Ukraine destroys more than 40 military aircraft in drone attack deep in Russia
646 comments
·June 1, 2025nradov
jojobas
Russia has either no capacity to build new strategic bombers at all, or has al they need to do it, depending on the timeframe you're talking about.
If they really decided to do it, they could make some kind on narrow-body bomber derivative of Il-96 in a few years.
kevin_thibedeau
Bombers require unpressurized bomb bays. The B-52 is built completely unlike any Boeing airliner. The fuselage is significantly different than an airliner and the structural changes would not be trivial to implement. They also need to have control surfaces designed to take off with a full load and land empty. Airliners don't have to take that into consideration.
greedo
The P8-Poseiden is based on the Boeing 737. It can carry missiles like the AGM84 Harpoon externally, and also has an internal bomb bay for torpedoes and mines. Converting a modern airliner design to a cruise missile carrier would be a trivial exercise for most industrial societies. Russia would struggle though...
tzs
Instead of modifying the plane to support an unpressurized bomb bay in a pressurized plan could they not pressurize the plane at all, and provide the crew with breathing equipment?
> They also need to have control surfaces designed to take off with a full load and land empty. Airliners don't have to take that into consideration.
Is it the take off or the landing that would be the problem? If the take off could they use JATO?
jojobas
B-52 was designed in the 40's. Much has changed since and a lot of things that had to be figured out by costly experimentation are much easier and completely calculated.
Sure the resulting plane would not be optimized in a lot of aspects but they could do it.
idiotsecant
The basic premise of nuclear safety is mutually assured destruction. If Russia believes that another superpower believes that Russia might be less capable of MAD due to losing a huge chunk of one leg of the nuclear trifecta they might be more likely to act premptively in launching a nuclear exchange.
Also, The Russian government relies on projection of an image of strength not just externally, but internally as well. If the Russian government is seen as weak internally they might be more likely to take drastic actions to stay in power.
Put all these together, and it seems like the world might just be a bit more dangerous today than it was yesterday. Maybe that is the Ukrainian strategy - make Russia do something monstrous to a western power to force western action.
dralley
Russia was using those bombers to terrorize their cities night after night. Ukrainians are not required to (nor will they) sit back and take it out of abstract MAD force balance concerns. If Russia cared that much about the value strategic aviation holds in their nuclear doctrine, they wouldn't be using it to chuck missiles at chldren's cancer hospitals and apartment blocks.
If you want to try to impose some deeper strategic meaning onto this, a more plausible one would be the reverse: that the more "western powers" pull back from supporting Ukraine, the more Ukraine is are forced to establish they are capable of less conventional, less predictable, more aggressive means of deterrence to compensate for the absence of strong western partners.
goalieca
There’s no 4D chess here. Ukraine was attacking the planes used to bomb their civilians day in and day out.
bdangubic
That is entirely too many words written that make no sense… The Ukrainian people were being killed by X, the Ukraine eliminated a bunch of X - end of story
ericmay
Escalation from picking on Ukraine to using nuclear weapons is an escalator ladder that doesn’t make sense with respect to projecting strength - because utilization means direct war with the United States, which Russia will decisively lose. Once they use a nuclear weapon there is nothing else left to escalate. All the cards have been played.
Their only action would then be to use more nuclear weapons and they just aren’t going to do that because they don’t want to end the world.
credit_guy
It doesn't follow. For the US the most survivable part of the nuclear triad was always the submarines. For Russia it was the road-mobile nukes. The rest of the nuclear deterrent for both the US and Russia is quite optional, and serves mostly political reasons.
mcv
Not striking Russian airfields hasn't exactly worked very well to tone down Russian aggression, so it makes sense to try to directly hurt their ability to attack. It's an entirely legitimate target: military equipment, from a country waging war against Ukraine.
By comparison, Russia keeps bombing civilian targets in a futile attempt to terrorize Ukrainians into surrendering. Or maybe just out of sheer spite.
Either way, it seems Putin is not at all interested in peace, which means the only way to stop this war is to stop Russia's ability to wage this war. The claim that Putin might resort to nuclear strikes in response to Ukraine defending itself, is pure propaganda aimed at cowing defenders into compliance. If he actually wanted to launch nukes, he'd have done so already.
tim333
Nuclear bombers haven't really been much of a factor in MAD since Dr Strangelove was made. It's all ballistic missiles these days, or newer stuff.
