Kathrine Frich
11 combat planes and one helicopter went down in October alone.
Keeping a fleet of high-tech jets in the sky takes constant maintenance and huge sums of money.
Even in peacetime, mechanical failures can ground the most advanced machines without warning.
Right now, one major air force is watching its hardware vanish at a dizzying pace.
Five brutal weeks
According to United24 Media and Defence Blog, Russia has lost roughly 13 military aircraft over a five-week stretch since late September.
Figures from the Ukrainian open-source tracking group Oko Gora show 11 combat planes and one helicopter went down in October alone, alongside a heavy bomber crash the day before the month began.
The Su-34 fighter-bomber took the hardest hit. Moscow relies on these planes to drop guided glide bombs on Ukrainian towns and front-line troops, making them a top target for Kyiv.
Throughout October, long-range Ukrainian strikes repeatedly caught those jets on the tarmac. United24 Media reported that drones from Ukraine’s Security Service hit a Su-34 and a Su-35 at the Khanskaya base on October 4, some 500 kilometers from Ukrainian-held land.
Base after base
Ten days later, Ukrainian Neptune cruise missiles slammed into the Borisoglebsk airfield in Voronezh.
Satellite photos referenced by United24 Media showed four Su-34 bombers wiped out and two others badly battered. Another Neptune strike on October 29 at the Marinovka base in Volgograd destroyed two more, bringing October’s toll to seven destroyed Su-34s and two damaged.
That single month of losses wiped out nearly a third of Russia’s yearly factory output for the model. According to Ukrainian military intelligence figures cited by United24 Media, Russian plants built 22 new Su-34s over the past year to support an active fleet of about 140 planes.
Enemy fire was only half the problem. From the Baltic coast to the Far East, accidents have plagued the fleet too.
Fires and crashes
On September 29, an irreplaceable Tu-95MS strategic bomber crashed on takeoff in the Amur region, killing six of its seven crew members, Defence Blog reported.
Three weeks later, Russian officials said two pilots ejected when their Su-30SM fighter went down during training in Kaliningrad, while a second Su-30SM was reportedly lost the same day.
Even Moscow’s prized Su-57 stealth jet was not spared. According to United24 Media, one of the fifth-generation fighters caught fire while starting its engines at the Akhtubinsk test center on October 29, leaving a scorched mark visible from space.
The streak ended on October 30 when Ukraine’s Third Assault Brigade said it blew up a landed Mi-8 helicopter in Luhansk with two Hornet drones. Overall, the tracking group Oryx has visually confirmed 205 damaged or destroyed Russian military aircraft since February 2022, Defence Blog noted.
