Vladimir Putin has been left reeling after Ukraine’s successful Operation Spider’s Web wiped out a third of Russian airborne carriers of strategic cruise missiles and one-third of the air component of the country’s nuclear weaponry.
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) launched several co-ordinated drone strikes targetting long-range aviation assets across five air bases.
The FPV drones were smuggled into the country via trucks that were driven within close proximity of Belaya, Dyagilevo, Ivanovo Severny, Olenya and Ukrainka air bases, before launching the remote-controlled attack.
An estimated more than £5billion in damages was dealt to Moscow’s air fleet by 177 drones, according to the SBU.
Around 40 aircraft were damaged in the unprecedented attack, which was stretched out across five different time zones, hitting targets 2,700 miles from Ukraine.
But the damage goes beyond monetary value for Russia as it tries to rebuild its lost arsenal of A-50s, Tu-95s, Tu-22M3s and Tu-160s bombers.
Russia reportedly has not produced a single strategic bomber from scratch, instead relying on Soviet-era airframes stored for decades.
Air programmes such as the Tu-160M2, a ‘modernised’ strategic bomber, is using Soviet-manufactured fuselages, and has only produced two new aircraft since 2022, according to Defence Express.
The Tu-160s heavy bomber has a similar story, currently undergoing modernisation, yet only between 12-18 are at Putin’s disposal, with five under repair.
Elsewhere, Russia no longer manufactures Tu-95s and not all of the current crop are believed to be operational. From 2013, 27 of them were upgraded to the Tu-95MSM standard, with the first taking flight in 2020.
Considering this, restoring the 40-plus aircraft destroyed in the largest drone strike on Russian air bases is causing Putin both an expensive and manufacturing headache.
Building entirely new aircraft may be the only solution for many of the casualties, such as the PAK DA (Product 80) program to develop a next-generation, stealth strategic bomber, intended to replace the Tu-95 and Tu-160.
The initiative was launched in 2009, aiming to take flight by this year and enter service in 2027. But, twelve years after its start date, in 2021, only final design layouts were considered to have been approved.
There is no flying prototype in 2025 and production seems potentially decades away with doubts the lofty project will ever come to fruition.