HeadsUpHigh
I still don't understand how Putin managed to convince so many people that a rule that exclusively works to his benefit is a good idea. Weak of mind.
Incipient
Aren't they just buying stuff from china these days? Do they need a domestic supply?
dralley
China isn't gonna be producing parts for Soviet Bombers that they've never used themselves.
dragonwriter
I don't think China is selling them strategic bombers.
PedroBatista
Electronics, ATVs and clothing not Strategic nuclear bombers
at0mic22
I would assume having supply chain in place and aircraft manufacturer's like antonov, Ukraine is hiding its supersonic bombers somewhere.
greedo
Ukraine has no large supersonic bombers the size of the TU-95/TU-160/TU-223m. They do have a very small fleet of SU-24, but those are tactical bombers, not strategic bombers.
at0mic22
Ukraine actually has inherited 19 TU-160s from USSR. 8 of which were transfered to Russia as a payment for natural gas, and 11 were disassembled.
JumpCrisscross
It looks like Ukraine just took out a third of the Russian bomber fleet, conventional and nuclear [1].
thrill
It may have been even more effective than that if the intel supported specific target selection. Russia is likely already having a difficult time keeping their fleet operational, and if Ukraine was able to select aircraft that had recently flown then it's likely to have left mostly the non-flyable aircraft, causing Russia that much more difficulty to employ them.
Sammi
Ukrainian intel have said that they were seeing Russia prepare for a large aviation bombing attack. So all the best bombers were out on the tarmac getting fueled when they attacked. Maximum pain. Russia didn't just loose a third of their strategic bombers, they lost their best third. The other lesser two thirds will now have to handle the wear and tear going forward. And these planes are already old and torn and require a lot of upkeep.
duxup
The cost of those aircraft vs the cost of this operation has to be astounding.
jxjnskkzxxhx
As a European I often feel we don't deserve the allies we have in Ukraine.
cosmicgadget
Would it be reasonable to assume some of the damaged aircraft are not bombers?
PedroBatista
It would, but these were FPVs and their targets can be precisely chosen at the very moment of the strike.
Also, these are remote airbases where all the strategic bombers are stationed. Fighter jets would not be there in significant numbers if any since they are needed in other bases closer to the front-lines and also some at the borders.
In in of the videos you could see a Mi-8 which was ignored because of it's insignificance compared to the primary targets.
distances
Well, claims included also Beriev A-50, which is clearly more expensive than any of the bombers.
cosmicgadget
Absolutely, not trying to dump cold water on this remarkable feat of covert action. I just imagine there are a few support aircraft, fighters, non-op planes, helicopters, etc.
dragonwriter
> Would it be reasonable to assume some of the damaged aircraft are not bombers?
Probably not many if any, they weren't attacked with area munitions but with FPV drones they were attacking bomber bases, specifically aiming to reduce offensive capability, there's not a lot of reason to target non-bomber other aircraft.
rhcom2
It's pretty crazy all other spots in the top 5 are taken by the US except #3 by Russia.
neilv
You mean on "https://www.wdmma.org/ranking.php"?
csomar
I wouldn't read too much into that. India and Pakistan skirmish last month debunks it.
roncesvalles
I'm skeptical of how much damage drone-based munitions would do to these planes. A bit of frag shrapnel doesn't "total" them.
gloosx
The planes were relocated and loaded with fuel and munitions for a massive raid which would've have happen that morning. They were able to hit fuel tanks specifically as they had few museum pieces to train on for the whole year.
tim333
It's quite impressive really. There must have been a lot of planning and information.
coolspot
Check out videos, they are completely engulfed in flames!
preisschild
The planes were full of fuel, a small explosion is enough to set them on fire and total them
hollerith
The longest-range battery-powered drones have a range of only 14 km or so (and probably cannot carry enough explosive that far to help much with an attack like yesterday's attack) thus the need for the Ukrainians to use trucks to transport the drones used in this attack to within a km or so of the target. It is easy for Ukrainians to pass for Russian (e.g., if stopped at a checkpoint inside Russia) because there were 3 million Ukrainians living inside Russia at the start of the invasion in 2022. The same cannot be said for many future conflicts. To give an example, the German regime got almost no useful information coming from spies in England during WWII because it proved easy for British society to detect and capture German spies. It probably would have proved equally difficult or almost as difficult and risky for the Germans to get a truck loaded with drones, explosives, drone operators and the electronics needed to control the drones to within a km of an English military target (if the citizenry knew about drones the way we in 2025 know about them).
wisty
In WWII, a joint Australian / British force carried out an attack, posing as Japanese fishing boat, and sailed right into Singapore harbour to place explosives on the vessels there. They flew a Japanese ensign, wore sarongs and wore tan makeup. Operation Jaywick was not a huge strategic success (and the local population was subject to reprisals since the Japanese thought it was their fault) but it did raise morale a lot in allied forces, as it was an early blow against Japan (which had seemed invincible at the time).
