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Deep Intel on Ukraine's Bold Drone Strike into Russia PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmAI166HGy0 Peter Burgess COMMENTARY Peter Burgess
Deep Intel on Ukraine's Bold Drone Strike into Russia Ward Carroll 650K subscribers Jun 11, 2025 Two-time Moochie award winner Prof. Justin Bronk returns to the channel to analyze the recent Ukrainian drone strike deep into Russia that took out a significant percentage of the Russian bomber fleet while it was parked on the ramp. He also discusses the claim that a Ukrainian Air Force F-16 shot down a Russian Air Force SU-35. Get PUNK'S FORCE, the fourth novel in the Punk Series that was just released, here: https://www.usni.org/press/books/punk... (use the code PUNK40 at checkout for 40% off!) or here: https://www.amazon.com/Punks-Force-No... Buy one or all three of the rest of the PUNK series, Ward's popular novels about life a Tomcat squadron, in KINDLE format here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09R1MX8SY And as an audiobook here: PUNK'S WAR: https://www.audible.com/pd/Punks-War-... PUNK'S WING: https://www.amazon.com/Punks-Wing-Pun... 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Transcript 0:00 all right rejoining the channel is twotime Mucci award-winning professor Justin Bronc of Russi the Royal United Services Institute in London Justin and I just saw each other in real life a few weeks ago He came through Annapolis and since that time you've been on the road describe the highlight your F-15 flight in Oregon I finally got a chance to uh to uh get a taste of the mighty legacy eagle uh with the Air National Guard in Oregon last week a couple of flights which was uh fantastic Um really interesting to see just how much expertise sits in the guard because you know for for a lot of people I mean I 0:40 guess myself included who who are not familiar with the the US system with the Air Force Reserve the Air National Guard 0:46 the active duty force the way it's all split out Um it sort of sounds like a slightly strange thing to have a 0:52 National Guard reserve type thing that flies these high-end aircraft Um and yet 0:58 it's essentially a mix This particular unit down in Clamoth Falls uh Kingsley Field is the the schoolhouse uh for the 1:04 F-15 They're closing out with the the Eagle towards the end of this year uh and are going to get the F-35 But you 1:10 know I've had a few people ask me you know why why does the National Guard need F-35 and it's it's interesting 1:15 because the majority of the people in that in that unit are extremely experienced instructors Um so there's a 1:23 few who are kind of long long long-term guard Um but most of them are former active duty who have uh essentially done 1:30 multiple tours uh for decades in some cases in the active force who've hit a 1:35 point where either their family or they themselves are like kind of done with the constant deployments abroad etc but 1:41 are still keen to fly fighters don't want to go into a desk job and still want to use that kind of massive amount of experience Uh and so the 1:48 international guard gives gives the US that way of having people um giving people an option to stay in one place 1:55 have that stable family life in many ways just have a kind of normal 9 to5 but flying jets Um and so yeah it's it's >br> 2:02 a kind of a slightly more chilled out um squadron vibe than than most places I've been Um but this mix of students going 2:09 through um B course essentially uh being taught by these incredibly experienced instructors uh and the Eagle itself Yeah 2:17 I mean it's it had been a life dream to uh to go fly it because uh yeah it's it's you know growing up as a kid in the 2:24 ' 90s in the back of Gulf War and Kosovo and Bosnia and you know if you'd asked 2:29 me as a kid like what you draw a fighter jet I'd have drawn an F-15 um just cuz 2:34 that was you know the 10 104 kills to zero the kind of legend at the time Um 2:40 so great to be able to get a chance to to see how they fly um before it kind of sunsets at uh at Kingsley and becomes 2:46 ever more difficult to to uh see in action So you were flying a slick Legacy 2:52 Eagle lightweight so it was pretty kick-ass in terms of the G available and 2:57 thrust to weight Oh yeah I mean even in just mil power um down low I mean you really get a kick in burner it's it's >br> 3:05 just a monster Uh so did some some really high and fast um a bit of uh TI seeing what they do best Um doing kind 3:11 of beyond visual range engagements up high and then finished up with a bunch with some BFM which uh yeah dog fighting 3:18 which as you say slick um relatively light towards the end of the sort in terms of fuel load and it's quite an 3:24 upright seating position as well so you really feel the G I've got g measles all over my arm and uh lower back uh which 3:32 I've never got before flying jets Uh just um you know the ability to especially slick and with those those 3:38 relatively