Shocking satellite images show row of Russian ‘nuclear-capable’ bombers destroyed after Ukrainian drone attack
New satellite images show the extent of the destruction against one fleet of Russian bombers during Ukraine’s “Operation Spider Web” attack on the Kremlin’s air bases over the weekend.
The images, shared by open source analysts, show nothing but dust and debris where more than a dozen of Russia’s nuclear-capable bombers once stood on the runway at the Belaya airfield, one of at least four military bases struck by 117 Ukrainian drones on Sunday.
John Ford, a research associate at the California-based James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, said the images supplied by Capella Space, a satellite company, confirm Ukraine’s achievement in destroying the fleet based in the Irkutsk region.
The SAR images showed the remnants of at least two Tu-22 Backfires — the same type of supersonic aircraft that have been used to bombard Ukraine.
At least four strategic heavy Tu-95 bombers were also identified among the aircraft destroyed at the Belaya airfield.
“It is clear that the attack on this airbase was very successful,” Brady Africk, an open source intelligence analyst, told Reuters after studying the images.
“The aircraft targeted in the attack were a mix of Tu-22 and Tu-95 bombers, both of which Russia has used to launch strikes against Ukraine.”
Africk noted that the Belaya airfield is littered with flat decoy aircraft, none of which appeared to fool the Ukrainian drones deployed at the military base.
Similar satellite images were released of the attack on the Ivanovo air base, located 100 miles northeast of Moscow.
In total, Operation Spider Web hit 41 warplanes in at least 4 different airbases, according to Ukraine’s intelligence agency SBU, with pro-Moscow military bloggers describing the attack as “Russia’s Pearl Harbor.”
Some 34% of Russia’s Tu-95 bomber fleet, equipped to carry nuclear payloads, were reportedly wiped out, the SBU added.
Andriy Kovalenko, an official on Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said that at least 13 of the targets were fully destroyed, with the damage estimated to have cost Russia $7 billion in losses.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said the daring attack will likely force Moscow to reconfigure its air defenses following the humiliating blow.
“The… operation will force Russian officials to consider redistributing Russia’s air defense systems to cover a much wider range of territory and possibly deploying mobile air defense groups that can more quickly react to possible similar Ukrainian drone strikes in the future,” the ISW said.
With Post wires