Even in the extreme example of white Australians trying to pass as Malaysians, special forces have pulled of plenty of raids without the need for native language speakers.
Even if you need someone highly fluent who can pass as a native, most of the time there's a nearby country where they have some kind of grudge against the belligerent. I can think of a lot of potential theatres where finding an enemy of a belligerent who can pass as a "native" would not be difficult. North / South Korea, China / Taiwan, The Middle East ... conflicts often occur in places where there's a lot of conflict.
Also, in a war, often the military and civilian sector are stretched thin. Russia can't spare the troops to guard everything as well as they could in peacetime, and even if they could search every vehicle they can't afford to gum up their logistics.
k_bx
> The longest-range battery-powered drones have a range of only 14 km or so
As a Ukrainian soldier – ha ha ha
wltr
Thank you for your service, sir!
skinkestek
Even the longest recorded strike with fibre optic seems to be a lot longer than that.
hollerith
Battery powered though? And "like a helicopter with multiple rotors" (term?) as opposed to like an airplane with wings and elevators?
jacquesm
> The longest-range battery-powered drones have a range of only 14 km or so (and probably cannot carry enough explosive that far to help much with an attack like yesterday's attack)
You are completely, utterly clueless.
sureglymop
Drones also easily get jammed. Which is why both sides are using cable based drones with spools of fiber optics cable.
anigbrowl
It's only a matter of time before they go fully autonomous. The technology exists now and tbh I'd be surprised if it hasn't been deployed already.
solid_fuel
We have already hit that point - https://www.livescience.com/ai-drone-attack-libya.htm
k_bx
Yeah those optic fiber drones on the video are so easy to jam lol
slt2021
nvidia chip and yolo model and you get autonomous drone
hagbard_c
...which can barely get off the ground due to the power consumption of that 'NVidia chip' and gives off the heat signature of a jet-powered drone once it manages to get airborne.
Nah, you don't need an 'NVidia chip' for this purpose, a reasonably modern mobile phone will do and has all the sensors you want. Just add a battery, 4 motors with propellers and something (other than the battery) which goes boom and voilà, an autonomous drone. Some [1] mobile [2] phones [3] even have their own thing-that-goes-boom [4] built in from the factory to make this project even easier to accomplish.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcoU2mXJJ3k
[2] https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252212685
[3] https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/6281000/iphone-explosion-video...
null
m463
why can't drones park on or near power lines and inductively charge?
marssaxman
This Danish group is building drones for power line inspection which do exactly that: https://drones4energy.dk/
ncr100
Would be kinda neat to see drones hanging off power lines like bats.
phito
Power lines mess up your communication signals.
justsomehnguy
> It is easy for Ukrainians to pass for Russian
There is no need to do so because they did employ a civilian drivers who never knew what 'cargo' they are hauling. Just like in the previous attack on the bridge.
andix
Someone still needs to hire the driver and set up everything. Much easier for someone that can just blend in, looks like everyone else, speaks the language and doesn’t only know the culture well, but even grew up in a similar culture.
ponector
>> someone that can just blend in, looks like everyone else, speaks the language and doesn’t only know the culture well, but even grew up in a similar culture.
You've described half of the Ukrainian population.
hollerith
I was assuming that the drone operators were in the truck to make it more difficult for the Russians to jam the control signals. Do you know whether that is true?
Maybe the drones were pre-programmed for a particular destination (given to the Ukrainians by the US and its reconnaissance satellites), i.e., no drone operators needed.
mdhb
The latest technique is (besides the fiber optic stuff) is running the command and control over the local phone network of the country you’re in so it just looks like regular mobile data. That’s what allegedly happened here.
lawn
The operators weren't present at the site.
They either used the trucks as a relay for the operators far away or the drones themselves were automated.
smackeyacky
An amazing idea: Drive a truck full of drones deep into enemy territory and let them loose. In the process, manage to poke serious holes into Russia's nuclear deterrent.
