Global Conflict Reporting

Tag: Engles

  • Russian Strategic Bomber base struck by Ukraine drone strike.

    Russian Strategic Bomber base struck by Ukraine drone strike.

    By.Scott Jackson

    March 22nd ,2025

    Thursday March 20th, Ukraine struck one of Russia’s most important airbases, housing Russia strategic bombers, with drones. The attack triggered a huge explosion that was caught on geolocated video.

    Engels 2 Airbase

    Engles-2 is located 450 miles from the Ukrainian frontline. While Russia or Ukraine both didn’t report directly what was used to carry out the attack, Russian forces in the area did report shooting down 54 drones during the time the base came under attack.

    Russia’s Engels-2 airbase is one of its most important airbases as it is the one airbase operating Russia’s Tupolev TU-160’s (NATO reporting name Blackjack). The TU-160 is a supersonic, variable swept-wing, nuclear capable long-range, strategic bomber that has been during the Russia/Ukraine war to launch long range cruise missile into Ukraine.

    The TU-160. While often compared to the Rockwell B-1 ”Lancer” the TU-160 is significantly larger and faster while the B-1 has a larger payload. The TU-160 was designed as a long range cruise missile platform, the Bone on the other hand excels at penetrating highly contested airspace’s with its speed and ability to use terrain masking by flying very low.

    While the bombers would be a nice target it appears the main focus of the attack was on something even more critical to the war. Looking at the satellite images, released in the days since the attack, show that all of the TU-160’s or TU-95’s were undamaged after the attack. The drones mostly targeted an area of the airbase being used to store munitions. The base, along with regular munitions, is used for the maintaining and storage of the Russian KH-101 Cruise missile although it’s not verified if any of them were damaged or destroyed.

    Overview of the whole airfield. Affected area is off by itself in the top right under the Maxar logo.
    The before shot of an ammunition storage area of the airbase. These ammo storage areas, generally are fairly easy to spot as it will usually be an underground building or a regular building with raised dirt berms surrounding it. The dirt is there tj absorb shock and hopefully protect neighboring buildings in case of an explosion.
    The after shot. A number of buildings here are completely destroyed, either from direct targeting or a result of the blast and resulting fire that blazed for two days.

    The fire in the aftermath of the attack led to a state of emergency being declared in the region as civilians were evacuated. Some having had their houses damaged in the explosion.

    Video shows the soon after from the explosion, you can see that some of the houses were damaged from the shockwave of the large blast.

    The explosion damaged many homes in the immediate area. Windows busted or blown out, as well as roofs being damaged or having sections completely blown off.