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3 days ago
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Mass Drone Attack On Exposed Russian Bombers Puts Spotlight On Hardened Aircraft Shelter Debate
New details continue to emerge about Ukraine's unprecedented covert drone attacks on multiple Russian air bases, but the full scale and scope of the resulting losses remain unclear. It is the latest global event to put a spotlight on an already fierce debate about whether the U.S. military should be investing in more hardened aircraft shelters and other new fortified infrastructure at bases abroad and at home, something TWZ has been following closely. What we just saw in Russia is a nightmare scenario that we have already been sounding the alarm on for years now, which broadly underscores the growing threats posed by drones. Readers can first get up to speed on what is known about the attacks, which were focused on trying to neutralize Russian strategic bombers that are regularly used to conduct cruise missile attacks on Ukraine, in our latest reporting here. Authorities in Ukraine say they attacked five bases with a total of 117 small and relatively short-range first-person-view (FPV) type kamikaze drones, destroying or at least damaging 41 aircraft. Andriy Kovalenko, an official with Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, has also said that 'at least 13 Russian aircraft were destroyed.' These claims have yet to be independently verified and they should be taken as speculative at this time. The russian terrorist state no longer has the ability to produce Tu-95s or any kind of strategic bomber. This is a tremendous victory for Ukraine. — Michael MacKay (@mhmck) June 1, 2025 The drones were launched from container-like enclosures built to look like small sheds or tiny homes on tractor-trailer trucks. Questions remain about exactly how they were guided to their targets, but at least some of them were human-in-the-loop guided by operators using first-person-view 'goggles' or tablet-like devices. 5/5. After launching, the trailers self-destructed to avoid detection or recovery (see photos). — Roman Sheremeta (@rshereme) June 2, 2025 From the imagery that has already emerged, a key aspect of the Ukrainian drone attacks was that the Russian planes that were targeted were parked out in the open. The fact that aircraft sitting on open flightlines are especially vulnerable, including to uncrewed aerial threats, is not new. 'One day last week, I had two small UASs that were interfering with operations… At one base, the gate guard watched one fly over the top of the gate check, tracked it while it flew over the flight line for a little while, and then flew back out and left,' now-retired Air Force Gen. James 'Mike' Holmes, then head of Air Combat Command (ACC), said in 2017, now nearly a decade ago. 'Imagine a world where somebody flies a couple hundred of those and flies one down the intake of my F-22s with just a small weapon on it.' At that time, TWZ noted that it would be easier for an adversary to just attack parked planes in the open, offering a way to knock out large numbers of aircraft before they can even get airborne. Since then, we have already had multiple opportunities to re-highlight the ever-growing risk of something like this occurring to America's armed forces, including scenarios involving more localized attacks on bases far from active war zones by lower-end weaponized commercial drones. The Russian military has been acutely aware of drone threats to air bases even before the all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022. A mass drone attack on Russia's Khmeimim Air Base outpost in Syria in 2017 was a watershed moment that TWZ highlighted at the time as a sign of things to come. Regular drone attacks on Khmeimim in the late 2010s also prompted the construction of new hardened aircraft shelters there. Last year, Russia's Minister of Defense Andrey Belousov said that 'a schedule for airfields has already been drawn up and that shelters will definitely be built' in response to Ukrainian drone and missile attacks, according to independent Russian journalist Alexander Kots. The construction of new aircraft shelters, hardened and unhardened, had already been visible in satellite imagery of a growing number of air bases in Russia since late 2023. However, from what has been observed to date, the focus has been on better protecting tactical jets at bases closer to Ukraine. Just recently, Belousov was shown a model of a hangar with a Tu-160 Blackjack bomber inside as part of a presentation on new developments relating to prefabricated and modular structures for various military purposes. Whether or not the hangar model reflects an active project, or is a proposal or notional concept of some kind, is unclear. Tu-160s were among the aircraft types Ukraine explicitly targeted with its covert drone attacks this weekend. Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov was shown a model of a hangar for Tu-160 strategic bombers during a visit last — Rob Lee (@RALee85) June 2, 2025 Russia's construction of new aircraft shelters is part of an expanding global trend that has also been observed in China, North Korea, and elsewhere. Hardened Aircraft Shelters of J-10 Fighters — Húrin (@Hurin92) September 8, 2023 Geolocation: 39.4069444, 125.8983333Sunchon AB, DPRK (North Korea)10/27/23 Sentinel-2 L2A pass shows paving and shelters (16 total) completed. Sunchon is home to the KPAAF 57th Air Regiment (MiG-29s).