country can never be free from the threat of Moscow’s military as long as the peninsula remains under Russian control. Nothing illustrates that more than the missions that the Russian aircraft based in Crimea have flown against Ukrainian positions in the Kherson and Dnipro regions.
Degrading those air power assets will continue to be one of the main objectives of Ukraine’s Crimea campaign. In the end, say Ukraine’s senior military officials, they will see the peninsula completely isolated from mainland Russia.
About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson
Reuben F. Johnson has thirty-six years of experience analyzing and reporting on foreign weapons systems, defense technologies, and international arms export policy. Johnson is the Director of Research at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation. He is also a survivor of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He worked for years in the American defense industry as a foreign technology analyst and later as a consultant for the U.S. Department of Defense, the Departments of the Navy and Air Force, and the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia. In 2022-2023, he won two awards in a row for his defense reporting. He holds a bachelor’s degree from DePauw University and a master’s degree from Miami University in Ohio, specializing in Soviet and Russian studies. He lives in Warsaw.
