2 In the early morning of February 5, the Russian bomber base at Diagillevo, 100 miles southeast of Moscow , was as usual. Although mainly used by training units, pilots and ground crews are refueling the Tu-22M3 blackfire supersonic bomber on the flight route, with at least a huge Kh-22 anti-ship cruise missile loading under the wings.
Tu-22M3
Later that day, several aircraft will take off and launch supersonic weapons at Ukraine's electricity and gas heating infrastructure 280 miles away, but these weapons are not targeting the U.S. Navy warships they are designed to destroy.
is different from strategic bomber , which was used to drop gravity bombs into cities in World War , and North Korea and Vietnam, in 2022, Russia's bomber launched missile outside Ukrainian airspace, even exceeding the range of Ukrainian long-range S-300 air defense turret, and completely fight against Ukrainian soldiers outside its own air defense umbrella.
But at 6 a.m., a jet drone crashed onto a tanker. The resulting fire ripped the rear fuselage and wings of the Backfire bomber and killed two ground crew members and a major bomber pilot. The bomber RF-4110 will almost certainly be retired for the foreseeable future.
At about the same time, another drone Kamikaze Squad entered the flight route of the Engels-2 Air Force Base near Saratov , 400 miles from Ukraine. This is the base of the 22nd Heavy Bomber’s giant Tu-160 Blackjack jet bomber and ancient Tu-95MS Bear turboprop bomber, which frequently fire Kh -555/Kh-101 land attack cruise missiles at Ukraine.
This drone attack injured two people and damaged at least one, possibly two bombers with nuclear capabilities. Records from surveillance cameras show that a huge explosion triggered a car alarm four miles away. Subsequently, satellite photos showed the asphalt road burning and one of them was washed away by fire foam, but the severity of the damage was still unclear.
Tu-95MS
According to the Ukrainian Air Force, despite the air strikes, eight Tu-95s were launched later that day, launching 38 subsonic cruise missiles at targets in Ukraine, and another 3 Kh-22s were provided by the Tu-22M3 jet.
However, Ukraine's drone air strikes are not over yet. On December 5, a Kamikaze drone was shot down near Kursk and the next day, another drone hit a fuel depot at Harino Air Force Base, triggering a fire. Russian sources said the fourth drone was shot down while trying to attack the Belbek Air Force Base in , Crimea.
Russia's report describes offensive munitions as Soviet jet drones, explicitly referring to the turbojet Tupolev Tu-141 and Tu-143 reconnaissance drones used by Ukraine in early war attacks, but mostly without significant success.
Soviet reconnaissance drone changes occupation
Strictly speaking, there is still no visual confirmation Ukraine uses Tu-141 to attack, modify or other methods. Before the attack, Ukrainian officials claimed they were preparing a new long-range Kamikaze drone with a strike range of 620 miles and a warhead weighing 165 pounds. The new drone may actually be an improved version of the Tu-141, although it may also refer to a completely new platform.
Still, most analysts believe the attack was carried out in some form by Tu-141, so let's take a closer look at how drones from 40 years ago were transformed into cruise missile .
Tu-141 Strizh (Swallow) or VR-2 was launched in 1979 with the aim of using old-fashioned film cameras or alternative payloads such as infrared or radar imagers.The 14-meter long Swallow has pre-set navigation instructions before launching and launches from a truck-torn trailer using the discardable rocket booster .
Tu-141 Old antique
usually skimmed at low altitudes, and the Tu-141 can reach transonic speeds of 620 to 680 mph (i.e. slightly below the speed of sound), thanks to the KR-17 turbojet engine installed on its back. Once back to base, it releases the parachute at the tail and floats to the ground, which can then physically restore its recorded camera lens for processing.