@GeoConfirmedhttps:// — Evergreen Intel (@vcdgf555) December 1, 2023 Satellite imagery of Nasosnaya Air Base – Republic Of Azerbaijan Construction of hangars for JF-17 fighter jets, which began in early 2024, is now in its final stages. The base will soon be ready to host a full squadron of 16 aircraft. — آریان || Āryān (@BasedQizilbash) May 28, 2025 The U.S. military does have hardened aircraft shelters are various bases, but has made very limited investments in building more since the end of the Cold War. Calls for new shelters, hardened or otherwise, have been pointedly absent from U.S. military planning in recent years, at least publicly. Some American officials have actively pushed back on the idea, often citing the cost of building new hardened infrastructure, which is funding that could be applied elsewhere. The U.S. Air Force, for instance, has been more focused on active defenses, such as surface-to-air missile systems, and expanding the number of operating locations that forces could be dispersed to, if necessary. 'So, we will have the need for bases, the main operating bases from which we operate,' Air Force Gen. Kevin Schneider, head of Pacific Air Forces (PACAF), said at the Air & Space Forces Association's (AFA) 2025 Warfare Symposium in March. 'The challenge becomes, at some point, we will need to move to austere locations. We will need to disaggregate the force. We will need to operate out of other locations, again, one for survivability, and two, again, to provide response options.' Those are requirements that 'cost money' and force the Air Force to 'make internal trades,' such as 'do we put that dollar towards, you know, fixing the infrastructure at Kadena [Air Base in Japan] or do we put that dollar towards restoring an airfield at Tinian,' Schneider added. There is growing criticism that U.S. forces are being left increasingly vulnerable, including to drone attacks, by a lack of investment in hardened aircraft shelters and other new fortified facilities. A recent deployment of six of the U.S. Air Force's 19 prized B-2 stealth bombers to the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, which wrapped up earlier this month, had offered a new datapoint in the shelter debate. Diego Garcia only has four specially designed B-2 shelters open, which are not hardened in any way, and the bombers were seen parked out in the open while on the island. More recently, a detachment of F-15E Strike Eagles arrived on the island to help provide force protection to other assets still there. 'While 'active defenses' such as air and missile defense systems are an important part of base and force protection, their high cost and limited numbers mean the U.S. will not be able to deploy enough of them to fully protect our bases,' a group of 13 Republican members of Congress had written in an open letter to the heads of the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy in May 2024. 'In order to complement active defenses and strengthen our bases, we must invest in 'passive defenses,' like hardened aircraft shelters and underground bunkers, dispersal of forces across both within a base and across multiple bases, redundant logistical facilities, and rapid runway repair capabilities.' 'While hardened aircraft shelters do not provide complete protection from missile attacks, they do offer significantly more protection against submunitions than expedient shelters (relocatable steel shelters). They would also force China to use more force to destroy each aircraft, thereby increasing the resources required to attack our forces and, in turn, the survivability of our valuable air assets,' they added. 'Constructing hardened shelters for all our air assets may not be economically feasible or tactically sensible, but the fact that the number of such shelters on U.S. bases in the region has barely changed over a decade is deeply troubling.' In January, the Hudson Institute think tank in Washington, D.C., released a report that underscores the points made above about the benefits that new hardened aircraft shelters offer in terms of reducing vulnerability and increasing the resources an enemy would have to expend. The authors of the Hudson report assessed that 10 missiles, each with a warhead capable of scattering cluster munitions across areas 450 feet in diameter, could be enough to neutralize all aircraft parked in the open and critical fuel storage facilities at key airbases like Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in Japan, Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, or Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. The general points made here about the particular danger of submunitions from cluster weapons could also apply to drones with similarly sized warheads like the ones Ukraine just used in its attacks on Russia's air bases. Even fully-enclosed, but unhardened shelters could provide a modicum of additional defense against these kinds of threats. Last year, officials at two U.S. air bases – Langley Air Force Base in Virginia and Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina – expressed interest in the possibility of adding nets or other similar physical defensive measures to existing open-ended sunshade-type shelters to help protect against attacks by smaller drones. It's unclear whether there has been any movement since on actual implementation. Nets are among the drone defenses currently used on both sides of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Waves of still-mysterious drone incursions over Langley Air Force Base in December 2023, which TWZ was the first to report on, remain a particular focal point for broader calls from Congress and elsewhere to better protect U.S. military facilities against uncrewed