Our planes are wheels down. Lots and lots of wheels down.
Put ‘ em on the bottom. Makes sudden landings much safer.
watch out guys, I can already hear the mod-man rolling in
Has there been any actual confirmation that this works, for any purpose other than slowing down scramble-launches? This feels to me like a “green marker on the CD” thing, where everyone does it because everyone knows it works, even though it doesn’t.
I read that some of the cruise missiles / drones have photo-recognition of targets and they probably try to make a plane look less of a plane …
my guess: “don´t hold your breath” - but just like the green sharpie on CDs … it’s basically free and if it doesn’t work there did not go a lot of effort into this.
also: you now only need a small drone with - say - 1 liter of gas to ignite on this plane, as tires are notoriously hard to put out as a fire (they are the pyrotechnical equivalent of alien-blood ;-)).
another tangent: the whole tire-thing seems to scream “those are planes that don’t actually fly anymore”, as putting that amount of tires on a plane that makes 2-3 sorties a day is inplausible…
Or if you spin it the other way round: if you see a bomber getting un-covered, that might be an indication that it might take off in the next couple of hours
one of the better articles with good maps here:
Well, this seems to be a new thing they just started, so there may no be a lot of good data on how well it works. I suspect it’s mostly just a cheap way to try to spoof the image sensors, that the guys in the field can whip up with little input from the higher-ups off site.
Of course, this just starts a new arms race, between the people trying to spoof the sensors, and the guys programming the sensors to recognize targets. I wonder at what point they’ll start painting their planes with dazzle patterns.
No. They would likely put a tarp down under them to keep from damaging the surface. All they need to do is attach a rope to the tarp and stake it down. As they taxi forward the tires are pulled off without any human effort.
Do you see any evidence of a tarp in the pictures above? They’ve got a tire looped over the wingtip pods ferchrissakes. (EW pod? Mounting rail for wingtip tanks? Dunno, not well-versed in Su-34 configurations.)
I think Magiver was suggesting an option consistent with his namesake.
I think (but don’t know for certain) that getting a war-plane into the skies does have some protocols and sequences of processes and checklists going on … (remove before flight -tabs) … so a taxi out under a tarp loaded with 50+ tires seems a bit removed from reality
No, the resolution isn’t high enough. But it’s just common sense not to damage an aircraft. Not that the war makes any sense to begin with.
If this is just an optics issue then they could lay pictures of tires or anything that breaks up the image of a plane.
Sure it is. The tires are very clearly sitting directly on the aircraft.
As I understand it, it’s also a really bad idea to have foreign objects on a runway used by jets, especially jets with powerful engines. Some of those fighter jets can suck up asphalt from the pavement-- Eating a tire seems like it’d be much less difficult to accomplish than that.
I don’t know if all Russian planes are designed this way but the Mig-29 is specifically designed to deal with FOD. The intakes have doors in them that force the engines to draw air from slots above. Here’s a video showing the doors opening on takeoff.
They have a cover over the front of the aircraft so they actively protect their planes. I can’t see anything under the tires on the elevator but that’s not to say there isn’t. Either this was a desperate nighttime attempt to avoid imminent attacks or they don’t give a crap about maintenance.
A compilation of Putin lies and hypocrisy:
If they have tarps available, why would they be using tires to break up a plane’s visual profile and foil optical recognition algorithms? Three or four tarps laid over the plane at odd angles should do the job, and would be much easier to remove in a hurry.
I agree. I think there is more to the tire story than is being reported.
Maybe western tarp sanctions are finally working as planned.
You’re right. But not in a conspiratorial sense, just in a failure of imagination sense.
I think the visual signature disruption is the important part. But there’s more. The aircraft are generally painted light gray. Tires are black. Tires also have very different IR signatures and that effect will linger for hours after sunset in the summer, and a couple hours in the winter. To the degree the seeker uses any IR bands, and many do, the tires will be much more effective camouflage than a tarp would be.
Lastly, airplanes are rather thin-skinned. Whether the incoming warhead is simple HE or frag or even an anti-aircraft continuous rod warhead the result is that a detonation nearby does a lot of damage. Even a more distant detonation throws fragments a long way. It only takes a couple random hits to put an airplane out of commission for a couple days, and as we’ve seen, a solid hit is often a total kill on that airplane for good. Which is why airplanes at front line bases tend to park in at least revetments and ideally concrete bunker/hangars. Both to reduce the likely damage from one airplane being hit, and to contain any warhead effects to the one targeted aircraft, not let them spread to another aircraft parked adjacent. Lastly revets reduce fratricide if a targeted aircraft does burn or explode.
The drones attacking these airplanes do not have large warheads. Which means the high velocity frag doesn’t go very far or in much volume. IMO the tires are a form of anti-frag armor. The equivalent of the tactical vests infantry wears. And, like an infantry anti-frag vest, it doesn’t make the wearer invincible or immortal. But it turns a lot of killing wounds into minor wounds, and far more minor wounds into non-events. Which is a damn good thing and is the reason every decently equipped army (or gaggle of irregulars) on Earth wears them.
Tires are individually portable enough for ground crew to emplace and remove as needed. Each tire (especially mounted on a wheel) can absorb a lot of frag. Yes, there’s some incremental risk of setting the tire on fire versus the airplane under it, but most frag is small and most tires are large. It’s not temperature that starts fires in cold solid objects; it’s heat content. Keep all the fuel inside the airplane and your odds go up. Every bit of frag absorbed by a tire is one that didn’t hole a fuel tank. The odd airplane that does get hit bad enough to set its tire-armor on fire was probably a total loss anyhow.
As many folks have noted, both here and in the press, the Russians own a lot of unserviceable, but still valuable airplanes. So covering those broken jets in tires doesn’t affect sortie generation at all because that airplane wasn’t going anywhere anyhow. It’s essentially a parts warehouse.
Particularly for bombers, the process of getting one ready for a sortie is the work of hours, not minutes. Other than nuclear bombers on hair-trigger alert, the incremental time to remove a pile of tires is immaterial in the broad scheme of things.
Overall I give the Russians high marks for inventiveness with this one.