General Discussion

The Ukrainian drone attack hit two components of the Russian nuclear force. The primary purpose of the attack was to destroy the planes that launch cruise missiles at Ukraine. Some of those planes are also the types that carry nuclear weapons. There also were hits at Severomorsk, the headquarters of the Northern Fleet and Russia’s ballistic missile submarines. We have much less information about the hits at Severomorsk, so I won’t say more about it in this post. I want to make clear that from what we know, no nuclear weapons were involved in today’s action. The primary nuclear bomber bases were not targeted.

As much as a third of Russia’s nuclear bomber fleet was destroyed. No new bombers have been produced for some time, and there are no facilities to produce them. This has serious implications for the nuclear balance between Russia and the United States.

The nuclear balance is maintained when both sides can credibly destroy the other in a return attack. Both sides rely on three types of delivery vehicles for that second strike capability: land-based ICBMs, submarines, and bombers. The land-based ICBMs would go first, both offensively and defensively. Their locations and requirements for destruction are known, so they would be the first to be fired and the first to be destroyed.
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For those of us contemplating this from our place in front of a consumer-quality computer, it seems like it shouldn’t make a big difference. But the military makes calculations of deterrence effects, and those calculations have now changed. Whether forcing that change was escalatory is not clear; we will eventually hear from Russia about that, mostly in what they do. My own judgment is that they will not escalate to the use of nuclear weapons. What else they do is open, although they now have fewer planes to do it with.

https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2025/06/more-thoughts-on-russias-bomber-losses