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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> obvious to me that this vulnerability exists everywhere

“Everywhere” meaning undefended airspace into which one masses a significant fraction of one type of strategic armament.

This was the savvy exploitation by Kyiv, once again, of Russian operational incompetence.

> there isn't anyone who will stop you from pre-positioning weapons adjacent to American strategic assets

You want to try driving a truck up to a USAF base? (EDIT: Where strategic arms, e.g. B-2s, live.)

This is a novel threat vector. It needs to be protected against with vigilance. That to requires active effort to counter doesn’t mean it’s OP. Just that defensive perimeters need to be expanded, units not needlessly amassed, air defences kept in check and those perimeters constantly (and completely) monitored.

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Are you joking? Have you seen ANY American Air Force bases? Tinker AFB is flanked north and south by interstate freeways and surrounded by civilian truck stops and materiel depots. The easiest way to stage a weapon there would be to literally order it on Amazon.

The air mobility command in the Bay Area is similarly totally surrounded by urban civilization.

> Tinker AFB is flanked north and south by interstate freeways and surrounded by civilian truck stops and materiel depots

Isn’t Tinker mostly logistics, intelligence and AWACS? Don’t get me wrong, that’s important. But you’re not taking out a significant fraction of any U.S. armament hitting Tinker with drones.

It's one of the three USAF maintenance depots (consolidated, IIRC, back in the 90s). Aircraft that are maintained by USAF (vice dispatched to a contractor site for the same kind of work) primarily go to Robins, Tinker, or Hill to be torn apart and rebuilt. An attack on a place like Tinker won't necessarily hurt in the next 6 months, but will in the next 18 when you lack the critical facilities for depot maintenance.

And that's ignoring all the other functions the 25k+ people working there serve.

> An attack on a place like Tinker won't necessarily hurt in the next 6 months, but will in the next 18 when you lack the critical facilities for depot maintenance

This drone attack worked because small explosives detonated close to an airframe can do catastrophic damage. That simply isn’t true for most equipment, civil or military. (The exception at Tinker being the AWACS.)

Tinker being nuked would be a strategic disaster. Dozens of drones causing small-arms damage around the base would be embarrassing, but nothing on the order of America losing a third of anything in its possession.

The analog would have to be us putting e.g. most of one class of unit at Tinker simultaneously for maintenance.

You're focused on AWACS probably because that's the operational unit at Tinker, but they aren't the only aircraft at Tinker.

I count over 60 aircraft on the Google Maps image of Tinker, not all of them AWACS (there are less than 20 AWACS total so most of these planes aren't AWACS). And that's not counting what may be in hangars which could also be a target of this hypothetical attack. USAF has about 5500 aircraft, so this accounts for over 1% of the current USAF air fleet. It's not as critical an attack as what's happened in Russia, but it's still very damaging.

It's an operational airfield so it has large fuel tanks which would be targeted and are hardly immune to small explosives themselves. Attacking those and the ensuing fires would be costly to repair and recover from. That alone, ignoring any attacks on aircraft, could lead to months of downtime for the airfield and various disruptions as you relocate your operational units to an airfield that still has fuel tanks (if the aircraft survived the attack).

> You're focused on AWACS probably because that's the operational unit at Tinker

They’re slow to make, critical to modern war and we don’t even have two dozen of them. (I think at least a quarter of our AWACS are at Tinker. Hence the analogy to Russia concentrating its bombers.) For everything else we have redundancy in droves.

> not all of them AWACS

Yup, refuelling, logistics, cyberwar. Nice to have. But not critical and few among many.

> months of downtime for the airfield and various disruptions as you relocate your operational units to an airfield that still has fuel tanks

You’re not detonating fuel tanks at Tinker with drones. (Not unless they’re storing munitions within blast range of the tanks.)

I’m not arguing such a strike wouldn’t be damaging. It just would not be disabling to scale of this attack. It would also be unusual for the highways around bases to be unrestricted during major wartime. (Or drones to remain uncontrolled, for that matter.)

> You’re not detonating fuel tanks at Tinker with drones.

Why are you so certain of this? IIUC (I am far from an expert) the insurgents in Iraq regularly utilized improvised shaped charge devices to attack armored vehicles. I don't understand those to have been particularly large or heavy. Consider that fiber FPV drones are carrying upwards of 2 kg of fiber (IIUC) in addition to the payload. Fuel tanks are stationary so you can dispense with the fiber.

At any given time much of the B-1 fleet is parked on the ramp at Tinker.

Anyway, I invite you to visit America some day. I think it's obvious to Americans that anyone can drive a truck to within a mile or two of every military installation, usually much closer.

> At any given time much of the B-1 fleet is parked on the ramp at Tinker

One type of a retiring aircraft. Not comparable to a third of Russia’s entire bomber fleet.

> it's obvious to Americans that anyone can drive a truck to within a mile or two of every military installation

Fair enough, in peacetime. Russia is at war.

Imagine: take out one AWACS with a $500 drone...

AWACS is if anything more vital and more vulnerable than bombers. If you're blind it doesn't matter how much firepower you've got.

loss of awacs can be compensated with satellite and drones. its no big deal.

but if all aerial refueling fleet is damaged, like KC-135 Stratotankers then it will be over very quickly.

or blowing up Navy's ice cream supply depots and it will be over as well

> loss of awacs can be compensated with satellite and drones. its no big deal

One can compensate for the loss of AWACS with satellites and low-flying drones in the way one can compensate for a sprained ankle with crutches. See the recent Pakistan-India skirmish, which Pakistan appears to have won on account of sensor fusion powered by its AWACS.

No, Pakistan won because Indian generals are absolutely incompetent.

They sent the planes for suicide mission without suppressing enemy air defense. Indians planes flew too close to the border without suppressing AD.

Pakistani planes flew from highland valley which was invisible from radio perspective

Offut AFB is right next to Bellevue/Omaha and it would be absolutely trivial to attack all the STRATCOM aircraft located there. Think KNEECAP/TACAMO etc. Whiteman AFB in Missouri where the B2 bombers live would be an easy, easy target for this type of attack. The B2's are kept in climate controlled facilities, but the Ukrainian military has shown the ability to fly into almost any building and attack. The US is woefully underprepared for this type of attack.

They are working on stuff there's the Anduril gizmo

>Anduril has clinched a $642-million contract to supply counter-drone technology for the US Marine Corps (USMC).

https://www.anduril.com/capability/counter-uas/

And imagine how many cheap drones you can have in a container if you don't need to smuggle the container across borders.

Exactly my point. America probably admits a container full of drones every hour or something.

The containers weren't smuggled across the border. Ukrainian intelligence assembled the containers in a rented warehouse inside Russia, near the border with Kazahkstan. Drones were hidden into the roof section of wooden containers. Photos: https://bsky.app/profile/maks23.bsky.social/post/3lqkc4osmhk...

I think it would be reasonable to assume that almost everything except for explosives were commercial off-the-shelf parts and trivial to acquire.

All airfields are serviced by highways, even the main military ones. These little drones still have a 15 to 20 km strike range because they're one-ways.

True, but the main reason for success here, as far as I understand, is that drones were launched very close to the airfield.

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