aerial threats. What happened at Langley is just one of a still-growing number of worrisome drone incidents over and around U.S. military facilities, training ranges, and warships off the coast of the United States, as well as critical civilian infrastructure, in the past decade or so, many of which we have reported first. Overseas bases well outside of established conflict zones that host American forces have been the site of concerning drone overflights in recent years, as well. There was also a flurry of reported drone sightings last year over New Jersey and other parts of the United States last year, many of which quickly turned out to be spurious. However, the surge in public attention underscored a real threat, as Ukraine has now demonstrated in dramatic fashion. While Ukraine says its covert drone attacks on Russia took more than a year to plan, prepare for, and stage, they also underscore how the basic barriers to entry for carrying out drone attacks, especially ones involving weaponized commercial designs, have long been low in terms of cost and technical aptitude. The operation notably leveraged ArduPilot, described as an 'open source autopilot system' that is freely available online. Of course open source software has been used in war before, but seeing ArduPilot Mission Planner being used to blow up Russian strategic bombers is still wild. — John Wiseman (@ 2025-06-01T15:55:48.877Z Additional footage shows another FPV drone overflying the airfield; multiple Tupolev Tu-95 bombers are seen aflame. — Jimmy Rushton (@JimmySecUK) June 1, 2025 18 years after @Jrdmnz @jason4short and I created ArduPilot, here it is destroying large parts of the Russian air force. Crazy — Chris Anderson (@chr1sa) June 1, 2025 Drone threats are only to expand and accelerate in terms of sophistication, thanks in large part to advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning, as time goes on. Uncrewed aerial systems with rapidly improving autonomous navigation and targeting capabilities that do not require a human in the loop present particularly serious threats. Without the need for an active link to a human operator, those drones are immune to jamming and do not pump out radio emissions that can help provide early warning to defenders. They are also not limited in range to keep a connection with their controllers. Improving capabilities to autonomously find and prosecute targets are already emerging on one-way-attack drones, and this is something that can be expected to proliferate, as well. Autonomous drones that can target objects dynamic targeting without having to rely just on a fixed set of coordinates via satellite navigation like GPS, another signal that can be disrupted, will only make drone threats more complex and vastly harder to counter overall. TWZ has explored all of this in great detail in this past feature. Swarming is another area that will make lower-end drones so much harder to defeat. Working cooperatively as an integrated team at computer speeds allows drones to operate and react with extreme efficiency beyond the pace of the enemy's decision cycle. This, along with sheer mass and the resilience that goes with that, can quickly overwhelm defenses. 'In general, the technology to field systems has far outpaced the technology to defeat those systems,' Rear Adm. Paul Spedero, Vice Director for Operations, J3, Joint Chiefs of Staff, told members of the House Oversight Committee at a hearing on drone threats in April. 'It's a much wider, broader, deeper market for drone application, for commercial and recreational purposes, so hence that technology has evolved very quickly from radio control drones to now fully autonomous drones that may or may not even rely on reception of a GPS signal, which would make it very challenging to intercept.' Ukraine's covert drone attacks on Russia also underscore that these are increasingly threats unbounded by basic geography. An adversary could launch uncrewed aerial attackers from 1,000 miles away or from an area right next to the target, or anywhere in between. There are many drone types that can address those missions needs, and affordably so. Those drones could be launched from the ground, from ships at sea, and/or from aerial platforms, including other lower-end drones. Complex attacks involving different tiers of threats approaching from multiple vectors at once only add to the complications for defending forces. Ukrainian "Dovbush" UAV carrying and releasing two FPV drones during "Dovbush" UAV is reportedly capable of carrying up to six FPV drones at the same — Status-6 (Military & Conflict News) (BlueSky too) (@Archer83Able) November 19, 2024 Despite all this, America's armed forces have also continued to lag in the fielding of counter-drone defenses for forces down-range, as well as bases and other assets in and around the homeland. Domestically, an often convoluted array of legal, regulatory, and other factors have presented challenges. On the sidelines of a U.S. military counter-drone experiment called Falcon Peak 2025 in October 2024, TWZ and other outlets were notably told that lasers, microwaves, surface-to-air missiles, and guns were all off the table as options for neutralizing drones within the United States, at least at the time. For over a decade I have outlined the exact scenario as we just saw in Russia. It could happen in the U.S. tomorrow. This was a pivotal event. U.S. military and political leadership cannot live in partial denial of this threat anymore. Our most prized aircraft are sitting ducks. — Tyler Rogoway (@Aviation_Intel) June 1, 2025 The biggest challenge with this issue is