An operation by Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) has hit “more than 40” Russian bombers at air bases “in the rear of the Russian Federation,” a source in the agency told the Kyiv Independent on June 1.
“Enemy strategic bombers are burning en masse in Russia — this is the result of a special operation by the SBU,” the source said.
Video provided by the source shows what appears to be a row of heavy bomber aircraft on fire at an undisclosed location.
No, that’s not how strategic bombers are used. Not in our time.
These bombers were part of the “dead hand”, an element of those nuclear threats Russian officials sometimes make.
Maybe some missiles were being launched from them from time to time, but I doubt even that.
You must know better, but I’ve read they are using Geran drone swarms more and more, I suppose those are unaffected by this.
Usually getting a notification that strategic bombers took off from Olenya meant setting an alarm in 3 hours (it’s usually at night too) to go to shelter. They take off, fly to Caspian sea, and each launches a few dozen guided rockets at Ukraine.
There were almost 200 confirmed take offs from Olenya. So basically every week they have been bombing Ukrainian cities with guided rockets.
Stand corrected.
Also quite stupid then, to use them in this quality.
Nothing Russia has done including (or since) the invasion in 2022 was smart. It was all stupid.
Russia’s wasted a million soldiers on grabbing a rather small amount of Ukrainian land. They’ve destroyed their own economy, their trade relationships with most of the world, and their demographic future. Take a million men off the streets of most countries and it’s going to crash your population within a generation or two.
Considering that a specific group of people is doing this, sociopathic and power-hungry, it makes plenty of sense.
In case of Ukraine they gambled, because they wanted another country under their rule too much.
In the air they are highly survivable long range bomb trucks, that all these ones had to be destroyed in drone attacks on the ground is kind of evidence of that.
The US has used its strategic bombing forces for non nuclear attacks extensively as well, including known use of the B2 against the Houthis and B52 against IS in Syria.
Disclaimer, I’m just a rando with a search habit. Not like, a professional analyst.
It’s maybe not the dumbest to use them in this way - their carrying capacity meant fewer sorties per pound of munition delivered.
But also, it seems like Russia is picking and choosing how it deploys resources, presumably so its more advanced jets do not have to be put at risk (there are various reasons for why that may be so - the linked article discusses them).
The other side of it is that keeping the strategic fleet demonstrably in use signals to other countries that Russia may be able to back up their nuclear saber-rattling.
Not disputing this but why would they go from olenya to the Caspian sea to fire at Ukraine? Would make way more sense to fire them from up north?
Russia uses Tu-95’s to launch cruise missiles. This is from late March:
https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/tu-95-bomber-same-age-as-putin-used-in-today-1711015673.html
You think they just sit on the runway until someone needs to drop a nuke? So, when Trump redeployed our B-2s to the Indian Ocean, he must’ve been preparing to nuke the Houthis?
On a runway - no. I just would think that such an old and valuable machine would be in some underground concrete hangar and wouldn’t be used to terrorize cities with conventional payload. Because their supposed role is not that.
I think it’d be much smarter to simply use the piece of equipment when its capabilities suit your needs, than treat it like a weirdly-shaped ICBM.
It was intended as part of the system including also ICBMs. But OK, doesn’t matter, late Soviet doctrines were all idiosyncratic anyway. Produced in a stagnating hierarchical system and little-tested.
Also just doctrine being subject to rapid change to suit changing realities during times of war. As an example, we can look to WW1 to see rapidly changing doctrines as it became understood to be necessary, like when the maneuver warfare of the Napoleonic Era quickly shifted to trench warfare.
These attacks will have dealt a significant blow to Russia’s aerial cruise missile strike capability.
Tu-95 bombers, which are among the type of aircraft that have been destroyed, are said to have launched a large-scale Kh-101 missile attack on Ukraine earlier this year. They have been used extensively since the full-scale invasion of February 2022 and so are a vital target for the Ukrainian military. - BBC
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cgrg7kelk45t