No, Russia Was Not Required to Leave Its Bombers Exposed

The claim that Russia was legally required to leave its nuclear-capable bombers visible from space, thereby inviting drone strikes like Ukraine's Operation Spider Web, is false. It is an error born of armchair speculation and the faint echo of Cold War-era treaties that have long since lapsed or been suspended. What remains today is not a legal obligation but habit, inertia, and in some cases, negligence. That the bombers were struck while sitting exposed on Russian airfields is not a function of treaty compliance, but a reflection of strategic vulnerabilities that Moscow, until recently, failed to remedy.

It is true that past arms control treaties between the US and the Soviet Union, and later Russia, included verification regimes that made use of satellite imagery. These verification measures did, at times, involve displaying disarmed or destroyed bombers in open view so that they could be visually confirmed by the other side. But the logic here is narrow and historical. These procedures applied to the elimination of delivery systems, not their everyday deployment. To leap from this past requirement to the idea that Russia must currently leave Tu-95s or Tu-160s parked outdoors is like assuming the presence of a demolition sign mandates perpetual exposure.

The foundational precedent is the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START I, signed in 1991. Under this treaty, heavy bombers removed from active service had to be visibly dismantled, with components such as wings and tails cut apart and left out in the open for a prescribed period. These wrecks were observable from space, confirming compliance. START I was succeeded by the New START treaty, signed in 2010, which preserved this requirement in streamlined form. When, for example, the US eliminated its B-52G bombers, it severed their tails and arranged the parts on airfields, specifically to allow Russian satellite confirmation. This mutual visibility was limited to dismantlement activities, not standard basing.

But the New START treaty is no longer operative in practice. Though technically in force until 2026, Russia unilaterally suspended its participation in February 2023. Vladimir Putin's announcement marked the effective end of the treaty's verification provisions. Russia halted on-site inspections, ceased sharing data, and ended prior notifications of strategic movements. In response, the US reciprocated. As of 2025, neither side provides transparency measures once considered foundational. Russia claims it still observes the central limits on warheads and launchers, but absent inspections, these claims are unverifiable.

No other treaty mandates the visible deployment of bombers. The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which collapsed in 2019, dealt exclusively with ground-launched missiles. The Open Skies Treaty, which allowed unarmed aerial surveillance over member states, was abandoned by the US in 2020 and by Russia in 2021. What remains is the 1988 Ballistic Missile Launch Notification Agreement, still honored by both sides, which requires prior notice of ICBM and SLBM test launches, a narrow and unrelated matter.

Some treaties, like SALT I and its successors, prohibited interference with national technical means of verification. This meant that parties could not engage in active concealment intended to prevent satellite monitoring. But even these provisions did not require day-to-day exposure of bombers. Sheltering bombers in hangars for maintenance, weather protection, or security purposes was never forbidden. The legal bar was not concealment per se, but concealment designed to defeat treaty compliance checks. In any event, Russia is no longer observing these clauses.

There is a reason these legal subtleties matter. Ukraine's Spider Web operation, which targeted Tu-22M3 Backfire-Cs, Tu-95MS Bear-Hs, and Tu-160 Blackjacks, was an audacious and technically impressive assault on the Russian strategic air fleet. These bombers were parked in the open at airfields like Engels, where their vulnerability had been demonstrated in previous drone strikes. By 2024, Ukraine had succeeded in striking at least a dozen of these aircraft on Russian territory. The damage was real, but the legal narrative that justified the openness was not.

To put the point clearly: Russia was not compelled to park these aircraft in the open. It did so out of habit, logistical limitations, and a Cold War tradition of valuing ICBMs and submarine-based systems over bombers. Hardened aircraft shelters were expensive and rarely prioritized. For decades, this posture sufficed. But Ukraine's use of long-range drones changed the risk calculus. That Russia now plans to build shelters for its strategic bombers is not a treaty violation, but a delayed recognition of military necessity.

The illusion of obligation persists in part because arms control has cultivated a certain imagery: graveyards of bombers under satellite eyes, symmetric transparency, a choreography of openness. But the facts have moved on. There is no active bilateral treaty that forces Russia to expose its bombers. Not New START, not INF, not Open Skies. Nor does the broader Non-Proliferation Treaty address deployment practices.

Some may wonder: if Russia was not required to expose its bombers, why did it not conceal them once the strikes began? The answer is partly bureaucratic inertia, partly signaling. Concealing bombers en masse could itself be seen as escalatory. Sudden movements into hangars might raise US suspicions. So, ironically, keeping the bombers visible may have been a way of signaling continuity, not provocation.

What, then, are we to make of the claim that Ukraine's attack was egregious because it violated some understood rule of visibility? The claim is false. It trades on a conflation: the idea that what was once observable for treaty verification must now be exposed by legal duty. But that duty does not exist. Russia could have sheltered its aircraft. It chose not to. Ukraine exploited that choice.

If strategic bombers are to be kept safe in a modern drone era, it will not be through the fiction of past treaties. It will be through concrete, hardened infrastructure and a realistic assessment of threats. Russia, like any nation, is free to conceal its aircraft from view. That it left them visible is not a result of compliance. It is a result of miscalculation.

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