I am a military aviation nerd. Just have been my whole life. So it really caught my eye, honestly I thought it was fake until I saw the news starting to report it.
I've seen varying reports. So numbers are not exact.
All numbers estimated cuz we obviously don't know Russias exacty numbers.
This is a very big deal. Not so much because of the Nuclear part, but because The 160 and 22 are more expensive and more modern. They require parts that can get expensive and when sanctioned can be hard to come by. It's more expensive to maintain and Ukraine just took out the old reliable workhorse
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I've seen varying reports. So numbers are not exact.
All numbers estimated cuz we obviously don't know Russias exacty numbers.
1. Tu-95: 47 Aircraft
These are long range bombers, if Russia was gonna bomb the United States it'd be these.
2. Tu-160: 15 aircraft
These are very fast, designed for conventional nuclear deployment and short range bombing.
3. Tu-22: 56 Aircraft
These are fast
Ukraine claims to have destroyed anywhere from 70% to 41 total (85%) of the Tu-95 in Russia.
if that's true, they've cut Russias bombing ability by 35% in one strike.
And nuclear air delivery by 66% in one strike.
They infiltrated into russia to pull this off. And got out clean.. It's a huge W.