Hard to know whether to be seriously impressed or seriously concerned - if Europe decided that enough was enough and started helping Ukraine with troops if they decided the Russian nuclear threat was a paper tiger we're in for some very interesting times.
BuyMyBitcoins
Russia has a nuclear triad. Unless all of their submarines were in port and taken out during the attack, there’d be no way to prevent them from losing all three delivery mechanisms simultaneously.
jxjnskkzxxhx
Russia hasn't spent enough in their military to afford nuclear maintenance in decades. They don't have nuclear weapons any more, they're just faking it at this stage.
wltr
It’s an elephant in the room, and I have a strong impression not everyone acknowledges it.
bufferoverflow
And there worst part of the triad, ICBMs, can't really be taken out easily by any method I can imagine. And they are nearly impossible to intercept, even by the US.
skinkestek
A giant, incredibly detailed documentation ppackage, down to what posters are on what walls in what rooms were leaking in western media the other day.
Braxton1980
Which is why a simultaneous targetted assassinations of Putin, his key government supporters, and the oligarchs is needed. Whomever would take over would have no reason to nuke others when he could just have power over Russia
rcxdude
Putin has very carefully put himself in the position that his death would cause a very chaotic power vacuum in Russia (to the detriment or at least risk of almost everyone), to dissuade any would-be assassins.
slt2021
russia has dead hand system, any attack on putin will trigger the dead hand.
most importantly USA doesn't want putin dead, because his next successor could be smarter and more brutal
drysine
>Which is why a simultaneous targetted assassinations of Putin, his key government supporters, and the oligarchs is needed.
It's ironic that while Ukrainian supporters like you dream about terrorist attacks, Putin himself doesn't order strikes against Kiev government.
throwaway422432
I can imagine this could have been the motivation 18 months ago.
"In the early morning hours of 29 December 2023, Russia launched what was seen to be the largest wave of missiles and drones yet seen in the Russo-Ukrainian War, with hundreds of missiles and drones hitting the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and other cities across the country."
You have to wonder how much of that time was inventing/creating the actual capability on top of planning/rehearsing. Would be an interesting story in the mold of the "Dam Busters".
smackeyacky
It’s just an incredible of a story to me. The logistics and spycraft required boggle the mind
dragonwriter
> Drive a truck full of drones deep into enemy territory
The trucks used for the delivery were acquired (along with the mobile homes the drones were launched from that were on their beds) in Russia, as I understand it, not driven from Ukraine (of course, the drones still needed to be delivered from Ukraine for the attack packages to be assembled.)
mrheosuper
I wonder if those drones could be made in RU ? They were all using off-the-shelf parts. I don't see the need to import then from Ukraine.
Teever
Imagine an assassination that is done with a drone mailed internationally to a PO Box. Send a gig driver to pick up a small box and drop it off at an abandoned lot.
The box has a machine inside that cuts the box open and opens up to release a drone that pops out and hits the target.
Bonus points if the box itself can fly away and self destruct so there's even less of a physical trail to figure out where the drone came from.
smackeyacky
The ultimate sleeper agents.
By all accounts the Ukrainian attack took a year to execute. It's the kind of planning that was behind the explosive pagers that Israel cooked up.
It's a new kind of automated terrorism - who knows what is planted around Russia now and when the Ukrainians will set it off.
alisonatwork
It's not terrorism if a country is at war and their military facilities were targeted.
Teever
The next step in the automation is a cargo container sized machine that can be fed parts and spit out packaged drones ready to go.[0]
m463
I imagine a "glitter bomb" operation. Basically a postal package that leaks drones all along its delivery route.
Also, why can't drones just infiltrate a country in little spurts from the borders, pausing near power lines to inductively power themselves.
A lot of this stuff is terrifying, and conflicts like the ukraine are basically funding/inventing nightmares.
hayst4ck
When it comes to abuse of trust, I'm worried about goods coming from China. Israel's compromise of the pager supply chain shows that innocuous seeming devices can be weaponized via trust.
Imagine if every IoT appliance decided to burn down/self destruct and every phone with satellite connectivity decided to weaponize its battery pack. If every car with cell service connectivity decided to accelerate with brakes disabled at once. If every access point/router decided to make itself inoperable/turned into a bot net removing home internet all at once and likely shifting traffic to cell towers which could overload them resulting in zero communication. Imagine that as many devices as possible were programmed or constructed in a way to create failure on a specific date or period.
