The planes had to be visible to the skies for spy satellites to see them per a nuclear treaty with the US. The US is required to do the same thing.
The tires were SOP due to previous drone attacks at other air bases. They have been doing that for months already.
I believe they started doing this after a few first attacks on their planes in Belarus. It is specifically against FPV drones. And the only threat that far into their land would be FPV.
Ah, OK, thanks for the explanation.
I really don't think it occurred to the Russians that Ukraine would pull something like this off.
It sure hadn't occurred to anyone else.
But why the tyres? That's what I wonder about. Is that standard practise with planes?
Maybe to confuse any autonomous targeting AI/ML detection models
That I don't have an answer to.
Ukraine has been sending drones deep in Russian territories for months, they probably didn't expect this particular attack, they were afraid something was coming and took some general, low cost, low effectivness counter measures.
If they knew about the attack, wouldn't it have been easier to move the planes or stop the trucks carrying the drones? I admit the tires were weird, but may have been more to counter surveillance than to counter drone targeting. Can't see any reason why they'd let Ukraine blow up billions in critical hardware to prove a point.
Is it possible that tires had some other function? Wind from some specific direction causing resonances on the wings and fuselage that does some harm in long term?
Moving those planes is very expensive like costing a shit ton of money, and they lose remaining flight hours on those frames.
The tires are weird. Pretty sure no capable surveillance would be bothered by it. If that were the case they'd already painted the planes that way - much cheaper and easier. The tires look like fast last minute "solutions", not like some sophisticated plan.
Still pretty sure they knew something and maybe just couldn't come up with better deterrents.
The tires are for shrapnel protection, they will prevent it flying as far and hopefully protect from shrapnel hitting them.
It’s not super effective but it’s kinda effective
Like the cope cages on their ground vehicles.
Probably even more so because the intent I believe it to deflect shrapnel from another explosion instead of stop a direct hit
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