In light of recent drone attacks, Russia has decided to cover their vulnerable aircraft in tires. One can only speculate on that decision making process.
From what I read, I think it's that the drones and/or missiles that are used to attack the airbases quite deep in the mainland use a special form of homing equipment that is not depending on any outside signal, which could be disrupted for example gps. So those weapon system rely on infrared or other means of self homing equipment to manage the final approach on target.
The tires are supposedly meant to disrupt the systems that use visual clues for final approach also disrupting thermal imaging, kind of like dazzle camouflage is intended to work on warships.
If that is effective or work in any way I don't know, but if it does it is a cheap and fast solution until a more broader defense mechanism is crafted.
If not, you haven't spend a lot on trying, to solely rely on it forever would be dumb, but to as a makeshift temporary solution I don't see much wrong with it, except that it looks silly.
But just like the cage roofs on tanks personally I doubt it will have a meaningful impact.
They're being attacked on all sides, this is a radial defense. This has all weather capabilities (although they may want to change to snow tires in November).
I got deployed to a spot where a company man came to help out with some logistics. We happened to be using some 50 gallon drums to help anchor down some comms equipment, which got us talking about the topic of 50 gallon drums.
The company man happened to also be a vietnam vet, and told me a story about some POWs that got captured there. The enemy was real keen on finding out how the americans were finding their ground compounds for aerial attacks.
These several POWs told the enemy that it was all of their diesel fuel 50 gallon drums that were lighting up on radar, and was giving away their position from dozens of miles away. They went on to tell the enemy that the only way to hide the drums from radar, was to bury them at least 3 feet below ground.
So there's the enemy, digging 6+ foot trenches to hide their diesel drums in. Digging trenches like that in the jungle is difficult enough, but even more difficult is then unburying them one by one when the fuel is actually needed.
So the POWs pulled that whole radar + drums story out of their ass, but knew that if they were believed, it was going to be a huge hindrance for the enemy hiding/accessing the drums like that.
So I have to wonder: Do the russians believe that throwing tires on their aircraft hides them from radar, or otherwise some other overhead asset from detecting them? It seems like it would be hindrance to scramble those jets when needing to chuck a bunch of tires off it first. Would be hilarious if some type of planted misinformation is responsible for this practice.
The question still remains though: Does this shit actually work?
I mean do they hide the bloody plane? Planes have a very noticeable outline perhaps they are trying to hide it. This way for a drone with low quality cameras, it might not look like a target immediately? And I am thinking these drones have humans sitting behind them and have bad cameras.
If the drones are programmed almost anything unexpected can put them off course. (Looking at you Million dollar russian missile hitting Ukrainian toilets)
Thinking the enemy is dumb is almost never a great plan and it certainly doesn't help you. Luckily for Ukraine, the people who think the enemy is dumb are sitting behind a computer and not inside a command post.
There's something so sad about the rutted concrete, the tires and the uncut grass in the image. Wouldn't a messy airfield give some cover to partisans doing a sneaky thing? Even the very small municipal airport, hair care 'n tire center near me looks better.