US official: Russian tactic of covering tires to protect aircraft is effective

The Russian military began covering Tu-95MS and Tu-160 bombers at the Engels-2 air base, nearly 500 km from the border, with tires in late 2023, shortly after Ukraine deployed long-range unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to attack the site. Russian soldiers later covered various aircraft at air bases near the border with tires.

Schuyler Moore, director of technology at the US military’s Central Command (CENTCOM), assessed on September 13 that this tactic could neutralize an attack on a Russian airbase, because the tires prevent the missile or UAV’s image-recognition-equipped probe from detecting the target.

“We often use aerial photographs to build the basic shape for target-finding systems. However, many computer vision models struggle to determine the shape of an aircraft covering a tire,” Moore explains.

At the time Russia adopted the tactic of covering aircraft with tires, Ukraine began using Neptune anti-ship missiles equipped with infrared sensors capable of image recognition, and also possessed Storm Shadow/SCALP EG cruise missiles with a similar type of seeker.

Some Western experts at the time believed that the tires were a physical protection measure to detonate warheads on UAVs and missiles early, as well as to limit damage from shock waves and fragments. However, some have theorized that this tactic was intended to confuse the imaging seekers on Ukrainian weapons.

Imaging seekers are completely immune to electronic warfare, which targets radio-based communications and control systems. They do not emit signals like radar, allowing them to take pictures of the area in question and compare them with an integrated database to detect targets without alerting the enemy.

Some UAV models in the Russia-Ukraine conflict have begun to be equipped with artificial intelligence (AI) technology to identify targets, increasing the ability to hit targets even in conditions of strong interference and loss of contact with the control station.

Moore said the Russian tactic of covering planes with tires shows that AI targeting systems need to use models and data that are “as accessible in as many ways and as realistic as possible” to remain effective in the future.

According to Moore, users need to interact better with the existing AI model, being able to flag new data that they think is relevant to the target, such as changes in the general shape and color of an object. When determining that the enemy is changing the image of the target in ways such as covering the tires, the operators need to record the information to complete the AI ​​training database.

“However, the recognition model will quickly be invalidated if it takes 6 months to train the AI, while the opponent only needs to replace the tire with another object. We will spend too much time training the computer vision system without achieving results,” Moore said.

Expert Moore commented that information obtained from the Russia-Ukraine war has many benefits for the US military, not only limited to developing AI-based navigation and target locking systems.

The assessment comes as the US military prepares for a future large-scale conflict with a peer power. The US has recently focused on the ability to camouflage, conceal and deceive an adversary with significant intelligence and reconnaissance capabilities, especially from space.

“Today’s adversaries have developed a network of integrated sensors with different types of warheads, capable of attacking multiple targets at the same time. They are all connected to each other and communicate in many ways,” said General Michael Guetlein, deputy chief of staff of the US Space Force.

General Guetlein warned that the network of seeker-killer weapons could put US forces at constant risk from a distance. “This is a very sophisticated and challenging threat,” he said.