The Tupolev Tu-22M ‘Backfire’ strategic bomber was designed within the mid-Nineteen Sixties to beat the powerful air defenses around U.S. aircraft carriers and NATO military bases. To extend the survival odds of the striking aircraft, should World War III break out, each Tu-22M3 cost the equivalent of tens of millions of dollars. Each incorporates swing-wings and NK-25 turbofan engines that enable it to each race as much as twice the speed of sound and skim at slower speeds very near the surface.
But recently, the fearsome Soviet bomber met its match in combat, in the shape of quadcopter hobby/camera drones—ones that any civilian should buy online for between $400 and $2,000.
At roughly 10 a.m. last Saturday, several of those quadcopters got here buzzing down upon Soltsy-2 airbase in northwestern Russia near Novogorod. A satellite photo taken on August 16 shows that 10 Backfire bombers of the 40th Mixed Aviation Regiment were stationed there.
A minimum of one drone careened right into a Tu-22M3 within the technique of refueling and rearming. The resulting blasts caused a cloud of smoke seen rising over the airbase.
Russia’s military eventually reported that a bomber had been ‘damaged’ at Soltsy. This was an understated way of describing the fate of a Tu-22M3 photographed enveloped in a hellish firestorm.
Multiple sources contend that either one or two more Tu-22Ms were damaged or destroyed within the attack.
Then, at 8 a.m. local time on Monday, one other drone attack struck an airbase at Shaykova—much closer to Ukraine’s border, and residential to the Tu-22M3s of the 52nd Heavy Bomber regiment. Yet one more Tu-22M3 was reported damaged, though confirming visual evidence hasn’t yet emerged. Again, civilian-style quadcopters fitted with explosives and uprated batteries carried out the attack. Russian sources claim that either no damage was inflicted, or that an out-of-use aircraft was damaged.
A spokesperson subsequently told The Drive on Monday that Ukraine’s GUR intelligence service took credit for organizing the attacks using “people recruited from Central Russia.”
Aviation historian Tom Cooper, chronicler of the Tu-22M’s combat use in Syria, wrote on his blog of reports that the initial attack killed 6-7 personnel (including at the very least one pilot), wounded eleven, and resulted within the destruction of a fuel truck and 4 refurbished Kh-22 missiles—a weapon noted for its highly toxic fuel.
Cooper writes that Ukraine’s long-range drone attacks on Moscow could have contributed to this consequence:
“In keeping with Russian reports, the air defenses of this base were weakened: all radars and SAMs were withdrawn to bolster the defense of Moscow, and thus limited to ‘few Kalashnikovs.’”
Russian sources indeed claim that defensive small arms fire downed one attacking drone at each base, and might also have by chance hit landed aircraft.
A satellite photo taken two days after the attacks shows that the bombers formerly based at Soltsy-2 at the moment are gone—though one among the spots shows the scorch marks left behind by the blazing bomber. A Russian sources claims that the bombers were moved to Olenya airbase in Arctic Murmansk, nearly 800 miles to the north.
The scorched area also appears geo-consistent with the photo of the blazing Tu-22.
In keeping with World Air Forces 2023, Russia began the yr with just 59 of the Soviet bombers, production of which had ceased 30 years earlier.
The war by and against Russia’s strategic bombers
The Soltsy raid was removed from the primary to focus on Russia’s strategic bomber force. On December 5, a converted Soviet Tu-141 goal drone launched by Ukraine heavily damaged a Tu-22M at Diaghilevo airbase 100 miles southeast of Moscow. Concurrently, drones also damaged one or two Tu-95 Bear bombers at Engels airbase 400 miles east of Ukraine.
Destroying aircraft on the bottom has at all times been an efficient tactic—during World War II, commandos of the British Special Air Service mounted on jeeps destroyed more Axis warplanes on the bottom in Africa than the Royal Air Force downed within the sky throughout the desert campaign.
Ukraine bears a specific grudge against Russian heavy bombers, as their missiles have caused tons of of mostly civilian deaths and billions of dollars in economic damage. And while Ukrainian air defenses can attempt to shoot down missiles launched by the bombers, the aircraft themselves, as a rule, release their lethal weapons far beyond the reach of Ukrainian’s fighters and ground-based missile batteries.
Russia’s Tu-22M3 fleet has been particularly engaged in launching outdated Kh-22 supersonic missiles, originally designed to home-in on and sink U.S. Navy aircraft carriers while traveling at thrice the speed of sound. As urban targets are much harder for the missile’s 60-year-old radar seeker to select than aircraft carriers, the large 6-ton weapons routinely plunge into completely civilian structures and “sink” shopping malls, bars, apartment complexes, and so forth.
Ukraine’s use of a quadcopter UAV—a category of drone known for its short range—indicates that the attacks almost actually originated from agents in Russia positioned a comparatively short distance from the airbase. Larger drones might have been launched from Ukrainian soil.
This means that no base in Russia is really protected from such attacks—something that also needs to give Western air forces reason to take into consideration improving counter-drone security at their very own ‘protected’ bases.
It seems that small business drones—despite their short range—might be frighteningly effective if snuck close enough to focus on, due to their relative stealth and skill to strike precisely. That may spell very bad news for powerful warplanes costing tens of millions of dollars.
Detecting such small, low cost drones in time is difficult as a consequence of their small radar and infrared signature and low-altitude flight profile, meaning that only short-range sensors and anti-air/counter-drone weapons are effective counters. And plenty of such systems are needed, as they will only protect a limited radius around themselves.
Still, counter-drone defense is just not unattainable. And Russia must have learned from early experience defending against small drones when its Pantsir-S and Tor-M2U systems battled drones launched at Russian aircraft within the Hmeimim airbase by anti-Assad rebels in Syria.
The issue is that Russia’s Pantsirs and Tors, in addition to olderZSU-23/4 Shilka and 2S6 Tunguska vehicles, are quite thinly spread on the frontline or defending Moscow. They’ll’t be easily spared to defend each military facility—particularly not ones as distant as Soltsy-2.
Besides such expensive lively defenses, Russia could have more easily undertaken passive measures like sheltering aircraft in hangars or anti-drone netting—somewhat than parking them within the open—to complicate targeting.
After all, repositioning the bombers farther from Ukraine’s border at places like Olenya may increase the challenges of future Ukrainian attacks without stopping missile strikes by the long-range Russian bombers. Nevertheless, the additional distance will increase the time and fuel required for every bomber sortie, worsening logistics and readiness. And Russia’s over-stretched air defenses will face recent dilemmas as to how thinly to spread themselves.