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It always seemed obvious to me that this vulnerability exists everywhere. For example there isn't anyone who will stop you from pre-positioning weapons adjacent

It always seemed obvious to me that this vulnerability exists everywhere. For example there isn't anyone who will stop you from pre-positioning weapons adjacent to American strategic assets. That's why I thought the media freakout about the supposedly Chinese balloon was so ridiculous.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> obvious to me that this vulnerability exists everywhere “Everywhere” meaning undefended airspace into which one masses a significant fraction of one type of strategic armament. This was the savvy exploitation by Kyiv, once again, of Russian operational incompetence. > there isn't anyone who will stop you from pre-positioning weapons adjacent to American strategic assets You want to try driving a truck up to a USAF base? (EDIT: Where strategic arms, e.g. B-2s, live.) This is a novel threat vector. It needs to be protected against with vigilance. That to requires active effort to counter doesn’t mean it’s OP. Just that defensive perimeters need to be expanded, units not needlessly amassed, air defences kept in check and those perimeters constantly (and completely) monitored.
- jeffbee 1y ago
  Are you joking? Have you seen ANY American Air Force bases? Tinker AFB is flanked north and south by interstate freeways and surrounded by civilian truck stops and materiel depots. The easiest way to stage a weapon there would be to literally order it on Amazon. The air mobility command in the Bay Area is similarly totally surrounded by urban civilization.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > Tinker AFB is flanked north and south by interstate freeways and surrounded by civilian truck stops and materiel depots Isn’t Tinker mostly logistics, intelligence and AWACS? Don’t get me wrong, that’s important. But you’re not taking out a significant fraction of any U.S. armament hitting Tinker with drones.
    - Jtsummers 1y ago
      It's one of the three USAF maintenance depots (consolidated, IIRC, back in the 90s). Aircraft that are maintained by USAF (vice dispatched to a contractor site for the same kind of work) primarily go to Robins, Tinker, or Hill to be torn apart and rebuilt. An attack on a place like Tinker won't necessarily hurt in the next 6 months, but will in the next 18 when you lack the critical facilities for depot maintenance. And that's ignoring all the other functions the 25k+ people working there serve.
      - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
        > An attack on a place like Tinker won't necessarily hurt in the next 6 months, but will in the next 18 when you lack the critical facilities for depot maintenance This drone attack worked because small explosives detonated close to an airframe can do catastrophic damage. That simply isn’t true for most equipment, civil or military. (The exception at Tinker being the AWACS.) Tinker being nuked would be a strategic disaster. Dozens of drones causing small-arms damage around the base would be embarrassing, but nothing on the order of America losing a third of anything in its possession. The analog would have to be us putting e.g. most of one class of unit at Tinker simultaneously for maintenance.
        Jtsummers 1y ago