low weights low down just to sit and hold 8 and a half 9g um yeah 3:44 it's pretty brutal in the back seat but absolutely kickass Um it's amazing how analog the the flight controls feel as 3:51 well because you've got it's all kind of hydromechanical There's not no flight control system no no digital flickers or 3:57 anything Uh and so you've got this this very sensitive but also mechanical and >br> 4:03 uh hydraulic So slight kind of dead zone There's a little bit of mushiness in the middle but it also has a bit of pressure 4:09 feel like on an F-16 stick So you've got this this combination I must I found it very very difficult to keep it really 4:16 stable in in just in the cruise Uh there's a bit of kind of you'd call it PIO pilot induced oscillation um sort of 4:23 slightly meandering around um just cuz the stick is that sensitive but beautiful in turn um that wing is just a 4:30 a piece of aeronautical art um in terms of engineering The other thing you mentioned G measles just so everybody 4:36 understands that's what happens under G the capillaries at the base of 4:43 particularly your forearms burst under G And I remember flying the F-16N I I got 4:50 that's the only airplane I got G measles in after pulling as you say 9 10 G's Woke up the next morning and I had all 4:56 these little red bumps on the bottom of my forearm So uh that's how you know you actually you know pul pulled some G's So >br> 5:03 good stuff Let's pivot now to talking about Ukraine And I'm probably the last 5:09 aviation YouTuber to tackle this audacious drone strike that happened a 5:16 few weeks ago taking out badgers and bears but I was waiting for you to get 5:21 off the road so we could chat in great length and great detail about that So 5:26 what are your thoughts on that particular mission i mean first and foremost it's it's fantastic to see I 5:34 mean really first thoughts you love to see it Um especially for the Ukrainians 5:39 themselves because um they've been under such uh horrific and consistent 5:45 bombardment for years and years now for three and a half years um by these same 5:50 airplanes by the the TU1 the TU95s uh the TU160s So those two um the bear 5:57 and the the um blackjack uh launching these salvos of KH101 or as NATO would >br> 6:03 say AS23 cruise missiles uh and particularly the TU22 M3s to the the um 6:09 backfires because they are while traditionally they're an anti-ship uh platform designed to carry big anti- 6:16 supersonic anti-hip missiles to go after US carrier groups um would have been your enemy particularly in the Tomcat uh 6:22 the the way that the Russians have used the Backfire fleet There's about 60 of them in service were about 60 of them in 6:29 service uh throughout the war in Ukraine is to lob uh these KH22 and the later 6:35 KH32 or X32 anti-hship missiles These huge supersonic quasi ballistic 6:41 anti-hship missiles which are very very hard to intercept but really not very accurate when used in a land attack role 6:47 uh with a 1,500 kg very big warhead into Ukrainian cities And so a lot of the 6:53 worst mass casualty events the uh attack in the first year on the the the um 6:59 shopping center uh was uh KH22 and a lot of the strikes where you've seen for >br> 7:04 example the entire middle bit or one side of a big sort of Soviet era um apartment block taken out completely 7:11 That that's often those those KH22s uh fired by the TU22s And so it's a 7:16 particularly kind of hated system by the Ukrainians So to see those things burning uh in large numbers uh on their 7:23 bases deep inside Russia uh yeah incredibly satisfying It's also extremely um politically evocative 7:32 Not just because these things um were considered largely safe although there have been a couple of Ukrainian successes in um causing damage to and in 7:39 a few cases destruction of uh TU T95s and 22s on their bases closer to Ukraine 7:45 with long-range drone strikes uh previously the the sort of spectacular 7:50 scale of these attacks and the fact that they were so far in into Russia itself has a political significance that is 7:56 particularly salient given the context of ongoing negotiations between Ukraine >br> 8:01 and Russia the US and Russia and Ukraine and the evolution there So really um 8:07 making a point that Ukraine has plenty of options that it continues to work on 8:12 that are beyond what a lot of people thought possible Um and of course this is also uh a leg of Russia's nuclear 8:19 triad So the the TU95s and TU160s uh not only carry the KH101 air launch cruise 8:25 missile which is conventional but also the KH102 which is nuclear air launch cruise missile So this is an example 8:32 where Ukraine is launching very very successful attacks that are spectacular 8:37 explicitly without assistance uh almost assuredly uh without assistance from 8:43 foreign partners because as has been underlined many times throughout the war 8:48 um the US but also even you know the UK for example is one of the most forward-leaning partners