Sunday morning’s coordinated Ukrainian drone strike on Russia’s bomber fleet was indeed a significant blow to dictator Vladimir Putin’s regime, the Associated Press reports with a breakdown of the impact that was kind of missing from the initial coverage of the attack.
Prior to the attack there were, according to western experts, 50 to 60 each of the 1950s era Tupolev Tu-95 and 1970s era Tu-22Ms and 20 of the A-50s. The precise numbers of which models were destroyed was not clear, but suffice to say Russia lost at least fully a third of its bomber fleet in one action. And these things aren’t exactly rolling off the production line as the first two dated to the Soviet Union and aren’t being built any more (Don’t laugh too hard, 76 of the Tu-95’s American rival, the B-52, are ships of Theseus still in US Air Force service and will be until the 2050s).