education. Many just don't take the time to learn the ins and outs of the UAS threat, there are many layers and nuances, emerging technologies. There are high up people in the military that don't even really understand these basics. Then… — Tyler Rogoway (@Aviation_Intel) June 1, 2025 The U.S. military does continue to push for enhancements to the authorities it has now to protect its bases and other assets domestically against drone threats. As part of a new Pentagon-wide counter-drone strategy rolled out last year, U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) has a 'synchronizer role' that includes making sure commanders know what they are allowed to do now if drones appear around their facilities. Ukraine's drone attacks on Russian air bases this past weekend can only add to the already intense debate over investments in hardened aircraft shelters and other fortified infrastructure, as well as fuel calls for new counter-drone defenses, in general. The stark reality of what Ukrainian intelligence services have now demonstrated makes clear that uncrewed aerial threats, including to key assets deep inside a country's national territory, are well past the point of something that can be ignored. Contact the author: joe@
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Russian Strategic Bombers Destroyed In Unprecedented Wide-Scale Drone Attack
Ukraine carried out a massive drone strike at airbases across Russia on Sunday, claiming to have destroyed dozens of aircraft. There are also indications that Russia's Northern Fleet headquarters, home of Russian nuclear submarines, was attacked as well. Overall, the attack was clearly aimed at Russia's most prized strategic aerial assets, which cannot be replaced quickly in any manner and doing so at all would be extremely expensive. 'The Security Service of Ukraine is conducting a large-scale special operation to destroy bomber aircraft in the rear of the Russian Federation,' the Ukrainian Armed Forces General Staff stated on Telegram. 'SBU drones have hit more than 40 aircraft, including A-50, Tu-95 and Tu-22 M3, causing damage of over $2 billion.' The operation, codenamed 'Web,' targeted four key Russian airbases: Belaya, Diaghilevo, Olenya and Ivanovo, the Kyiv Post reported. There was no immediate response from Russian officials. While The War Zone cannot independently verify these claims, video has emerged showing Russian bombers being struck by drones. We have geolocated the video to show that the attack was on the Olenya base. It was widely reported as the Belaya Air Base in Irkutsk. The russian terrorist state no longer has the ability to produce Tu-95s or any kind of strategic bomber. This is a tremendous victory for Ukraine. — Michael MacKay (@mhmck) June 1, 2025 Locals filmed dozens of small FPV-like drones which reportedly struck multiple aircraft and other targets at the base. In short, a truck drove up to a gas station in the town next to the base and launched at least 20 drones.#BudanovApproves#OSINT — OSINT Intuit (@UKikaski) June 1, 2025 Videos show that the attacks apparently came from first-person view (FPV) drones launched from trucks parked nearby. Lol… Russian men climbed onto drone truck, trying to stop the drones from taking off…. — MAKS 25 (@Maks_NAFO_FELLA) June 1, 2025 Video showing drone launched from truck. — Def Mon (@DefMon3) June 1, 2025 The Russian air base in Olenegorsk, Murmansk, was also attacked. Explosions and flames were observed at Russia's Northern Fleet headquarters in Murmansk. It is home to some of Russia's most capable submarines, like the Yasen-M class nuclear-powered cruise missile carrying Kazan. A powerful explosion was heard in the Russian North Sea – where nuclear-powered submarines are serviced, Russian media city is a strategically important port and one of the main centers of the Russian Northern telephone communications are being… — BLYSKAVKA (@blyskavka_ua) June 1, 2025 Russian officials denied that the Northern Fleet headquarters was attacked. 'The information about explosions in Severomorsk, which is being spread on social networks, does not correspond to reality,' the head of the city said, according to the Russian Operation Z Telegram channel. 'The situation is currently stable. No threats have been recorded. Do not panic and trust only verified sources of information!' As all of this was taking place, the Ukrainian Armed Forces General Staff said Russia conducted one of its biggest attacks of the war, launching 472 drones and seven ballistic and cruise missiles across the country. Ukraine says it 'neutralised' 385 aerial targets. As we noted in the opening of this story, the fact that Ukraine went after some of Russia's most prized aerial capabilities, many of which are directly tied to its nuclear deterrent, greatly ups the ante. We don't know how many strategic aircraft Russia lost today, but it could be a large portion of its long-range cruise missile carrier aircraft. While these aircraft have rained destruction on Ukraine from a far and are legitimate targets, they also underpin a leg of Russia's nuclear deterrent. This will undoubtedly provoke a unique response from the Kremlin who has warned that widespread attacks against its strategic capabilities would be a red line. are dual use conventional/nuclear platforms. And they have rained destruction on Ukraine from afar as cruise missile carriers. But this is not about them being legitimate targets (clearly they are) it's about this attack bleeding into potentially a major degradation in the most… — Tyler Rogoway (@Aviation_Intel) June 1, 2025 The threat of wide-scale, low-end, localized