🇺🇦 Із Днем армійської авіації сухопутних військ всіх причетних!

Shahed Tracker (who you should follow) just published OWA-UAS statistics for June. A sharp drop in total numbers, average and median size of OWA UAS strikes since May, which was the all-time high since the beginning of the Russian campaign. Still the fifth highest number of OWA UAS in a month.

Jeg har skrevet i Luftled nr 2/2026, som har luft- og missilforsvar som tema: luftled.info/drone-og-mis...

Just a couple of pictures of this flight from our side. Photos by the Royal Norwegian Air Force via NATO Aircom.

1/4 June 22 Russian strategic aviation carried out a flight with two Tu-160 Blackjack cruise missile carriers over the Barents and Norwegian seas. Patrols in May or June are common. The planes came out of Ukrainka in the Russian far east, lasted 16 hours and required refueling.

TIL that lids on petroleum product tanks are floating in order to prevent combustible gases from building up. And that the technical term for what is happening here is a "tank-top toss", which sounds like something that happens in a strip club.

Great article by Fabian Hinz. A well researched and credible argument that the Tsirkon is a rocket-propelled quasi-ballistic missile rather than a hypersonic airbreathing cruise missile. open.substack.com/pub/luftlage...

1/ Norwegian public broadcaster NRK has an article about an increase in intercepts of Russian military aircraft along the Norwegian coast, with a nice video of a recent intercept of a Su-24/Fencer by Norwegian F-35s www.nrk.no/nordland/her...

1/5 Some more details about the intercepts of two Russian combat aircraft Friday.

Must read.

The Russian plan to keep their Tu-22M3s flying forever backfired badly today.

1/7 Some more ways to distinguish the Su-24MR/Fencer-E reconnaissance version of the Su-24 from the "regular" Su-24M/Fencer-D strike jet. And some comments on this intercept, which may hint at an interesting development.

🇸🇪 JAS 39 #Gripen D during Ramstein Flag 26 #NATO 📷Flygvapnet

Wow. The Russian MOD is now suing Rheinmetall over unfinished work at the Mulino training centre: en.defence-ua.com/analysis/rus... h/t @ukbastard.bsky.social

One year ago yesterday. Since then, the absolute number as well as proportion of air launched cruise missiles in Russian combined attacks like tonight's have been reduced, and the Russians seem to spend a lot of time and resources on shuffling their cruise missile carriers around between bases.

Wiped out Tu-142MR could be a significant blow to the Northern Fleet.

1/9 A few observations on this strike and the aircraft involved.

Timely repost

An RQ-4D Phoenix from NATO's ISR Force at Sigonella, Sicily, landed at Ørland Air Station today. This is the first time this large ISR UAV is forward deployed to Norway. ac.nato.int

1/4 April 30, Russian strategic aviation carried out another flight with two Tu-95MS/Bear-H cruise missile carriers over the Barents. Patrols in April are less frequent than in February, but not unheard of.

1/4 Norwegian daily @dagsavisen.bsky.social found the Instagram account of one of the pilots of the "Russkie Vitiazi". They asked me to comment on the footage from a Russian intercept of a Norwegian P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft and two F-35 combat aircraft: www.dagsavisen.no/nyheter/vi-e...

1/6 On February 27 the Norwegian Air Force's QRA intercepted two Tu-95/Bear-H strategic cruise missile carriers in international airspace over the Barents Sea. Russian Bear and Blackjack cruise missile carriers have flown patrols into the Barents and Norwegian Seas every February since at least 2020

Great thread. The Swiss are figuring out what we did 80 years ago: - Protection by geography can be made irrelevant by technological change - It is too late to plan for assistance when you are under attack (- Pretending to be non-aligned/neutral is probably the worst of all solutions)

Vi har en ledig PhD stipendiat-stilling ved Luftkrigsskolen - søknadsfrist 10. januar: arbeidsplassen.nav.no/stillinger/s...

