As Ukraine’s drone use escalates against targets inside Russia, including air bases, Moscow appears to have found an ingenious way to protect its bombers from its neighbors’ increasingly less detectable drone aircraft.
Satellite images released by Ukrainian military broadcaster Tatarigami_UA show at least two Tupolev Tu95 strategic bombers being covered in tires at the Engels2 base in Saratov, 800 km east of the Ukrainian border.
They were picked up by a French satellite and loud Sheet Statements by two military analysts in Moscow correspond to reality. Websites that use georeferencing have also validated it.
What is not exactly known is the motivation. In the largest wave of drone attacks against Russia on the night of Tuesday (29) to Wednesday (30), four Iliuchin Il76 heavy transport aircraft were damaged, two of which were completely destroyed. Videos captured of the attacks showed that the drones hit the central part of the plane between the wings, increasing the impact on the fuel tanks.
The tires on two Tu95s are spread across the middle and along the wingspan of the 46.2 m long giant aircraft, which measures 50.1 m from wing tip to wing tip. For comparison, a Boeing 737 MAX 8 is 39.5 m or 35.7 m long.
One of the analysts interviewed for the report points out that the function of the tires is to confuse the targeting system. Most drones used by Ukraine use a simple computer into which the profile of enemy aircraft is entered, and the rudimentary artificial intelligence on board does the rest of the work: identifying the victim and hitting him in the most vulnerable place.
This means the models do not require GPS navigation, which can be easily blocked. However, the system is not that intelligent and differences in the measured shapes, which favor dark areas, can confuse the robots. The Russians and Chinese are already using this tactic, painting some of their ships with dark stripes to make life difficult for water drones.
However, the other analyst starts from the most common assumption that went viral this Sunday on war monitoring networks (3): the tires also serve to deflect the direct impact of the drones. It seems crude, but when you see tanks, armored vehicles and howitzers with simple cages on both sides of the conflict, it makes sense.
The use of these protection devices is now so universal that Russia is already installing them as factory accessories in its new tanks and armored vehicles, as was recently demonstrated at the Army2023 military exhibition in Moscow.
Of course, it all depends on the drone you use. The lighter and simpler, like the Australian cardboard models that Kiev used in a successful attack on the Kursk air base (southern Russia), the easier the plane is to shoot down.
Saratov was already the target of this war in two daring attacks last December. Engels2 is Russia’s main strategic bomber base with the Tu22, Tu95 and the heaviest and most powerful of all, the Tu160 supersonic aircraft. There is a bunker on the site for nuclear weapons to be loaded from aircraft.
However, to get there from its territory, Ukraine has at least three models, the old Soviet jet drone Tu141 and the newer light propeller models UJ22 and Bober, which were used against Moscow (450 km from the border). .
But as Ukrainian intelligence confirmed to the American website The War Zone last week, there are intruders in Russia who use very light and small drones, such as cardboard drones, which are virtually impossible to detect. Hence perhaps the caution in Saratov.
Drone warfare has more symbolic rather than military value at a critical moment in the war for Ukrainians, although the eventual destruction of valuable Russian warplanes firing their missiles at Ukraine from Ukraine’s own airspace will have some impact. According to the Dutch military loss monitoring website Oryx, which uses only open data, Russia has already lost one Tu95 (from a prewar fleet of 60 people) and two Tu22s (from a fleet of 61 people) to drone strikes.
This Sunday there was at least one drone attack against Russia in the Belgorodo region (south). According to the Ministry of Defense, the device was shot down and caused no damage.