drone attacks against prized aircraft sitting at airfields — including in the U.S. homeland — has been a brewing threat, as TWZ highlighted repeatedly for many years. Including the exact scenario that occurred in Ukraine in the last 24 hours. Drone technology has proliferated dramatically since, and the threshold requirements for executing such an attack have dropped considerably. At the same time, defenses against these types of threats still lag behind, both in wartime Russia and most everywhere else. This is also a glaring case of how the lack of any kind of hardened shelters leaves aircraft totally exposed to attack. This is another reality TWZ has highlighted for years, but still has not changed the U.S. investment strategy in this kind of infrastructure, even at forward locales in the Pacific. Meanwhile, drone incursions of U.S. bases at home and abroad — another issue TWZ reported on exclusively for years — have shown just how vulnerable even the Department of Defense's most prized and critical aerial assets are. There is also artificial intelligence-enabled low-end drones now becoming a reality. This would allow these aircraft to fly much farther without any radio control and hit targets they recognize autonomously. You can read all about that major development and its massive implications, which have been spurred by the war in Ukraine, here. It is unclear what control method the drones used to strike aircraft at these bases were. First Person View (FPV) types with a human in the loop nearby are possible, as are ones programmed to hit precise GPS coordinates. Both have major advantages and glaring vulnerabilities. AI-enabled ones that use image matching is possible too, which would allow the strikes to occur without emitting radio-frequency emissions and without the chance of the drones being jammed. The drones would also not require individual controllers and, like those programmed to hit GPS coordinates, they could be launched and strike in rapid succession. Russia has been covering their aircraft with tires in hopes of confusing image-matching autonomous drones in just this kind of attack, which the TWZ was first to report on. This is a developing story, and we will update it with pertinent new information. Update: 11:50 AM Eastern – The Russian Defense Ministry (MoD) commented on the attacks. 'Today, the Kyiv regime carried out a terrorist attack using FPV drones against airfields in the Murmansk, Irkutsk, Ivanovo, Ryazan and Amur regions,' the MoD stated on Telegram. 'At military airfields in the Ivanovo, Ryazan and Amur regions, all terrorist attacks were repelled. In the Murmansk and Irkutsk regions, as a result of the launch of FPV drones from the territory located in the immediate vicinity of airfields, several units of aircraft caught fire.' The fires 'have been extinguished,' the MoD added. 'There are no casualties among military personnel or civilians. Some of the participants in the terrorist attacks have been detained.' Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky 'personally supervised the operation, and Vasyl Malyuk and the SBU team implemented the plan. 41 Russian strategic aviation aircraft were hit,' Ukrainian journalist Sergey Bratchuk wrote Telegram. 'According to sources, this operation was extremely difficult from a logistical point of view. The SBU first transported FPV drones to Russia, and later – mobile wooden houses. Later, in the territory of the Russian Federation, the drones were hidden under the roofs of houses already placed on trucks. At the right moment, the roofs of the houses were remotely opened, and the drones flew to strike Russian bombers.' Sources in the SBU 'emphasize that the people who participated in this historic special operation have been in Ukraine for a long time,' Bratchuk added. 'So, if the Putin regime demonstratively detains someone, it will be another staged operation.' Irkutsk Oblast Governor Igor Kobzev confirmed that drones were launched from a truck 'At the moment, it is known that this was a drone attack on a military unit in the village of Sredniy,' he stated on Telegram. 'The source from which the drones were launched has already been blocked. It's a truck. The main thing is not to panic. There is no threat to the lives and health of civilians.' Meanwhile new video emerged of the attack on Olenya. Almost 5000km from Ukraine, a Ukrainian drone operator takes his time in choosing the perfect point of impact to destroy this Tu-95 strategic bomber that regularly rains missiles on the cities of Ukraine. — Kyiv Insider (@KyivInsider) June 1, 2025 The large-scale attack comes ahead of a scheduled meeting in Istanbul that is part of ongoing peace talks. 'We are doing everything to protect our independence, our state, and our people,' Zelensky said on X. 'I outlined the tasks for the near term and also defined our positions ahead of the meeting in Istanbul on Monday. First – a full and unconditional ceasefire. Second – the release of prisoners. Third – the return of abducted children. And in order to establish a reliable and lasting peace and ensure security, preparation of the meeting at the highest level. The key issues can only be resolved by the leaders. On Monday, our delegation will be led by Rustem Umerov.' I heard reports from the Minister of Defense of Ukraine, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the General Staff, our intelligence agencies, and the Security Service of Ukraine. Our defense, our active actions, and our are doing everything to protect our independence,… — Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) June 1, 2025 Contact the author: howard@
