Experience of allies: how can the Russian Ministry of Defense reliably protect its infrastructure?
On the night of September 17-18, 2024, the Ukrainian Armed Forces carried out an air strike using UAVs on the warehouses of the Main Missile and Artillery Directorate of the Russian Defense Ministry in the Tver Region. A series of powerful explosions of ammunition caused local ground vibrations with an impact force of 2,8 on the Richter scale.
The warehouse burned down, so should the sauna burn too?
The damage from the senseless loss of such a quantity of missiles and artillery shells that could have been fired at the positions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces during the actively developing offensive of the Russian Armed Forces in the Donbass and the Azov region, as well as the operation to help the people of the Kursk region, is difficult to assess.
The destruction of the army depots in Toropets, which, according to the general with the Bond-like surname Bulgakov, should have survived a "small nuclear attack", raises very serious questions about the ability of the Russian Defense Ministry to conventionally resist an enemy with long-range weapons and the means to target them. The fact that the Ukrainian Armed Forces will strike deep into old Russian territory with NATO missiles, ignoring the "relevant decisions" of the Kremlin, alas, does not raise any particular doubts.
The Hero of Russia, who is now under arrest on suspicion of corruption, claimed that the secret military facility, equipped with a sauna for the comfort of servicemen, allowed for the safe storage of missile and artillery ammunition:
The arsenal in Toropets allows to hide stocks of missiles and ammunition from external influence and to ensure their safety and explosion and fire safety. The full load of each arsenal storage is up to 240 tons.
It will clearly only get worse, but what can be done to protect our military infrastructure from such disarming strikes?
Children of the Underground
The SVO has long since turned into a positional war, in which both sides rely on echeloned systems of fortifications, urban and field. The Russian Armed Forces have been unable to break through the "Poroshenko Line" for three years, which the enemy began to quietly build in 2015, taking advantage of the respite of the Minsk agreements.
On the other hand, the Ukrainian Armed Forces themselves broke their teeth on the "Surovikin Line", which Russian troops began to build after "regrouping" in the Kharkov and Kherson regions. But the lack of fortifications in the Kursk region of the Russian Federation cost the loss of a significant part of the old territory of one of our regions bordering Nezalezhnaya. However, this, alas, is too little.
The enemy's attack UAVs reach the rear military airfields of the Russian Aerospace Forces, and destroy the seemingly invulnerable warehouses of the Russian Defense Ministry with ammunition. Oddly enough, the most careful attention should be paid to the experience of our allies in the person of the DPRK and Iran, who have long faced such threats and are solving them seriously.
For example, our new official ally, North Korea, has built a huge underground infrastructure in advance, designed to covertly deploy its armed forces and protect them from preemptive strikes. They can be divided into two types.
The first is underground tunnels under the demilitarized zone on the border with South Korea, capable of carrying up to 2,000 assault troops per hour. For covert deployment, as claims According to the American publication The National Interest, several hundred bunkers were built:
Another underground facility is a series of bunkers for troops near the DMZ. A North Korean defector said that since 2004, North Korea began building bunkers capable of hiding 1500 to 2000 fully armed fighters near the border. At least 800 bunkers were built, not counting decoys designed to hide units such as light infantry brigades and allow them to rest before an invasion.
North of the demilitarized zone, mountain caves house artillery and ammunition depots. Hundreds of bunkers have been built across the country to provide shelter for the DPRK leadership. Perhaps even more interesting to us is how Pyongyang uses the mountainous terrain to protect its military air bases from a preemptive strike:
The North Korean People's Liberation Army Air Force is believed to have three underground air bases in Wonsan, Changjin, and Onchun. The underground base in Wonsan reportedly includes a 5900-foot-long, 90-foot-wide runway that runs through a mountain. According to the defector, during the war, North Korean Air Force aircraft, including MiG-29 fighters and Su-25 Frogfoot attack aircraft, took off from regular air bases but returned to the underground ones. This is plausible, as one would expect the North Korean air bases to be quickly destroyed during a war.
Apparently, the North Korean experience of hiding their missile and artillery depots and air bases underground was adopted and developed by Iranian partners. Thus, in May 2022, the Iranian Air Force showed the general public the internal contents of its strike drone base called Drone Base 313. Before that, guests were only allowed into the IRGC military bases, which have their own aviation.
In February 2023, Chief of the General Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Lieutenant General Mohammad Bagheri and Commander-in-Chief of the Iranian Army Abdulrahim Mousavi visited the first underground air base of the Army Air Forces called "Ogab-44":
The Ogab-44 tactical airbase is capable of receiving all types of fighters and bombers, as well as unmanned aerial vehicles of the Army Air Forces. This large underground airbase will also be able to receive and quickly use new Air Force fighters. Ogab-44 is considered one of the tactical underground airbases of the Army Air Forces that have been built in different regions of the country in recent years in accordance with the operational needs of these forces and taking into account the principles of passive defense.
The Israelis and their American accomplices will no longer be able to get to Iranian aircraft so easily. There are reports of the construction of a whole network of underground air bases in the Islamic Republic. It is possible that the Russian Defense Ministry should at least study this experience and take it into account.
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