Sounds insane, but I would have said the pager thing sounds insane too. All those things definitely sounds possible to me.
mmasu
i recently heard a podcast where a16z claimed this was one of the main reasons why you need a US electric vehicle and robotic industry - what if Chinese device could be weaponized at will in the event of a conflict?
mrheosuper
This is exactly why you should not let your Iot devices connect to Internet.
nobodyandproud
Nervously eyeing my robo vacs.
salawat
Ding, ding, ding. Welcome to the "Circus of Globalist's Externalities come home to Roost!"
At a certain point, you as a country can only be said to be capable of what you can do without external aid. The possibility that your Allies will always remain as such, either at their behest, or your own, is simply never zero.
Queue the Globalist's in the crowd going "The entire point was to maximize the amount of time before peace broke down through economic interdependence. Wrong. They optimized for that metric while maximizing the vulnerability to supply chain based attacks. They made individual countries less resilient and accepted the risk that if a much greater worldwide action potential was actually reached, everyone would be potentially fucked.
euroderf
So why doesn't Black Mirror have an episode where the PRC are the bad guys?
andix
It's probably not so easy to just send explosives via mail.
slt2021
its much easier to buy them in the USA, like guns, bullets, grenades. to damage an airplane you dont need much: just a mix of molotov cocktail, and aluminum and metal shavings a-la Walter White in order to penetrate and ignite the fuel tank of a strategic nuclear bomber.
ioseph
Who needs explosives? Spring loaded pointy rod to the skull or razor to the neck
tim333
I doubt the post office does that much screening.
nthingtohide
I can now understand Palmer Luckey's point of intelligent weapons. It truly brings to life the quote from Game of Thrones, "Why is it more noble to kill 10,000 in battlefield than dozen at a battle." Intelligent weapons enable the second scenario. Civilian lives are mostly unharmed.
3eb7988a1663
I think autocorrect mangled your quote! "Why it is more noble to kill 10,000 men in battle than a dozen at dinner?"
boruto
Would be sitting in customs for bribe clearance in here.
Gibbon1
Imagine an anti-tank drone buried in the bushes 100 yards off the road.
throwaway422432
You don't need a drone. Ukraine has these, and there are numerous videos of them taking out Russian vehicles.
mrguyorama
How about an automated weapon you shoot from a howitzer 15 miles away that autonomously surveils the area under it's impact zone for a couple armored vehicles and reliably eliminates them?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMArt_155
You can actually see video of these in action in Ukraine. Bofors has also produced the BONUS round which is basically identical in action.
ClumsyPilot
> An amazing idea: Drive a truck full of drones deep into enemy territory and let them loose.
Is it such an amazing idea? Imagine the shoe is on the other foot - would you normally be able to drive a truck full of drones into a country at war, say Israel? This puts a target on civilian vehicles.
> In the process, manage to poke serious holes into Russia's nuclear deterrent.
Again, is it such an amazing idea? Do you want to make people in charge of nuclear weapons more jumpy and likely to make a rash decision?
jsiepkes
Put a target on civilian vehicles? This changes nothing. I don't know if you read or watched "generation kill" but even US troops shot at everything which came too close for comfort in Iraq. And I understand that, any unidentified vehicle could be hostile. You are not going to sit and wait to find out as a soldier.
Also they didn't drive a truck into Russia. The trucks were acquired and modified in Russia. And according to Russia they are not in a war. They are in a "special military operation"...
CoastalCoder
Amazing doesn't necessarily mean welcome.
It's amazing in how effective it was, and the asymmetry of the destruction compared to cold-war assumptions.
Zamaamiro
Russians are using those planes to bomb Ukrainian cities and murder Ukrainian civilians.
“Amazing” is the correct word for it
ClumsyPilot
I would support this idealistic approach and disregard for consequences if we didn’t have an “ally” that’s doing exactly the same thing, and potentially vulnerable if a major power decides to intervene
JumpCrisscross
40 bombers is like a third of the Russian bomber fleet [1]. That is huge.
jauntywundrkind
Fwiw, the US bomber force is ~75 B-52's, 40-something B-1's, and 20 B-2's. Pretty similar to Russia, until today.
ponector
[flagged]
falcor84
>Pure evil country.
