Ukraine's Special Operators Just Executed Another Air Base Raid in Russia—And Knocked Out Four Sukhoi Fighter-Bombers
Two Su-34s were reportedly destroyed and two damaged in the drone raid on Marinovka air base
On June 1, the Ukrainian state security service—the SBU—smuggled long-haul trucks full of explosive first-person-view drones close to five Russian air bases, the farthest around 3,700 miles from Ukraine.
Around 100 of the tiny FPVs, each weighing just a few pounds, swarmed the bases. Relaying signals back to their operators via Russia’s own cellular phone network, the drones homed in on Russian air force strategic bombers and other warplanes parked on the bases’ tarmacs.
When the smoke cleared, satellite imagery confirmed no fewer than 13 planes had been destroyed. The losses included 11 irreplaceable Tupolev Tu-22M and Tu-95 strategic bombers: around 14% of Russia’s active bombers.
Three weeks later on Friday, the SBU and Ukraine’s special operations command, the SSO, struck again—and knocked out as many as four Russian air force Sukhoi Su-34 fighter-bombers at Marinovka air base in Volgorod Oblast, 180 miles from the front line in Ukraine.
“The SSO of the armed forces of Ukraine and the SBU worked on Russian fighters using long-range drones,” the special operations command reported. The command claimed two of the twin-engine, two-seat Su-34s were destroyed and two were heavily damaged.
It’s unclear what kinds of drones were involved in the attack. They may have been long-range attack models. In any event, the raid extends the SBU’s kill streak—and worsens what has already been a terrible month for the Russian air force.
“The attacks also caused a fire in the technical and operational part of the enemy airfield, which is a critically important infrastructure of the military facility,” the SSO added. “It is there that the enemy prepares aircraft for flights, carries out their current maintenance and repair work.”
The Russian air force went to war in Ukraine in February 2022 with around 125 Su-34s. It has now lost nearly 40 of them in action in and around Ukraine. Further production has added a few dozen airframes to the depleted fleet.
Glide-bombers
The Su-34s are Russia’s primary platforms for dropping KAB winged glide-bombs on Ukrainian positions. The 1,100- and 2,200-pound KABs range as far as 40 miles. They can be jammed, but the sheer number of KABs raining down on the Ukrainians—thousands per month—makes them among the most damaging munitions in the Russian arsenal.
Ukrainian forces are keen to reduce the pace of the KAB bombings by suppressing the main launch platforms, the Su-34s—much in the same way they’re reducing the pace of cruise missile attacks on Ukrainian cities by suppressing the Russian bomber fleet.
The best opportunity for Ukraine to strike at the Russian glide-bombers came almost exactly a year ago, when dozens of Su-34s belonging to the Russian air force’s 47th Guards Bomber Aviation Regiment parked out in the open at Voronezh Malshevo air base, in southern Russia 100 miles from the border with Ukraine.
“The large number of jets stationed at the airfield enables the simultaneous deployment of bombs, allowing multiple targets in Ukrainian territory to be engaged at once,” Ukrainian analysis group Frontelligence Insight explained at the time.
But the administration of U.S. Pres. Joe Biden withheld permission for the Ukrainian government to aim its best American-made missiles at Voronezh Malshevo. And so the Su-34s at Voronezh Malshevo bombed with near impunity.
When Ukrainian forces grew impatient and finally began intensive strikes on Voronezh Malshevo a couple of months later, they did so with Ukrainian-made drones. But it was already too late. Anticipating the coming raids, the Russian has scattered many of the Su-34s across a greater number of bases, some deeper inside Russia and thus less vulnerable.
Ukraine’s drones are constantly improving, so damaging raids on more distant bases such as Marinovka are now possible. But the target set is somewhat less juicy owing to the dispersal of the surviving Su-34s.
Still, it’s very, very bad news for the Russians to lose as many as four Su-34s in a single day.
Read more:
To Deflect Russia's 'Miracle' Glide-Bombs, a Ukrainian Team Invented a New Jammer: One That Blasts Radio Noise In a Powerful Stream
In early 2024, Russian engineers modified the Russian air force’s KAB glide-bombs with more channels for their satellite radios. This made them harder to defeat by electronic means, as a jammer would have to interfere with each Controlled Reception Pattern Antenna channel to send the bomb off course. (Watch a Russian munition miss its target in the video above.)