Russia builds giant bomber shelters at Engels air base

Russia has nearly finished the steel frames for the first three of 16 large aircraft shelters it is building at Engels-2, the main base for its strategic bomber fleet, satellite imagery published by open-source analysis group AviVector shows.

An Airbus Defence and Space image dated Oct. 12 shows three side-by-side shelter frames standing on new concrete pads at the base in Russia’s Saratov region, each linked to the airfield by a freshly paved taxiway. AviVector first spotted ground being broken in early September, reporting in a Sept. 6 post, based on imagery taken on Sept. 5, that work had started on the first of 16 planned shelters.

Each shelter measures roughly 63 by 63 meters (207 by 207 feet), with 7-meter (23-foot) side walls and a peak height of about 17 meters (56 feet), according to AviVector’s estimates. That footprint is large enough to cover a Tu-160 supersonic bomber, which is about 54 meters long with a wingspan of nearly 56 meters when its wings are fully spread, as well as the smaller Tu-95MS turboprop bomber. Behind the frames, workers have built earth berms that deflect jet blast upward when aircraft run their engines, a sign the shelters are meant for aircraft to start up and taxi from directly.

Engels-2 sits about 600 km (370 miles) from the front line in Ukraine and is home to the bulk of Russia’s long-range bombers, which fire cruise missiles at Ukrainian cities from inside Russian airspace. Ukraine has repeatedly sent long-range drones against the base since December 2022, hitting fuel and ammunition storage and, in the past few months, parked aircraft. In July, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the SBU had destroyed a Tu-95 at Engels, and a satellite image taken days later appeared to show the wrecked bomber. A second Tu-95 was damaged in an SBU Alpha drone strike on the base on Aug. 28.

Until now, Russia’s bombers at Engels have been parked in the open, where commercial satellites can photograph them and drones can find them. Covered shelters would hide which aircraft are present and give them some protection against drone warheads and debris, and Russian crews have also painted outlines of Tu-95 bombers on the tarmac at Engels to confuse drone operators and imagery analysts. Russia can no longer build new Tu-95s, so every airframe lost to a strike permanently shrinks its long-range fleet.

The structures visible in the imagery are steel frames that have yet to be clad, and it is not yet clear what materials will be used for their walls and roofs. AviVector has not given a timeline for completing all 16 shelters, and the Russian Ministry of Defense has not commented on the construction.