tends to have 8:53 pretty strong levels of restraint around assisting Ukrainian targeting with anything that goes near the Russian 8:59 nuclear enterprise because of the the deterrence and and escalation implications of targeting the Russian 9:05 nuclear force So the Ukrainians have found a way to do that in a way that they can do pretty much just 9:11 indigenously I I would bet a lot that this was pretty much indigenous whereas 9:16 you know there may be partner assistance for for example long-range cruise missile strikes we know um as well as 9:21 perhaps elements of the long-range drone strikes this was special services infiltration Um you know it doesn't like 9:28 it wouldn't have needed to rely on on partner provided information or assistance in any way um and all the 9:34 more impressive for that It also should be a wakeup call for a lot of Western air forces because as great as it is to 9:42 see and as morally satisfying as it is to see Russian bombers burning on their airfields a lot of our air bases in the 9:48 west would be just as and are just as vulnerable to a similar sort of attack 9:54 Um albeit it's not as easy as is often made out to coordinate something like 9:59 this by people who say that you know combat aircraft have been made obsolete by the rise of small UAVs because >br> 10:05 they'll all be destroyed on the base The Ukrainians themselves have pointed out that this operation took a year and a half of extremely intensive planning Um 10:13 you know high-risisk appetite presidential sign off and you know it's very unlikely to be repeated directly 10:18 now that it's happened Um because the Russians will be searching everything that goes near Um which itself creates 10:24 more um disruption Uh but it's an argument for for example hardened 10:30 aircraft shelters for all your fighters because small UAVs like this are not going to be able to get through a 10:35 hardened aircraft shelter that has the doors closed Um and so while it's difficult to protect every air base 10:41 everywhere from theoretical infiltration with small UAVs carrying explosives there are answers to this and you see 10:47 this already with the Russians building hardened aircraft shelters at bases close to Ukraine or closer to Ukraine Um 10:53 especially for fighters it's a bit more difficult for huge bombers You hinted at just how long the planning took to to >br> 11:01 carry this audacious strike out giant crates smuggled in that uh my 11:07 understanding is at a given time they they came open and the drones launched I 11:12 don't know if they had predetermined targets or they were steered by some drone drivers that were remote Uh the 11:19 other thing that was interesting from that amazing I guess you call it the drone fleer footage um you see the fail 11:25 safe and the the you know the horizon line there the attitude line and tires 11:32 on top of the wings of particularly the the bear bombers I guess that was if you 11:38 don't have a hanger you throw tires on top of the wings It looks pretty uh 11:43 pretty low rent to see that And obviously it did not work In fact if you blow a drone up sitting next to a tire 11:50 the tire just lights off you know and and and keeps the fire going So I don't know quite what they were thinking there 11:56 but as you say this did significant damage I don't know exactly how many >br> 12:02 aircraft were were totaled were were blown up But the number I saw is this is 12:09 a third of their nuclear triad that was significantly damaged So not only is it 12:14 a tactical win it's a strategic win But now the Russians have countered 12:21 So let's talk about particularly the strike that happened last night that I think was a record in number of drones 12:29 used against the Ukrainians So I mean just to pick up on one or two things there uh and we'll go into the strike I 12:35 mean the firstly the the the Ukrainian claims initially were 41 aircraft um 12:41 damaged or destroyed Um it's difficult to verify damage So where for example uh 12:48 one of the drones or more may have gone off but not caused a fire let's say they hit an aircraft that had been on the 12:54 ground for a while and didn't wasn't fueled for example then they might just have caused uh you know a hole and a 12:59 bunch of frag uh around the aircraft That wouldn't necessarily show in satellite footage and so would be >br> 13:06 difficult to detect uh in terms of actual numbers destroyed 13:11 certainly I think we're at significantly less than the 30 35% of the nuclear fleet that's being banded around um in 13:19 terms of what we know for certain has been completely destroyed functionally completely destroyed that is burned down 13:26 um so that there's you know a few kind of bits of tips of wings and tail left um that is seven TU95 MS's from an 13:35 active fleet of about 50 um so That's significant About 15% uh according to my 13:40 bad math Although I shouldn't do math in public because I'm as I say bad at it Um 13:46 the and about five so five