        You're focused on AWACS probably because that's the operational unit at Tinker, but they aren't the only aircraft at Tinker. I count over 60 aircraft on the Google Maps image of Tinker, not all of them AWACS (there are less than 20 AWACS total so most of these planes aren't AWACS). And that's not counting what may be in hangars which could also be a target of this hypothetical attack. USAF has about 5500 aircraft, so this accounts for over 1% of the current USAF air fleet. It's not as critical an attack as what's happened in Russia, but it's still very damaging. It's an operational airfield so it has large fuel tanks which would be targeted and are hardly immune to small explosives themselves. Attacking those and the ensuing fires would be costly to repair and recover from. That alone, ignoring any attacks on aircraft, could lead to months of downtime for the airfield and various disruptions as you relocate your operational units to an airfield that still has fuel tanks (if the aircraft survived the attack).
  - ViewTrick1002 1y ago
    And imagine how many cheap drones you can have in a container if you don't need to smuggle the container across borders.
    - jeffbee 1y ago
      Exactly my point. America probably admits a container full of drones every hour or something.
    - mopsi 1y ago
      The containers weren't smuggled across the border. Ukrainian intelligence assembled the containers in a rented warehouse inside Russia, near the border with Kazahkstan. Drones were hidden into the roof section of wooden containers. Photos: https://bsky.app/profile/maks23.bsky.social/post/3lqkc4osmhk2i https://bsky.app/profile/maks23.bsky.social/post/3lqkc4osmhk... I think it would be reasonable to assume that almost everything except for explosives were commercial off-the-shelf parts and trivial to acquire.
- jacquesm 1y ago
  All airfields are serviced by highways, even the main military ones. These little drones still have a 15 to 20 km strike range because they're one-ways.
  - kavalg 1y ago
    True, but the main reason for success here, as far as I understand, is that drones were launched very close to the airfield.
anovikov 1y ago
Simple solution is to store them hangared. Not too expensive for a rich country like US. It will also improve deployment ambiguity and facilitate covert changes in readiness levels (it's hard to tell from outside whether a plane in hangar is fuelled and armed or not).
- libertine 1y ago
  I don't think these types of planes are stored in hangars, these are huge. Geography is kind of a way to protect them. The best way to protect them is maybe not invading and trying to commit genocide on a neighboring country. It's like developing a good relationship with Ukraine wasn't a possibility, it had to be through corruption and now war.
  - jerlam 1y ago
    Even if you put all the planes in hangers, there are always other softer targets to attack. Fuel depots, weapons storage, barracks, factories, rail lines, etc. Not to mention the list of non-military targets, if you wanted to go that way.
    - anovikov 1y ago
      Well, all of this needs physical protection. Just walls thick enough, anti-drone nets, and AA guns too. Drone attacks from now on will be a new tax to add to the cost of all infrastructure.
- ClumsyPilot 1y ago
  They are stored out in the open because of the START treaty between US and Russia, it requires that nuclear strategic bombers should be visible from satellite to monitor compliance with the treaty. This attack, potentially, might spell the end of that treaty.
  - greedo 1y ago
    B2 is definitely stored in climate controlled hangers to help protect their stealth coatings. START has long since been a dead treaty, replaced by New START. New START has two verification methods, none of which rely on overflight by satellites; instead, verification is performed by onsite inspections of nuclear facilities.
AnimalMuppet 1y ago
The media freakout about the Chinese buying land near US air force bases, though, seems dead on.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago

