Satellite tv for pc photographs present that Tu-95 Bear bombers at Engels-2 Air Base have their wings lined with automobile tires.

One thing attention-grabbing is rising from the evaluation of satellite tv for pc imagery of Engels-2 airbase, positioned in Saratov Oblast, some 400 km southeast of Moscow and roughly 700 km from the border with Ukraine: at the very least one Tu-95 Bear strategic bomber seems to have its wings and a small part of the higher fuselage lined with automobile tires.

This doesn’t appear to be only a single prevalence. On this satellite tv for pc imagery, it appears the russians are nonetheless within the means of becoming tires onto the bomber – a contemporary, budget-friendly model of ERA substitute for the russian air pressure? pic.twitter.com/WUyTFfWlw1

— Tatarigami_UA (@Tatarigami_UA) September 3, 2023

Whereas the explanation for protecting the wings and a part of the higher fuselage on this manner will not be utterly clear, the almost definitely concept is that the automobile tires are used to guard the precious bombers from assaults carried out with kamikaze drones. Somebody mentioned the rubber tires would be capable to take in the impression of the remotely piloted car stopping it from exploding upon contact (small/mild drones would bounce on the tires and explode at a sure distance from the meant goal). Others prompt the automobile tires would shield the gasoline tanks within the wings from shrapnels of a drone explosion.

No matter, the usage of automobile tires on the wings of the Bear bomber seems to be an improvised anti-drone kind of protection, launched within the wake of a current Ukrainian drone assault on Kresty Air Base in Pskov Oblast, Russia that destroyed two Il-76 Candid cargo jets and broken two others, to guard the native bombers. Nonetheless, its effectiveness is dependent upon a number of various factors: the tires have holes and the drones might nonetheless be capable to attain the higher floor of the wing. The drone may very well be guided to detonate beneath the floor of the wing and nonetheless trigger the entire lack of the plane.

Final however not least, tires are flammable though they want a excessive temperature to burn. Nevertheless, if you retailer loads of tires in the identical place and situations for combustion are current, they’ll grow to be a hazard. When tires catch fireplace, they burn with intense warmth and produce noxious smoke.

Though its effectiveness is questionable, the emergence of such a artistic answer to guard important property from air strikes performed by unmanned plane of all sorts as soon as once more proves drones have grow to be a number of the most (if not probably the most) necessary property within the warfare in Ukraine: they’re used to carry out reconnaissance and coordinate air strikes they usually also can perform long range attack missions. The smaller Kamizake drones, guided from very shut distance (as occurred within the attack that damaged an A-50U in Belarus) are very tough to counter additionally as a result of they’re tough to determine on radars and for that reason they pose a major risk to air protection techniques, particularly when utilized in swarms (massive numbers).

Engels-2

Engels-2 is without doubt one of the key Russian airbases and the house of the 121st & 184th Heavy Bomber Aviation Regiments, respectively working the Russian Aerospace Forces Tu-160M Blackjack and Tu-95M Bear strategic bombers. The airfield has been used to launch most of the Moscow’s air strikes with Kh-101 cruise missiles prior to now: at sure occasions as many as 8 Tu-95s and 4 Tu-160Ms had been parked side-by-side at Engel-2.

The bottom got here underneath assault early within the morning on Dec. 5, 2022, that brought on the injury of two Tu-95s. On December 26, there was a repeated assault on the Engels air base, which brought on the loss of life of three officers of the Russian Armed Forces.

David Cenciotti is a journalist primarily based in Rome, Italy. He’s the Founder and Editor of “The Aviationist”, one of many world’s most well-known and skim navy aviation blogs. Since 1996, he has written for main worldwide magazines, together with Air Forces Month-to-month, Fight Plane, and lots of others, protecting aviation, protection, warfare, trade, intelligence, crime and cyberwar. He has reported from the U.S., Europe, Australia and Syria, and flown a number of fight planes with totally different air forces. He’s a former 2nd Lt. of the Italian Air Drive, a personal pilot and a graduate in Laptop Engineering. He has written 5 books and contributed to many extra ones.