There are no evil countries. There are people making choices, and they can always make other choices. Things aren't fixed and Russia can still have a different and better future.
hayst4ck
There might not be evil countries, but there are absolutely evil governments and broken cultures.
Sometimes defeat is required for change and sometimes change can only come from the outside.
ponector
The third Reich was not evil. As USSR. Mass murdering just happened by accident. Democratic People's Republic of Korea and Iran are not evil as well. Why they are sanctioned?
tim333
They can behave evil for a while - Germany in WW2, Russia recently etc.
TiredOfLife
What about the past 100+ years of Russian history makes you think that?
mannerheim
[flagged]
jopsen
Ukraine don't win that way, and they don't get support from Europe that way.
If Russian lives were valued, they wouldn't have started the conflict, much less continued it they way they do.
So no, for Ukraine I don't see what purpose targeting civilians would bring.
lxm
Ukraine is outmatched on ammo.
Also, some of the Western kit comes with restrictions on what exactly and how far they can hit inside Russia.
justsomehnguy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/30_December_2023_Belgorod_shel...
> Twenty-five people,[15] including five children,[1] were reported to have been killed in the attacks, while 108 people,[3] including 17 children, were injured.[2]
bratao
If the numbers are true, this would be one of the more successful attacks in history. Drones are changing the whole dynamic of wars.
consumer451
My concern is that it doesn't just change war, but security in general. I don't think that we have realized the real implications of this technology, especially the fiber optic drones.
JumpCrisscross
> I don't think that we have realized the real implications of this technology
Define “we.” The defence community has been deeply engaged with what’s going on in Ukraine since ‘22. (And the supremacy of sensor fusion in India’s air battle with Pakistan.)
consumer451
We as a society. I don't want to write down my detailed thoughts on this, but anyone with a red team mind can imagine the implications for personal security.
larodi
Real implications are that once again you don’t want your personal shit being public, which will still take some while for gen.audience to understand about social media and all sorts of corporate surveillance.
tim333
I don't think my or most people's shit being public will result in fiber optic drone attack.
tenuousemphasis
Fiber optic drones? AI drones are the really scary one. No control frequency to jam, no fiber to carry.
rpozarickij
I haven't heard about fiber optic drones [0] before and it turns the fiber optic used by them is much stronger [1] than I initially suspected.
morkalork
Not sure why the sibling comment is dead, it's an interesting topic. Here is a safe for work video of someone walking through countless strands of fibre over a field: https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1l0ld99/...
I read one operator describe the forests as being like Mirkwood from the Hobbit. Eerie.
aaron695
They are quite beautiful -
https://www.reddit.com/r/MilitaryPorn/comments/1kzy817/field...
https://www.tiktok.com/@united24.na/video/748403971532320286...
https://www.tiktok.com/@united24.media/video/748912820925079...
Sparkling in the sky (they track and kill the men in this video after the 10 second mark so you might stop there) - https://x.com/ng_ukraine/status/1891534054811439380
High def footage, 60 fps until they hit.
They are definitely useful for civilians, but seem dangerous. If you hit them on a motorbike etc. If you google kites and banned Chinese lines and road accidents its quite gory, but before the illegal kite lines accidents didn't seem to happen. So something should work for optic fibers.
Run one to your mates house 10km away for the pay-per-view?
tim333
I was thinking you should be able to turn this into cheap fiber to the premises.
balderdash
Its so strange to me that counter drone measures (active defenses - like jamming , lasers, nets, guns + passive measures - hardened aircraft shelters etc.) are not more common around airbases and the like. I would have thought governments would be rusting to harden installations and infrastructure. maybe this is the wake up they need.
justinator
Drones weren't seen as much of a threat as these airbases are many thousands of kilometers from the Ukraine border.
dmix
Those bases are heavily defended against drones. Ukraine has tried repeatedly to hit these bases and only succeeded once prior hitting a single TU-95. Since then there's been nothing as Russia adapted. The long range drones required have a larger radar signature and Pantsir + AA guns on the ground are pretty good at stopping that. That plus heavy EW and GPS jamming.
Which is why Ukraine spent the last year hitting softer targets like oil and factories.
justinator
>Those bases are heavily defended against drones.