Helpful

Good thread on Poseidon's lineage.

Gerasimov claims a successfull flight of the Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile after more than two months of tests. www.thebarentsobserver.com/security/no-...

This is also a feature of SAAB/Gripen that has made it a good match for Ukraine: Swedish flexibility and ingenuity around financing models. And of course risk acceptance.

1/9 A few comments on today's announcement of Ukraine's intent to buy 100-150 SAAB Gripen-E multi-role combat jets.

I guess this should be called a counter-counterdrone drone strike.

In the best Soviet tradition.

Two Sentinel 2 passes over Rogachevo Air Base in Novaya Zemlya today - one of which got a lucky break in the clouds. The aircraft involved Burevestnik test monitoring still appear to be there, so combined with the ongoing NOTAMs & continued presence of vessels, I don't think they're finished yet.

This is an intelligent approach. Fear and confusion are way too often mentioned as the desired effects of "grey-zone" or "hybrid" actions. They can however only be means to reach desired outcomes, by distracting us from what is at stake or coercing us from taking action.

Important thread on the state of Russian civil aviation after sanctions and under heavy GPS (self-)jamming. TL/DR: It is extremely unsafe.

Since it's in the wind with the footage of the Ropucha-class LST Aleksandr Shabalin: Only a handful of Russian warships tend to transmit on AIS and these few only do so very occasionally. Most never transmit and have never done so. Ropucha's are in this group.

This morning, there has been significant air activity visible off the east and west coasts of Novaya Zemlya over a number of hours with Sentinel 3. Contrails from orbiting/maneuvering aircraft are clearly visible. I cannot say a Burevestnik test is occurring, but this is what I'd expect to see.

1/7 The Mig-31BM Foxhound in the picture published by @forsvarsmakten.se on the other place has tail nr Blue 67. According to my records, blue 67 has been used by two different Russian units:

Possibly related to continuing Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile trials?

Article on likely imminent test of Russia's Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile, with a little contribution from me.

Must read on AI-generated satellite imagery, how to spot it and what to do.

1/3 SBU released footage from the attack on Ivanovo. As noted by others before me, the attacked airframes lack engines and frankly look like sh*t.

This picture is making rounds now. It is obviously an AI-generated fake or for "illustrative purposes". My understanding is it originated in Ukrainian media. Using Gen AI like this destroys credibility and is really unhelpful.

1/5 Good points. The truck that launched the one-way-attack small UAS towards Olenya stood a little to the North of this gas station:

Your key takeaway from the brilliant Ukraine attack with small drones into Russia shouldn’t be “wow, small drones make it so easy to score huge hits,” it should be “wow, Ukrainians are insanely good at covertly planning and executing extraordinarily difficult missions of which drones are one part”.

This is a very good overview of the bases hit and their current role in Russian long-range aviation. It is particularly useful as the war has seen rather drastic changes in basing of different units, so if your standard-sources for this are from pre-2022, they are outdated. bsky.app/profile/lars...

I honestly struggle to come up with a historical comparison. Destroying strategic assets that difficult to impossible to replace has been done, daring special forces raids have been done, and striking airbases to great effect has been done, all of which are hard to do, but to combine all three?

FWIW the Russian MOD indeed reports a failed "terrorist" attack on a military air base in Amur oblast, i.e. Ukrainka.

1/10 On the map, clockwise from top (as we see it): Olenya, Murmansk oblast, Ivanovo-Severny, Ivanovo oblast, Ukrainka, Amur oblast, Belaya, Irkutsk oblast, Dyagilevo, Ryazan oblast. All of them except Ukrainka have reportedly been attacked today by Ukrainian small one-way attack UAS. 🧵

Thanks to a @threadinburgh.scot tipoff we had a morning trip to D/S Hestmanden and it was such a fascinating, absorbing experience, go see it before it leaves 🫡🇳🇴