Ukrainian drone reportedly destroys Russian supersonic bomber

A Russian supersonic bomber was destroyed in an obvious drone strike carried out by Ukraine — with dramatic images exhibiting the plane engulfed in an enormous fireball in the midst of an airfield deep inside Russia.

The pictures posted on social media – together with by Anton Gerashchenko, an aide to Ukraine’s Ministry of Inside Affairs — seem to point out a Tu-22M3 supersonic long-range bomber on hearth.

British military intelligence said Tuesday that the bomber was seemingly destroyed in a weekend drone assault concentrating on the Soltsy-2 Air base south of St Petersburg, which Moscow blamed on Ukraine.

Russia’s Protection Ministry mentioned Saturday {that a} navy airfield within the Novgorod area, the place bombers just like the Tu-22M3 are stationed, had been attacked by a Ukrainian drone and one aircraft had been broken.

In accordance with the ministry, the copter-style drone had been shot down by “small arms hearth” and no one had been injured. It supplied no further particulars.

“That is no less than the third profitable assault on LRA (lengthy vary aviation) airfields, once more elevating questions on Russia’s capability to guard strategic areas deep contained in the nation,” British navy intelligence mentioned in its newest bulletin.

If a copter-style drone had actually been used within the strike, UK analysts argued, it bolstered the idea that some drone assaults have been being launched from inside Russia, contemplating that such drones have been unlikely to have had the vary to succeed in the airfield from throughout the border greater than 400 miles away.

Ukraine, which not often takes public accountability for assaults inside Russia, has not commented on the bomber’s fiery destruction.

Kyiv has beforehand mentioned that Russia has used the Tu-22M3 to launch Kh-22 cruise missiles at targets throughout Ukraine – and it has vowed to do all the pieces it might to annihilate Russian navy property.

Western navy consultants consider Russia has round 60 of the plane, which prices round $40 million every.

Saturday’s drone assault on the Novgorod airbase deep inside Russia drew the ire of influential Russian navy bloggers, who lashed on the nation’s Protection Ministry for not storing the plane in hangars, or utilizing “even elementary protecting buildings and nets” to protect the bombers from quadcopters, in response to an update from the Institute for the Study of War assume tank.

With Put up wires