Aug 22 (Reuters) - British military intelligence said on Tuesday that a weekend drone attack on an airfield deep inside Russia which Moscow blamed on Ukraine is highly likely to have destroyed a nuclear-capable TU-22M3 supersonic long-range bomber.

Kyiv, which on Monday claimed to have attacked another Russian military airfield, says Russia has used the TU-22M3 to bomb targets across Ukraine with conventional munitions. Western military experts believe Russia has around 60 of the aircraft.

  • Hyperreality@kbin.social
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    11 months ago

    It’s not just the planes that are the issue. It’s that apparently they launched the attack from within Russia and managed to attack what should be a highly secure airfield unimpeded.

    An astonishing failure in security.

  • itsgroundhogdayagain@lemmy.ml
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    11 months ago

    I don’t see how the same thing won’t happen to all of these F-16s that are eventually being donated to Ukraine. Planes are sitting ducks out there.

    • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      If what you were saying was true about future F-16 aircraft, why does Ukraine still have an air force of Mig-29 fighters, SU-27 multirole, Mig-25 close air support, Mig-24 bombers, and all of their helicopters still in operation?

      • Hopfgeist@feddit.de
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        11 months ago

        MigSu-24 bombers

        There’s no such thing as a MiG-24. (MiG has only ever used odd-numbered model designations, though I don’t know why. But it’s one of the reasons why it was a safe bet for Top Gun to use “MiG-28”, being sure not to refer to any real aircraft, past, present or (probably) future.

    • Hank@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      There haven’t been any noteworthy aircraft losses on Russian side confirmed by Ukraine for a while except a couple helicopter.
      So by your argumentation you should come to the conclusion that Ukraine will suffer very little plane losses at the current situation on the front.