TU95 is Tu22 M3s from an active fleet of about 60 Um 13:54 now there is also footage that the Ukrainians released a few days later that shows about 12 Tu22 M3s Uh so >br> 14:04 different ones being uh with with UAVs in terminal phase So the little FPVs 14:10 being filmed going into them But of course that doesn't tell us whether the UAVs for example fused correctly whether 14:17 they exploded correctly um or whether they for example you know at the last 14:22 minute kind of tumbled off the edge of a wing clipped a tire or the edge of a leading edge with with some of one of their prop one of the propeller blades 14:29 fell to the ground and then exploded which might well not do anything because remember these are very small charges Um 14:36 or whether as I say the some of the aircraft were not fueled and therefore you just put a hole in them Um and they 14:42 then the Russians then move them and potentially repair them or maybe not So it's probable based on 12ish terminal uh 14:51 bits of footage that at least one or two more may well have been badly damaged 14:57 that but then didn't burn So you know looking at somewhere in the region of six seven Tu22s perhaps uh I think is >br> 15:05 probably a reasonable assessment And there was also an Antonov 12 uh transport plane and two A50s that were 15:11 hit Awax but they were um not uh in service They've been long-term derelict 15:17 Um so unfortunately that wasn't as successful as initially suggested but you're I think you're looking at between 15:23 10 and 15% of the TU95 15:28 bear So that is part of their nuclear fleet um and Tu22 15:33 which is kind of an anti-ship which can carry nuclear warheads but that would be for an anti-arrier group thing not as 15:40 part of the strategic nuclear deterrent and none of the TU160s as far as we know of which the Russians have about 20 in 15:47 service So yeah probably around 10% of their nuclear delivery um fleet is a 15:53 reasonable assessment Uh and about 10% of their um uh backfire fleet as well 15:59 It's still incredibly successful These are essentially irreplaceable because >br> 16:04 while there are plenty in storage you know they they produced a lot more than they operate currently you would need to 16:09 take them out of long-term storage in many cases that they've been outdoors throughout the seasons for a long period They'll probably be in terrible 16:15 condition You would have to then find a load of not just repair them and bring them up to flightw worthy status which 16:20 in itself would be a big job but you would then have to modernize them So for example if you'd relied on Western 16:27 components Western imported components for the let's say TU95 MS standard which is the standard they fly at the moment 16:34 or the TU22 M3 standard or the M3M the latest variant that they're upgrading them to you might well not even have 16:40 access to all the components that you need at least not immediately So you're talking you know tens and tens of 16:46 millions and years to replace even one or two of these um lost assets So it's a 16:52 big deal In terms of the tires I believe those were intended to break up the visual outline of the aircraft um on the >br> 17:00 ground because initially the threat was seen as coming from and there was there 17:05 were a few successes of Ukrainian using long range one-way attack UAVs So either 17:10 modified light aircraft with a with a payload uh or more recently dedicated developed sort of shahed style oneway 17:18 attack UAVs and they were in many cases using automatic image recognition Um so 17:24 the Russians have been doing things like painting the outline of bombers on the ground Not terribly effective Um and 17:31 putting tires all over them to break up the visual signature so that if you only had a not very powerful sort of machine 17:37 learning algorithm that been trained on images of the of the aircraft it might not recognize it properly And in terms 17:44 of how the attack was controlled the info so far from Russian Ukrainian and 17:50 just observing the footage uh sources would suggest that they were automatically flown at a given signal 17:57 from or at a given time from these concealed containers on top of trucks that had been shipped by supposedly >br> 18:03 unwitting holage companies to nearby the air bases in question started coming out and then they automatically flew 18:09 themselves to the predetermined points around the air And we're looking clearly 18:14 sort of hovering near or above aircraft and then each one was being taken as I understand it having a control taken by 18:21 a human operator for the terminal phase using the uh cell phone network So four 18:27 and 5G cell phone network from Ukraine Um so very clever Um and there may well 18:34 have been for example a fallback capability that if you couldn't connect they would try and um home in using 18:40 imaging logic or image recognition logic Um so yeah kind of hybrid thing It it 18:47 bears restating um because you know we've