A total of 152 Tu-141 were built in the Kharkov aviation plant in Ukraine. In 1982, 950 Tu-143 Reys ("Flight" or "Voyage") or VR-3 drones, which were slower, smaller but similar in appearance, joined, with a range reduced to only 125 miles for tactical reconnaissance missions. The eight-meter-long Tu-143 can carry similar payloads to the Tu-141, as well as an electromagnetic sensor and a possible data link to transfer the found results back to the base.
map-143 Ukraine eventually inherited most of the drones: one regiment of Tu-143 and Tu-141, and three independent Tu-141 squadrons. Tu-143 is also widely exported, many have retired in Central European countries, and some are still serving in Belarus , North Korea, Russia and Syria .
Ukraine's gradually shrinking drone forces will eventually be used mainly in air defense target exercises, but in 2014, it served the Russian invasion. Therefore, the Tu-141 and Tu-143 in the 383rd Remote Control Regiment were renovated and deployed to perform photographs - performing reconnaissance missions in areas occupied by Russian troops, which have shot down several Ukrainian military assets. Two Tu-143s were lost over Luhansk , one was lost due to failure and the other was lost over Luhansk due to enemy artillery fire.
When the Russian invasion began in 2022, it was obvious that Ukraine had tried to weaponize drones. On March 10, a wrong Tu-141 flew over Romanian and Hungarian airspace, and the NATO fighter was too late to intercept it and crashed into a university dormitory in Zagreb, Croatia with a lucky undetonated OFAB-100-120 220 pound bomb.
3 In late and April, several Tu-141 and Tu-143 were shot down into Russian airspace, three of which were near Kursk, one near Rostov and the other near Bryansk . Including other Tupolev drones shot down in Ukraine, Russia reported shooting down five Tu-141s and six Tu-143s.
It is not clear whether the Tu-141/143 attack was successful, especially Kiev will not report attacks on Russian territory due to its political sensitivity. Admittedly, several attacks using unknown means proved to be very destructive and could have been done by Tupolev drone. However, these drones that rely on inertial navigation system based on gyroscope seem to be inaccurate enough to be very effective. The obvious way to improve accuracy of
includes integrating satellite navigation using GPS or Russia's GLONASS constellations, which were still in their infancy when the Tupolev drone was put into use. Since the exact location of parked Russian bombers can be seen in commercial satellite images, Ukraine can indicate the drone crashing into their usual coordinates.
A more challenging approach is to remotely control the cruise missile to enter the target. This will require the transmission of the command/communication link of real-time video feed from the perspective of the drone. This is problematic because the target base is outside the range of the line-of-sight communication link in Ukraine. However, an official interviewed by the New York Times said that at one time, Ukrainian agents "get close to the base...help guide the drone toward the target." Perhaps, once the drone is close to the range, front-line agents can remotely control the drone.
In the end, neither attack directly hit. But the fact that subsonic drones break through the Russian air defense system should worry Moscow. UAV missiles are likely to cover up long-range regional air defense radars by flying low altitudes; although perhaps short-range defense simply cannot detect and shoot down attacks that were previously considered impossible.
Considering that Engels-2 is the base of nuclear bombers, this vulnerability is still shocking, and it is expected that these bombers will be ready to deal with attacks from sea-piercing cruise missiles. What also disturbs the Russian military is that a drone that can fly from Ukraine to Jagilevo could also hit Moscow's target.
Given the known losses and relatively limited construction count, it is not clear how many weaponized Tu-141 (or alternative systems) there are on hand in Ukraine. Ukraine may quietly continue to develop long-range Kagussues drones, Korshun-2 cruise missiles and Grom-2/Sapsan ballistic missile systems that began before the Russian invasion. So far, Kiev's allies have been reluctant to provide such long-range weapons, fearing that this will lead to a dangerous escalation of Putin .
For Ukrainian civilians bombed daily, the December 5 air strike was symbolically satisfying the "Dolit air strike moment" even if it was not enough in itself to severely weaken Russian bomber operations. In turn, the Russian military will be forced to invest resources and be mentally prepared to defend even distant air bases from threats it believes did not exist before.
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