Russia Hides Tu-160s Near US Border After Ukraine Destroys a Third of Their Bombers
united24media.com
Russia has moved a Tu-160 strategic bomber to the remote Anadyr airbase near the US border, following drone strikes that damaged their fleet.

The impact of the airfield strike is immense and war-altering. Russia’s best remaining bombers, the Tu-160, having to be relocated 6,000km away from the Ukrainian border is in practical terms, as good as having destroyed them. Russia’ most effective strategy (other than corrosive misinformation) has been stand-off terror bombing for the last couple of years. Now that appears at best paused while they figure out some new security measures, and at worst - permanently blunted. It’s just staggering how stupid they are and how badly they overplayed their hand with this ridiculous war.

  • talEnglish
    35·
    1 day ago

    Anadyr, which lacks permanent road access, is reachable only by aircraft or limited seasonal maritime routes

    Hmm.

    I’m not sure that that’s such a great idea from Russia’s standpoint. Yes, Ukraine probably can’t just do a repeat of what it did before, which was drive trucks through Russia loaded with drones. But the flip side is that Anadyr Airbase is a mile from the Pacific shore:

    https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/75690390

    If Russia has trouble intercepting Ukrainian USVs in the Black Sea, I’m skeptical that they’d be able to intercept USVs dropped off an innocent-looking cargo ship or something, and if those can launch UAVs, now you’ve got all your valuable eggs in one basket in an area that has a lot less buffer to defend. Probably doesn’t even place Ukrainian special operators at risk the way the truck operation did. It’s not that far off shipping traffic from Alaska to Asia:

    I’d have put them somewhere remote and inland and put air defenses up there. US Minuteman silos are in the center of the landmass, away from oceans.

    • The_v@lemmy.world
      71·
      23 hours ago

      I don’t think they have much choice. Their air defense capabilities at this point are seriously degraded from before the war started. Ukraine as knocked out almost 1,200 of their anti-air capability.

      At this point they need to constantly move them to different locations. Never lingering at any one location longer than a week or so. Utilizing hanger space whenever possible to hide them.

      Ukraine has shown that they can effectively target almost anywhere in Russian now with enough time and motivation. Russia has been using these planes to terror bomb civilians.