discussed in the past how to harden aircraft and air forces against 18:53 these sort of attacks that while defending air bases with counter UAS >br> 19:00 uncreed aerial system capabilities is important it it's it can't be your 19:05 primary defense as a western air force against these sort of attacks Your primary defense has to be for for what 19:11 the air force can do itself hardening i.e put shelters around aircraft or at the very least nets so that it's 19:18 physically difficult for drones if they do arrive in numbers to get aircraft that are not immediately being used Uh 19:25 and secondly though um because remember force protection organizations for example the the Royal Air Force the RAF 19:31 regiment for the RAF um don't have jurisdiction outside the base perimeter 19:37 in in the homeland they they might on operations they'll patrol outside the perimeter on operations but you know 19:43 let's say at an RAF base in in the UK or at a US Air Force base in in the US 19:48 military force protection patrols the perimeter so if you know infiltrating 19:54 secret service or special services personnel let's say Russian GU uh military intelligence personnel are >br> 20:01 operating small FPVs from a truck 5 miles away force protection doesn't have the ability to go after them even if 20:07 they know where they because it's outside their jurisdiction So firstly what you need is very good coordination 20:13 with the local police forces so that you can say there's somebody nearby You know 20:19 our counter UAV surveillance kit tells us that there's somebody using a control 20:24 system from nearby Please go and find them in a truck in roughly this location 20:30 It's really urgent Um and have that be able to be processed by law enforcement 20:35 not as this is a nuisance Somebody's flying a drone who should somewhere they shouldn't which they get all the time 20:41 but the military is saying this is a national security critical thing You need to go do this please And 20:46 secondarily they need to track uh special service cells So ultimately the 20:52 first line of defense uh needs to be the special services So for example MI5 or 20:58 MI6 in the UK Um because >br> 21:04 while it's cat you know there are there are limits to what you can do to minimize damage If there's a truck with 21:11 a thousand small FPVs or two trucks that have 1,000 small FPVs with C4 strapped to them that is released within a couple 21:18 of miles of your base it's not that easy to pack a truck full of,000 FPVs 21:23 pre-programmed with C4 attached Like that is a significant logistical undertaking You can't just go and buy C4 21:32 and especially if you want those UAVs to be able to operate independently of the 21:37 commercial is it 2.4 GHz and 5.7 GHz I think it is um the commercial UAV 21:44 control frequencies which are easy to jam with you know easily available counter UAS capabilities because they're 21:50 the the hobby frequencies and so you know what they are Yes you can get components that allow you to control 21:56 things without using those frequencies but they're not commercial off the shelf So your first line of defense has to be >br> 22:01 your intelligence services tracking who is trying to buy these sort of things on mass andor smuggling them into the 22:07 country It's a bit like if you know if you're talking about how to defend against suicide bombers your primary 22:13 defense against suicide bombers in the homeland is not people with assault rifles on checkpoints at the last minute 22:19 it is trying to track people building bomb vests and or smuggling them into the country Same idea This should 22:26 absolutely be a wakeup call to Western air forces because we are absolutely vulnerable most of us to these same type 22:32 of attacks from Russians and Chinese um and potentially Iranian or whoever else 22:37 intelligence services But it's a relatively nuanced set of policy 22:43 implications in terms of it's not just you need to go buy a load of anti- drone guns although that's not a terrible 22:49 thing to do um as a first step Uh you know hell even just giving people the 22:54 rules of engagement clearance to use tungsten buckshot um from 12 BS uh if 22:59 stuff is spotted over your hard hard stands is probably not a terrible idea and doesn't cost a whole lot So where >br> 23:05 does all of that put Ukraine and Russia not to mention NATO EU United States 23:12 with any negotiations to end the hostilities yeah I mean that the Russian 23:18 strategy as a whole is very much to try and grind this war out this year because 23:26 they feel that they've got the initiative and they've got the force advantage to essentially um break the 23:34 Ukrainians this year Uh and part of that is massively increasing the weight of 23:40 their um strike long-range strike salvos uh into not just Ukrainian 23:46 infrastructure bases but also Ukrainian cities and for bombarding cities particularly using uh the fact that 23:54 their output of Shaheds uh so Shahed 126 