Weight doesn't seem to imply effectiveness I guess.
mmooss
Drone countermeasures are an immature technology; nobody knows the solution. Notice the limted defenses elsewhere in the war. The US military is still experimenting with different solutions.
koonsolo
Oh please there are plenty of solutions, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb5_F4_Eod8 for example. Bullets that explode into pellets thanks to an internal radar, etc.
mmooss
Plenty of proposed solutions, but nothing mature and proven. Again, the US military is still struggling to find answers. Drones dominate the Russia-Ukraine front (and the rear, per the OP).
Why are they so effective in Ukraine and Russia if there are so many solutions? Why do all the experts say they will transform warfare?
rhcom2
I would guess they have that stuff but the trucks the drones were transported in entered within the perimeter of the base and bypassed it.
mannerheim
EW is needed at the front, and these bases were deep within Russia. Lasers are not common technology for anti-drone use yet, and likely kinetic weapons are superior since lasers will not work in any sort of bad weather.
ClumsyPilot
START treaty between US and Russia requires that the Bombers are stored out in the open so that they can be monitored from satellite, to check compliance.
I guess after today's attack, that treaty is dead.
sxyuan
Russia already suspended their participation in Feb. 2023.
ponector
Russians can and will violate any treaty they have signed, also lying about their actions if caught. It is their handbook since forming of the Russian empire.
ClumsyPilot
They have been in compliance with nuclear treaties, that’s not a trivial point.
Also going back to the time of slave trade and genocide of native Americans seems a bit rich…
stackedinserter
From the treaty:
> The obligation not to use concealment measures shall not apply to cover or concealment practices at ICBM bases or to the use of environmental shelters for strategic offensive arms.
Anti-drone nets or simple hangars won't violate it.
amai
Ukraine updates assessment of mission targeting Russian bombers:
„at least 13 Russian warplanes were destroyed and more were damaged.“
https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/3999621-ukraine-updates...
k310
Some say that the Spanish Civil War was the rehearsal for WWII. No doubt, the war in Ukraine is just such a situation.
cosmicgadget
As long as TACO doesn't dissolve NATO or try to invade Canada, the optimist in me believes a global conventional war is highly unlikely.
dragonwriter
Why would he dissolve NATO? That would just encourage something else to form where the US doesn't have a veto over all decisions.
mmooss
Recent decisions don't seem to follow that agenda and rationale.
AnimalMuppet
Dissolving NATO is beyond his power. He could maybe withdraw the US from it.
snovymgodym
> He could maybe withdraw the US from it.
realistically speaking, this destroys NATO
erupt7893
You are naive if you think global conventional war is highly unlikely at this point. A nuclear weapon capable country is being backed in to a corner
rsynnott
Backed into a corner? All they need to do is pull out of Ukraine, and they’ll be fine.
jpmoral
Being backed into a corner? They're the aggressor.
cosmicgadget
A nuclear power is backed into a corner so you're predicting a global conventional war?
croemer
*backing itself
archagon
What corner?
koonsolo
> backed in to a corner
Please tell me what would happen if Putin states "Job well done in Ukraine, all Nazi's are killed", and then withdraws his troops. NATO is going to invade Russia?
CamperBob2
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ndsipa_pomu
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shepherdjerred
Everyone who has played Hearts of Iron knows that Spain is where you train your units for 1939
defly
Here is a list of largest volunteer funds at your disposal (military and non-military help):
Come Back Alive ex. These guys delivered first deep-strike drones
https://savelife.in.ua/en/donate-en/
Serhiy Prytula Charity Foundation ex. Bought a famous spy satellite
https://prytulafoundation.org/en
KOLO Charity Foundation managed by UA tech community
dralley
Liberty Ukraine is also good. They periodically run fundraisers for engineering equipment for digging defensive positions in addition to supplying drones and whatnot.
tim333
Good on Ukraine! I've always thought a good way of dealing with barbaric behaviour would be to use drones to destroy the baddies weapons. Putin obviously doesn't care how many tens of thousands of Russians he sends to their deaths so hitting the weaponry and finances is probably the way. Or killing Putin of course which they also seem to be trying - https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/did-ukraine-try-to-assassina...
There's some interesting stuff happening on the financial side as well with the Lindsey Graham bill - this thing https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/05/28/new-us-senate-...
Much of the old USSR heavy aircraft industry supply chain was in Ukraine. Now Russia has minimal capacity to build new strategic aircraft: those few that they managed to put into service since 1991 largely still relied on stockpiled old parts. Even for tactical aircraft they only manage to deliver a few per year. And with their shattered educational system and declining working-age population this trend won't reverse any time soon.