The US basically stores hundreds of B-52 airframes out in the elements. Admittedly the worst those airframes see is the occasional haboob, aka sandstorm, or some torrential rain, but that’s only a few days a year.
Of course that is the boneyards in NM and AZ. The operational ones are kept in hangers at Air Force bases in the middle of the Continental US. I don’t know if those are climate controlled, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they were.
Oh, right. The B-52 is the plane that the USSR was copying when they made the bombers that were just blown up.
Also storing them in a hanger wouldn’t matter to most of these drones since more often than not the hanger doors are left open, and even when closed they are typically made of sheet metal. So the Ukrainians would have just blown a hole in the sheet metal before driving the next drone into the bomber.
This operation was some serious Tom Clancy style sci-fi military intelligence porn come to life.
You could just store them in tarp tents or something. Also, build a bunch of fake tents around, now you doubled or tripled the amount of targets the Ukrainians have to hit.
But Russians don’t think that way. Maybe, they don’t think at all?
The Ukrainians have satellite photos and live drone coverage. They have proven their abilities to penetrate both camouflage and Russian cope cages.
Meanwhile the Russians can’t manage to produce their own microprocessors, electronics, or even basic fabrics. What makes you think they are spending their limited rubles on tarps?
I’m not sure that they can’t make basic fabrics. Tarps aren’t that expensive and they can make them themselves? They could also use things like bedsheets?
If they had a lot of plane-shaped piles of fabric along the runway, it might be difficult to tell which ones hide an airplane beneath, especially if you moved them around every day during the night.
As far as I know Russia was moving planes around to maybe prepare a bigger operation. Since they can’t build hangars for all planes everywhere they parked them outside. And planes are made to withstand the elements so it’s not so bad for them to stand outside for a while. If the conditions were too bad for long time storage you could just fly the plane somewhere else aswell.
The amazing thing about this to me is these were aircraft worth hundreds of millions of dollars each, parked out in the elements.
Even without the threat of enemy action, surely that would cause maintenance issues?
The budget for reinforced hangars is floating in the form of giant yachts around the world
The US basically stores hundreds of B-52 airframes out in the elements. Admittedly the worst those airframes see is the occasional haboob, aka sandstorm, or some torrential rain, but that’s only a few days a year.
Of course that is the boneyards in NM and AZ. The operational ones are kept in hangers at Air Force bases in the middle of the Continental US. I don’t know if those are climate controlled, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they were.
Oh, right. The B-52 is the plane that the USSR was copying when they made the bombers that were just blown up.
Also storing them in a hanger wouldn’t matter to most of these drones since more often than not the hanger doors are left open, and even when closed they are typically made of sheet metal. So the Ukrainians would have just blown a hole in the sheet metal before driving the next drone into the bomber.
This operation was some serious Tom Clancy style sci-fi military intelligence porn come to life.
You could just store them in tarp tents or something. Also, build a bunch of fake tents around, now you doubled or tripled the amount of targets the Ukrainians have to hit.
But Russians don’t think that way. Maybe, they don’t think at all?
The Ukrainians have satellite photos and live drone coverage. They have proven their abilities to penetrate both camouflage and Russian cope cages.
Meanwhile the Russians can’t manage to produce their own microprocessors, electronics, or even basic fabrics. What makes you think they are spending their limited rubles on tarps?
I’m not sure that they can’t make basic fabrics. Tarps aren’t that expensive and they can make them themselves? They could also use things like bedsheets?
If they had a lot of plane-shaped piles of fabric along the runway, it might be difficult to tell which ones hide an airplane beneath, especially if you moved them around every day during the night.
Hangar space is incredibly expensive in the bulk quantity and size needed for a large air force with some of the largest planes on the planet.
Yeah, but compared to the capital cost of the aircraft, is it really that expensive?
As far as I know Russia was moving planes around to maybe prepare a bigger operation. Since they can’t build hangars for all planes everywhere they parked them outside. And planes are made to withstand the elements so it’s not so bad for them to stand outside for a while. If the conditions were too bad for long time storage you could just fly the plane somewhere else aswell.