or Garandu type oneway attack UAVs is in >br> 24:01 the multiple thousands per month Now they're above 2,000 a month in terms of output That's Iranian production for 24:08 Russian use and Russian production domestically I think the latest Ukrainian claims is they're as high as 5,000 over the past month I haven't seen 24:15 anything to verify that but they're certainly above two So this is you know both to ensure that there is symbolic or 24:23 andor political pressure on Ukrainian leadership and perception that Ukraine is on the back foot uh in order to try 24:32 and encourage both Ukraine itself and also Ukraine's backers uh in terms of international partners to um try and 24:39 convince them to offer more concessions But given that Russia isn't offering any concessions at all um and has take 24:45 continued to not only take a very very hard line on what its own demands are but those demands have actually increased over the past 6 months They're 24:53 more aiming to break Ukraine rather than I think to achieve a particular negotiated settlement the Russians at 24:59 this point The reason though that they want to grind it out this year is that >br> 25:04 they recognize that there are really significant problems in the Russian economy that are starting to become 25:10 difficult to um manage So inflation remains extremely high because the 25:17 economy is essentially being propped up almost exclusively by defense spending having lost their ability to trade with 25:23 most of the world uh and als uh there you know a lot of them industry has been hit very hard by sanctions both in terms 25:29 of their ability to sell abroad and also their ability to buy in components um as you've seen from some of the chaos and 25:36 for example the US tech sector from uh the onoff tariffs um in in the US the 25:42 Russian economy has been under this this sort of pressure from tariffs in both directions for three and a half years 25:47 now uh and in some ways since 2014 so there are really serious problems and and a lot of what's backing up you sort 25:53 of propping up the economy is this enormous defense spending Uh it's now upwards of 40% of government expenditure 25:59 is on the special military operation So defense production and operations which >br> 26:05 is keeping the Russian economy afloat but is is a very very um temporary solution It's also one that they can't turn off So even if you were to get some sort of ceasefire in Ukraine they can't stop that military spending because if they do the economy will just keel over And so inflation is very high which means that their interest rates are extremely high in order to try and control that which as anybody with a mortgage or or a business loan knows uh is incredibly difficult to manage um for anyone with a mortgage or a business And then you've got the fact that Russia already had a significant um demographic problem of not enough essentially young healthy working age people uh and has suffered around a million casualties at this point in terms of killed wounded missing captured Some of those casualties are repeat casualties i.e people who get wounded multiple times or wounded and then later killed after they've recovered and gone back in So they would count as multiples and KIA is probably around 300 to 350,000 but it's >br> 27:06 still enormous And so uh you know there are big demographic issues that they've stored up Uh and finally they're almost completely out of their foreign currency reserves that they can continue to access to prop up the ruble and keep a limit on that extreme inflation So yeah if if if the war goes on into 2026 the Russians are going to have really serious problems sustaining this level of effort but they're betting on the fact that uh Ukraine's support from the US has pretty much dried out and it's now limited to provision of potentially some intelligence uh here and there but also um particularly most in most cases the US is still allowing Ukrainian partners andor Ukraine to buy US equipment which is crucial If Ukraine can make it through to 2026 um on that basis then Russia has real problems But the Russians clearly think they can break the Ukrainian will to fight and break the lines in the coming months They've just announced the start >br> 28:03 of the summer offensive Uh so you've seen huge increase not just in strikes So these supposedly 700 Shahed Guran UAVs in one night plus cruise missiles but also uh you've seen intensification of Russian ground assaults across the length of the front line over the past 24 hours But thanks to the operation spiderweb the destruction of about 10% of the uh 10 to 15% of the TU95 and TU22 fleet there will be more of a constraint over time on Russia's ability to generate consistently these big salvos um launching them all as a big wave alongside shahads and and scander type ballistic missiles and kals to try and overwhelm air defenses uh while at the same time maintaining the nuclear deter parents and signaling patrols that they still