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Russia’s Belaya airfield, located in south-eastern Siberia some 5,500 km east of the frontline, in flames. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belaya_air_base
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-95 Tupolev Tu-95.
Russia hasn’t built new Tu-95 or Tu-22M3 bombers since 1991, aside from a few finished post-Soviet collapse. Its strategic fleet — Tu-160s, Tu-95MS, and Tu-22M3s — totals just 70–90 aircraft.
4 military airfields in Russia. Planes are burning at the Belaya, Diaghilevo, Olenya and Ivanovo airfields.
Codenamed “Spiderweb”, it was planned more than a year in advance and “personally supervised” by Zelensky. It used dozens of FPV drones armed with explosives that were smuggled into Russia.
Photo: SBU Chief Vasyl Malyuk looks over a map of Russian targets.
Here are videos from Russian telegram channel Mash purported to show the Ukrainian SBU drones flying out of a truck where they’d been hidden and heading for a Russian airfield.
The SBU has shared photos of the drones it says were used in today's attack on Russian airfields. The images appear to show how the drones were hidden during transport to Russia ahead of the attack.
welluhwhatdoyouwantmetosay
My favorite: The Russians put tires on their planes to absorb blasts, and painted silhouettes of planes on the tarmac to confuse attackers.
UnitConversionBot
5,500 km ≈ 3420 miles
stukajr
#8 The commentary of the driver in Russian is priceless. I guess the police engage drones with their AK's, but with little success. Lots of obscenities, yet accurately describing the situation.
RenaissanceFaireMan
PicassoCT
Ukraine should make a scented candle- "Putins petals"
CaptainMilkshake
Hell yeah! Fuck Putin!
StonesTwice
Slava Ukraine!
malfunctionm1ke
OY BLYAT! SUKKA NACHUY BLYAT!
jwhennig
Those Bear bombers were never going to do much against a peer anyway. Radar guided missiles would have had a field day with them back in the 80s. Not sure about the jets though. Might be fast enough to evade. (But probably not.)
DoktorWeasel
Russia generally doesn't use their strategic bombers in the traditional dropping free fall bombs over a target role anymore. They use them as cruise missile carriers, to get nearer to the area, but still out of air defense range and launch cruise missiles. For precisely the reason that they're vulnerable to air defenses. Note how there's been a lot of cruise missile and drone attacks against Ukraine during this war. Although I'm not sure how much were using these and how much was smaller planes.
ChickenSnizort
Incorrect. Like American B52's they operate as 'bomb trucks' these days. They can fly high over uncontested skies in places like Afghanistan and drop bombs, or they can fly high near the Ukraine border and launch glide bombs. They have been very effective in the Ukraine war.
minipancho94
Many more modern bombers were hit, but the victory is both psychological and strategic as those bombers were a major part of their nuclear arsenal. These planes were the ones meant to carry nukes and air launched cruise missiles. While those cruise missiles can still be deployed on other platforms, it hinders their launch capacity and ability to saturate a target area still.
Asadsadsadclown
Russia has continuously shown that all of their "advanced" military technology has been bullshit. Before attacking Ukraine they were considered a near peer to the US. Now it is clear they barely made it out of the cold war technologically. They are "peers" are now places like Ukraine who had most of their conventional military equipment also coming from the cold war. Which is why they are fighting to a stand still against a fraction of the man power using 30 year old hand me down US equipment.
FlintNorth44
That's why they installed trump as a puppet. Now they do control the most powerful military in the world. Or do they...?
Asadsadsadclown
The US is the strongest military in the world several times over. Since WW2 we have operated under the doctrine of having enough weapons and men on hand to fight our two largest competitors at the same time and win. That has been China and Russia for a very long time. Now it looks like both not only failed to keep up but have lied about how far behind they were. Trump has not solidified his power enough to command the military in any meaningful way. If allowed to continue as he has been he will.
egoAristippos
SithElephant
1925, militaries were shitting themselves about $1B assets being killed by $1M fighters. Now it's $1M and $1K.
TheImgurWarsMadeMe
I know it shouldn't bother me as much as it does, but those are the same orders of magnitude.
Taalii
one is easier to sustain though.
SirenBrick
Those are $80-100 mil targets (that Russia can literally never replace or repair major components of), with $800 drones (yay economies of scale) and maybe $20k worth of containers. This war is wild.
SocoFox
I love how the drone the video is from is like, "Okay, this plane is on fire, so I'll go on to this one that hasnt been hi... Whoop nevermind, on to the next one."
hell0
HashMaster9k
I SO HOPE they hit the A-50. If they did, and crippled it (or better, destroyed it) that means there's holes in Ruzzia's Eye in the Sky coverage, meaning it'll be FAR easier for Ukraine to hit various other targets more easily. And they can't just build another one, as they're very specialized and expensive, plus those that *can* make them already have sanctions on Ruzzia.
Sebastopol
Excellent post @OP! Thanks for bringing all those pics and info together, it gives a much clearer idea of the operation.
secularink
Thanks man! :)
enderite
pachyderm
Didn’t even say thank you
FlintNorth44
The orange bastard is never thankful.
RenaissanceFaireMan
I think the message is, "Nowhere in Russia is safe"
BillHubbard
So, where did containers 6 and 7 go? Attack 5 failed, 4 were successful.
secularink
Attack 5 was against a naval base, I didn't feature it here because lack of material.
BillHubbard
As I understood the fifth attack failed. I haven't seen an explanation why and how. Would have been awesome if it had worked. I love it when Ukraine converts Russian surface ships to submarines.
secularink
Ok, lot of info still coming in and then there's the Kerch Bridge thing.
BillHubbard
Not much info on the bridge yet. Apart from the big badaboom and it being closed to traffic. afaik trains can still cross.
And the effing Russians are good with trains.
Frodyne
Have you heard about the prank where somebody released 3 pigs, but they wrote 1, 2, and 4 on them, leading people to spend way more time looking for the "3" pig.
It would be pretty hilarious if they only had the resources to make five attempts, but still chose to show off a preparation picture with seven containers in it.
Filanwizard
Even if all the planes hit are not writeoffs, they are still down for months or years.
The tactical value of this attack of course is now Russia has to spend resources to replace or repair jets but also guard bases they previously did not. And checkpoints for trucks. UA intelligence told the world how they did this for a reason. They had every option to leave the world wondering.
AMercer
Not just guard against this type of attack but whatever Wile E. Coyote-esque plan Ukraine comes up with next. Putin does not have the kind of imagination to deal with this.
xzinik
they told disclosed it to the world for extra points in psychological warfare, and to have russia in their tiptoes as they halt or slow down supply lines for everithing military or not
SirenBrick
And to remind Russia that about 1/2 of their total national air defence systems are allocated to defending 1 man and his 28 empty mansions.
stukajr
They also hit the ready and airworthy aircraft. Russia will need to transfer the aircraft they use to harass NATO's airspace
dontfloatmygoat
I really hope the temperature for war calms down worldwide and Ukraine gets peace because aside from that - this’ll make a brilliant movie
FeedThoseKitties
And I'm sure Ukraine is already planning the next strike, which will use a completely different approach.
b0stark
I'm pretty sure they have multiple things brewing that we don't know about. It wouldn't surprise me if they already have something prepared for the Russian retaliation of this operation. Especially considering they spent so long waiting for this moment, they surely already have more waiting far inland, just waiting to be activated.
SirenBrick
They just hit the Kerch Invaders Bridge support struts in a midnight underwater attack.
Ninjainslippers
Exactly. Distract and gum up the works in one area, then it leaves them vulnerable in other areas. Ukraine is outplaying Russia strategically.