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Ukrainian drone attack on Russian military bases
A brave and strategically planned UAV attack by Ukraine on Russian military airports has caused considerable damage to air forces. Find out how this surprise attack was carried out.
Ukrainian drone attack on Russian military bases
The Ukrainian drone attack on Russian military airfields was . But above all, he was meticulously planned and carried out without errors.
precise target selection
kyjiw attacked where it could make a difference and damaged or destroyed military aircraft that Moscow uses to terrorize Ukrainian civilians with air strikes almost every day. The Ukrainian security service explained that 41 Russian planes, including strategic bomber and surveillance planes, although remains unclear, how many of them were completely out of action.
Successful use of the Ukrainian special forces
Justin Bronk, a senior research employee at the Royal United Services Institute in London, described the attack as "an impressive success for the Ukrainian secret services". "Even though only half of the 41 damaged or destroyed aircraft is confirmed, this will significantly impair the ability of the Russian long -distance air trip to maintain their regular large -scale attacks with marching aircraft against Ukrainian cities and infrastructures, while they at the same time maintain their nuclear deterrence and patrol against NATO and Japan a message.
attack from the heart of Russia
The attacks were directed against four airfields deep in the Russian domestic, with the most distant away, the Belaya base in the Irkutsk region, about 4,500 kilometers from the Ukrainian border. Other goals included the Olenya base near Murmansk in the Arctic Circle, more than 2,000 kilometers away; The diaghilev air-air base in the Ryazan Oblast, about 520 kilometers from Ukraine; And the Ivanovo Air Force Base, which is used for Russian military transportation, removed about 800 kilometers from the border.
causes of Russia's negligence
The large distances to the Ukrainian border probably made Russia be negligent when it comes to protecting these locations. The most valuable aircraft on the Belaya base were regularly unprotected on the airfield and were easy to recognize in publicly accessible satellite images-including on Google Maps. Moscow probably believed that this distance was sufficient to protect the planes from Ukrainian attacks.
weak defense measures in Russia
The radar systems and air defense of the Russian bases were not prepared for a sudden and deep -flying attack. Heavy machine guns are an effective means of defending such an attack. Russia used it against Ukrainian sea drones in the Black Sea. But these were either not available or were not quickly positioned on the attacked bases, probably because Russia simply hadn't foreseen this attack.
a sophisticated operation
The Ukrainian President Wolodymyr Selenskyj said that 117 drones were used in the operation. According to the SBU, the Ukrainian security service, the drones were smuggled to Russia by its agents. At some point, probably already while they were in Russia, the drones were then hidden in mobile wooden sheds. Photos that are available show the drones that are hidden directly under the metal roofs of the scales.
These wooden scales were then loaded onto trucks and driven near the bases. How exactly Ukraine could bring the vehicles to the vicinity of these military high value goals is not known, but reports in the Russian media indicated that this was relatively simple.
social media as a tool
A high -ranking source in the Ukrainian drone development program announced that the pilots that flew the drones were probably far from the locations from which they were started. "You would probably have set up an internet hub to enable the pilot to control the pilot, and quickly use every FPV drone (first person View) to hit every goal one after the other."
conclusion: a year of planning
Selenskyj said on Sunday that the attack had been planning for a year, six months and nine days, and praised the security services for a "brilliant" operation. While the Russian officials were talking about the attack and declared that the attacks in regions Ivanovo, Ryazan and Amur had described the attack as a "tragic loss for the entire Russian air fleet" and attributed this to "criminal negligence".
The estimates of the SBU about the damage amount to about $ 7 billion, and it is reported that 34 % of Russia's strategic cruise aircraft carriers were hit on the main air -air bases. While Russia confirmed the loss of several TU-95 and TU-22M3 bombers and an A-50 surveillance aircraft, an insider said that a total of 27 TU-95, four TU-160, two TU-22M3 and probably one A-50 were hit. This attack is a significant challenge for Russia, since the production of these patterns has been set for decades, which has enormous difficulties for Russian aviation.