> obvious to me that this vulnerability exists everywhere “Everywhere” meaning undefended airspace into which one masses a significant fraction of one type of strategic armament. This was the savvy exploitation by Kyiv, once again, of Russian operational incompetence. > there isn't anyone who will stop you from pre-positioning weapons adjacent to American strategic assets You want to try driving a truck up to a USAF base? (EDIT: Where strategic arms, e.g. B-2s, live.) This is a novel threat vector. It needs to be protected against with vigilance. That to requires active effort to counter doesn’t mean it’s OP. Just that defensive perimeters need to be expanded, units not needlessly amassed, air defences kept in check and those perimeters constantly (and completely) monitored.

jeffbee 1y ago
Are you joking? Have you seen ANY American Air Force bases? Tinker AFB is flanked north and south by interstate freeways and surrounded by civilian truck stops and materiel depots. The easiest way to stage a weapon there would be to literally order it on Amazon. The air mobility command in the Bay Area is similarly totally surrounded by urban civilization.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > Tinker AFB is flanked north and south by interstate freeways and surrounded by civilian truck stops and materiel depots Isn’t Tinker mostly logistics, intelligence and AWACS? Don’t get me wrong, that’s important. But you’re not taking out a significant fraction of any U.S. armament hitting Tinker with drones.
  - Jtsummers 1y ago
    It's one of the three USAF maintenance depots (consolidated, IIRC, back in the 90s). Aircraft that are maintained by USAF (vice dispatched to a contractor site for the same kind of work) primarily go to Robins, Tinker, or Hill to be torn apart and rebuilt. An attack on a place like Tinker won't necessarily hurt in the next 6 months, but will in the next 18 when you lack the critical facilities for depot maintenance. And that's ignoring all the other functions the 25k+ people working there serve.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > An attack on a place like Tinker won't necessarily hurt in the next 6 months, but will in the next 18 when you lack the critical facilities for depot maintenance This drone attack worked because small explosives detonated close to an airframe can do catastrophic damage. That simply isn’t true for most equipment, civil or military. (The exception at Tinker being the AWACS.) Tinker being nuked would be a strategic disaster. Dozens of drones causing small-arms damage around the base would be embarrassing, but nothing on the order of America losing a third of anything in its possession. The analog would have to be us putting e.g. most of one class of unit at Tinker simultaneously for maintenance.
      - Jtsummers 1y ago
        You're focused on AWACS probably because that's the operational unit at Tinker, but they aren't the only aircraft at Tinker. I count over 60 aircraft on the Google Maps image of Tinker, not all of them AWACS (there are less than 20 AWACS total so most of these planes aren't AWACS). And that's not counting what may be in hangars which could also be a target of this hypothetical attack. USAF has about 5500 aircraft, so this accounts for over 1% of the current USAF air fleet. It's not as critical an attack as what's happened in Russia, but it's still very damaging. It's an operational airfield so it has large fuel tanks which would be targeted and are hardly immune to small explosives themselves. Attacking those and the ensuing fires would be costly to repair and recover from. That alone, ignoring any attacks on aircraft, could lead to months of downtime for the airfield and various disruptions as you relocate your operational units to an airfield that still has fuel tanks (if the aircraft survived the attack).
- ViewTrick1002 1y ago
  And imagine how many cheap drones you can have in a container if you don't need to smuggle the container across borders.
  - jeffbee 1y ago
    Exactly my point. America probably admits a container full of drones every hour or something.
  - mopsi 1y ago
    The containers weren't smuggled across the border. Ukrainian intelligence assembled the containers in a rented warehouse inside Russia, near the border with Kazahkstan. Drones were hidden into the roof section of wooden containers. Photos: https://bsky.app/profile/maks23.bsky.social/post/3lqkc4osmhk2i https://bsky.app/profile/maks23.bsky.social/post/3lqkc4osmhk... I think it would be reasonable to assume that almost everything except for explosives were commercial off-the-shelf parts and trivial to acquire.
jacquesm 1y ago
All airfields are serviced by highways, even the main military ones. These little drones still have a 15 to 20 km strike range because they're one-ways.
- kavalg 1y ago
  True, but the main reason for success here, as far as I understand, is that drones were launched very close to the airfield.

anovikov 1y ago

Simple solution is to store them hangared. Not too expensive for a rich country like US. It will also improve deployment ambiguity and facilitate covert changes in readiness levels (it's hard to tell from outside whether a plane in hangar is fuelled and armed or not).

libertine 1y ago
I don't think these types of planes are stored in hangars, these are huge. Geography is kind of a way to protect them. The best way to protect them is maybe not invading and trying to commit genocide on a neighboring country. It's like developing a good relationship with Ukraine wasn't a possibility, it had to be through corruption and now war.
- jerlam 1y ago
  Even if you put all the planes in hangers, there are always other softer targets to attack. Fuel depots, weapons storage, barracks, factories, rail lines, etc. Not to mention the list of non-military targets, if you wanted to go that way.
  - anovikov 1y ago
    Well, all of this needs physical protection. Just walls thick enough, anti-drone nets, and AA guns too. Drone attacks from now on will be a new tax to add to the cost of all infrastructure.
ClumsyPilot 1y ago
They are stored out in the open because of the START treaty between US and Russia, it requires that nuclear strategic bombers should be visible from satellite to monitor compliance with the treaty. This attack, potentially, might spell the end of that treaty.
- greedo 1y ago
  B2 is definitely stored in climate controlled hangers to help protect their stealth coatings. START has long since been a dead treaty, replaced by New START. New START has two verification methods, none of which rely on overflight by satellites; instead, verification is performed by onsite inspections of nuclear facilities.

AnimalMuppet 1y ago

The media freakout about the Chinese buying land near US air force bases, though, seems dead on.