that they still do with their bomber force in the Atlantic in the Arctic in the the Indoacific um down towards Japan The long-range aviation >br> 29:00 force was pretty heavily tasked in terms of they're pretty close to capacity over um the last three and a half years doing both the regular launches against Ukraine and those deterrence patrols and the loss of about 10% of two of their main fleets um or upwards of 10% is going to have a significant effect on the sustainability of that effort long term So they'll increasingly have to pick and choose whether they sustain their other geopolitical posturing and and nuclear deterrence patrolling or the strike weight that they've been maintaining against Ukraine with cruise missiles All right Justin The other issue around the war in Ukraine that just came out some evidence that a Ukrainian Air Force F-16 shot down a Russian SU35 So the loss of the SU35 is confirmed in the sense that we've you know there's footage out there It's it's geoloccated Uh there is a SU35 burning which is again great to see And uh the the location is not contested It's relatively uh near the border around >br> 30:00 Corsk although how near the border is something I haven't seen a precise measurement of yet In terms of the um attribution of the kill to F-16 I haven't seen anything concrete to that effect From my perspective at the moment it's possible What I would say is in order for that to be likely the Sue35 in question would have had to have come significantly closer to the border at the line of contact than usual because as we've discussed on the channel before Ukrainian F-16s operating near the front line will be operating at very very low altitude to stay below the groundbased air defense um threat and generally speaking will be lofting glide bombs and could loft to launch an AM RAM for a long-range air-to-air shot from low altitude and then the higher they go the greater the risk as they're going into that groundbased air defense envelope but also they're facing a look down shoot down threat from fighters uh >br> 31:05 sometimes with Awax support um fighters which have a significantly more capable radar and longer range uh air-to-air missiles So at the usual distances that Russian 235s cap to combat air patrol at I don't see a scenario in which an F-16 could loft a AMA of the variants that Ukraine uh is thought to operate Um so C model at best um probably relatively early C model the sort of distances that would reach from a loft starting at low altitude would reach a Russian 235 on cap at the sort of ranges that they typically cap at um at high altitudes and reasonably high speeds What's more the A235 would would almost certainly be aware that it had been engaged and so would probably go cold so turn away and go into full burner to increase the distance and ideally the altitude and make it harder to and gain speed to gain >br> 32:00 energy make it harder to complete the intercept for the missile So if it was shot down by an F-16 brilliant You love to see it But it would suggest that that 235 was doing something relatively unusual in terms of being really pretty close to the front lines So maybe for example they had encountered a this is completely hypothetical but maybe they encountered a pair of they saw a pair of F F-16s coming in to launch glide bombs near the front lines and having you know with a a strong desire to be the first Russian pilot to shoot down an F-16 um pursued them as they uh went away from the front lines uh significantly further towards the lines than they normally would and one of them managed to you know turn around at the right time in and stay in ground clutter and the Russian pilot made a mistake and the Ukrainian pilots did a fantastic tactical maneuver let's say Um so that is one scenario where you might be able >br> 33:00 to see why uh a SU35 would be much closer to the front lines than usual It is also possible of course um and you've seen uh suggestions that um the uh Ukrainians using Swedish donated Awax There's no reason why for example that an Awax being in play necessitates the kill being an F-16 It could also have been for example used to queue a Patriot shot So again I don't know Um but I would be cautious until we get um somewhat some more um concrete evidence uh in definitely attributing this to an F-16 kill Um but if it has happened then fantastic and what a milestone Um and if it was something else then it's always still good to see uh another Russian flanker splashed As always brilliant analysis from two-time Mucci award-winning Professor Justin Bronc at the Royal United Services Institute in London Justin thank you for the time and I look forward to having you on again very soon Always a pleasure All right >br> 34:01 that'll do it for this episode If you're not already a subscriber become one so you don't miss anything And in the meantime I look forward to talking to you again very soon [Music] [Applause] [Music]

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