Ukraine’s Drones Spell Danger For A Vast Swathe Of Russia As New Airbase Strike Reported

The Ukrainian strikes which we reported yesterday on Russian airbases 400 miles inside Russian territory have huge implications for this conflict. Now social media reports describe a fresh drone attack on Khalino military airfield in Kursk last night.

What do we know now about how much damage the strikes have done, how were they carried out, and why Can’t the Russians stop them?

According to the official UK Defence Intelligence update today, there were multiple explosions at Engels Airbase in Russia’s Saratov Oblast, and at Dyagilyaevo airfield near Ryazan, south-east of Moscow. Russian officials initially claimed a fuel tank had exploded, but later accepted that they had been hit by drones.

Engels Airbase is a prime target. It is the main operating base for Russia’s Long Range Aviation (LRA) forces within western Russia and is home to more than 30 heavy bombers. These have been used to launch cruise missiles attacks on Ukraine from outside its borders; some aircraft are also part of Russia’s nuclear deterrent force. The UK Defence Intelligence update says that two Tu-95 Bear bombers were damaged.

Satellite photographs of Engels from commercial company Maxar TechnologiesMAXR
before the attack shows rows of Tu-95 Bear and Tu-160 Blackjack bombers lined up in the open beside the runway. The ready availability of this type of high -resolution imagery, detailed enough to identify high-value targets and locate them with sufficient accuracy to put GPS-guided weapons on to them, makes this type of attack far simpler than it would have been a few years ago.

Satellite images from after the attack on Dyagilyaevo airfield show burn marks near a Tu-22M3 Blinder bomber. Photographs from an unknown source on the ground shared on social media appear to show a badly damaged Tu-22.

The Khalino attack seems to have set fuel storage ablaze, with the fire not under control after some hours. We wait further details.

All the evidence points to successful strikes by loitering munitions, aka kamikaze drones, craft loaded with explosives for a one-way attack mission and most likely guided by satellite navigation, the exact equivalents of the Russian Shahed-136s bombarding Ukraine’s power grid.

Russian sources have suggested Soviet-era Tu-141 “Swift” reconnaissance drones carried out the striles. The jet-powered Swift, produced in the 1980s, has been seen a few times in this conflict. One was short down on March 8^th, another crashed in Croatia on March 10^th, and Russian forces claimed two have shot down two similar Tu-143 drones in July. In some of these previous incidents. In some of these incidents (including the one that crashed in Croatia, damaging forty cars) the drones are claimed to have been turned into cruise missiles with the addition of explosive warheads.

“It could indeed be the Tu-141 drone that Ukraine used before ,” Samuel Bendett, an expert Russian drones and adviser to both the CNA and CNAS, told Forbes. “We know it can fly long distances since at least one crashed in Croatia. A few of them may still be in flying conditions in the Ukrainian military.”

This would be the most comforting option for the Russians. The Tu-141 flies at over 600 mph and is relatively difficult to intercept; the Ukrainians only have a few of them, so there cannot be many more attacks, and the technology is all Russian, so this is not a new Ukrainian weapon. But Bendett says there are other possibilities.

In November, the manager of Ukrainian defence suppliers Ukroboronprom recently described a new strike drone with a range several hundred miles carrying a 155-pound explosive warhead. This has been undergoing tests and was expected to be in service in the new year, but might have been brought forward, perhaps in response to the Russian drone offensive.

“Although the announcement still discussed tests, there is an urgency in Ukraine to bring the war to Russia as much as possible in response to Russia striking Ukraine’s civilian energy infrastructure,“ says Bendett.

Ukraine has previously carried out a handful of long-range drone strikes, including one on a Russian oil refinery in June and on Russian bases in Crimea in July. These attacks appeared to involve improvised drones assembled from commercial drone kits made in China which can be easily bought online.

But it might not have been a long-range drone at all.

“This could be a strike by a short-range drone that was launched inside Russia by a Ukrainian team,” says Bendett. “Either way, this attack was meant to send the message that even assets deep inside Russia are not safe from a Ukrainian counterstrike.”

This would have echoes of the drone attack by Houthi forces which set the Saudi oil facility at Abqaiq ablaze in 2019, which was reportedly carried out with a mix of long-range drones along with a number of small drones launched nearby as decoys.

If the attack was carried out by slow-moving commercial drones rather than advanced military hardware, why were the Russians unable to stop them?

The mocking question “What air defense doing?” became a meme in August after the drone attack on Russia’s Saki Air Base in Novofedorivka.It has been repeated many times since, and Bendett says there is no good explanation for why Russia’ surface-to-air missile complexes are preforming so badly.

“This drone – if it was a drone- flew hundreds of kilometers unimpeded,” says Bendett. “Perhaps there are gaps in Russian air defenses that have not earlier anticipated that such strikes would be possible. Perhaps there are issues in the air defense formations that could have identified the drone but thought it was a friendly.”

Friendly fire is a chronic problems for the Russians; in July, they conspicuously shot down one of their own ultramodern Su-34M jet fighters and there have been many other suspected incidents, with Russian drones in particular falling victim to over-enthusiastic defenders. There may have been more incidents after yesterday’s attack.

“Ukrainians and later Russian Telegram bloggers did identify Russian air defense and EW [electronic warfare] friendly fire against their own assets like smaller drones,” says Bendett.

The attacks must be deeply worrying for Russian commanders. At the very least, air base operations will need to be completely changed. Aircraft cannot be left out in the open at Engels Airbase, and may have to be withdrawn altogether to somewhere more secure. This will undoubtedly affect their ability support ground forces in Ukraine.

But air bases are not the only target. There are ammunition dumps, logistics centers, oil and gas storage facilities, and many others As German analyst Tendar noted on Twitter , a strike drone with a 1,000-km range would could hit everything from the Finnish border down to Dagestan. And while Ukraine is intercepting an increasing percentage of incoming Russian drones – possibly as many as 85% — there is no sign of Russian air defense getting any better.

This writer speculated back in April that Ukraine could carry out a Dolittle-style drone raid on Moscow itself. Such a move would clearly be very unpopular with the U.S.. which has declined to supply long-range weaponry to prevent this type of escalation. But Ukrainian planners will be looking very closely at where they can hit next for maximum impact.