An image emerged on social media of a Russian Su-34 Fullback covered in tires similar to how they’ve been placed on bombers recently.
And… what does that mean exactly?
When it gets shot down it bounces
It means the Russians know that the drones that were hitting their bases are using a GPS short burst to get their navigation as close to target as possible, and then relying on photo recognition of the targets with pre-loaded images, what they’re doing is try to mask size, shape and reflection on the aircrafts to “confuse” drones…
Sounds like it confuses some satellite imaging techniques
The article author doesn’t know; he covers a number of possibilities.
Given that Russia is doing this with a number of their warplanes, it’s probably in response to the Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian military aircraft which recently happened, but it’s not entirely clear specifically what it’s intended to defend against or how.
Could be an attempt to reduce the radar cross section or RCS of the aircraft. Albeit a very dumb approach. This is a major component of defensive electronic warfare where you try to reduce the strength of an RF signal bounced back towards a radar receiver by manipulating the physical geometry of the craft so that it reflects RF waves away from their origination point. It works well in cases where the transmitter and receiver are on the same platform. In this case it appears that this craft is worried about detection from aircraft flying at higher altitudes or other high altitude RF tracking platforms.
