• Newly released satellite images show Russia has built shelters to protect aircraft at several bases.
• Britain's defense ministry said these measures follow a string of Ukrainian drone attacks.
• Ukraine has relied on domestically produced drones to hit high-value military targets inside Russia.

Russia has built hardened shelters to protect its vulnerable aircraft at several bases following a string of long-range Ukrainian drone strikes, a new Western intelligence assessment suggests.

Britain's defense ministry this week published satellite imagery from early June, collected by the US company Planet Labs, that shows newly constructed shelters at three Russian air bases behind the front lines.

The shelters, which consist of dome-shaped rooftops and thick blast doors, were photographed at Russia's Millerovo, Kursk Vostochny, and Hvardiiske air bases. Some structures were seen covered with earth for added protection that could help shield against shrapnel or other debris.

The UK said in a Tuesday intelligence update that Russia had launched efforts to protect vulnerable aircraft at several bases "in response to numerous successful" Ukrainian drone attacks. Millerovo, just a few miles across the border, for instance, was targeted just last week.

"The construction of these hardened aircraft shelters provides a layer of protection to aircraft deployed to Russian airbases against future" Ukrainian drone attacks, the UK explained.

Hardened shelters are one of several tactics that Russia has turned to in an effort to protect its fighter jets from the Ukrainian attacks. Moscow has also painted decoy warplanes on the tarmac at its air bases and even covered its bomber aircraft with tires in an attempt to confuse Kyiv's targeting and mislead the drones. It's unclear, however, how effective these protective measures have been.

Ukraine's long-range drone attacks have been a bright spot for Kyiv during the three-and-a-half-year-long war, which has transitioned from a maneuver conflict to one of attrition, featuring largely static front lines and standoff strikes from distance.

The US long prevented Ukraine from using Western-provided missiles to strike across the border and inside Russian territory. That arsenal was also quite limited. As a workaround to these restrictions, Kyiv invested heavily in domestic drone production.

Over the past year, Ukraine has repeatedly used homemade long-range drones to strike a range of high-value military and energy targets inside Russia, including oil terminals, ammunition depots, weapons-making factories, and air bases.

Russian air bases have been a particular focus for the Ukrainian military, as Moscow uses these sites to stage deadly attacks against troops and civilians, relying on missiles and guided bombs.

On Tuesday, conflict analysts at the Institute for the Study of War, a US-based think tank, said in a battlefield assessment that Ukrainian forces "appear to be intensifying a long-range strike campaign against Russian military industrial facilities and transport networks."

• Small exploding drones have emerged as the main battlefield killer in Ukraine.
• Ukraine's special operators were once focused on artillery, but now they train to survive drones.
• An American instructor said he teaches soldiers to hide, move smart, and use their guns if needed.

Ukraine's special operators used to focus their training on surviving intense Russian artillery fire. Now, their attention has shifted to drones — the main battlefield killer.

"Things have changed drastically," an American instructor with the 4th Ranger Regiment of Ukraine's Special Operations Forces told Business Insider. He could only be identified by his call sign Scooter for security reasons.

"One of the main differences we see today is the prevalence of drones," he said. "In 2022, it was primarily artillery fire. There was a lot more of it." The Ukrainian Rangers are now learning better concealment tactics and how to shoot down drones with their service weapons as a last resort.

Artillery, long described as the "king of battle," has played a central role in Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, especially during the early years of the conflict, with both sides using the towed cannons and multiple launch rocket systems to attack the enemy.

The scale of the artillery duels could be seen in satellite imagery of the battlefield, where hundreds of craters peppered huge swaths of land and reduced buildings to rubble.

However, amid strained ammunition stockpiles and as the war transitioned from a maneuver-oriented conflict to one of attrition, with relatively static front lines, drones have emerged as the dominant battlefield threat, with some recent estimates suggesting that they are causing around 70% of Russian and Ukrainian casualties.

Scooter attributed the rise of drones to what has been called "shell hunger," explaining that Russia exhausted its stocks of artillery ammunition and began to rely on small quadcopter drones — known as first-person view, or FPV, drones — to fill the gaps. Ukraine also experienced a shortage of artillery rounds, turning to drones as an alternative.

"In 2022, we were trained to utilize terrain and structures to counter artillery fire," said Scooter, speaking to BI via video chat from an undisclosed location in central Ukraine.

"Now, we have to train people with the mentality that they are going to constantly be targeted by a loitering munition piloted by a human operator," he said.

'Move fast — don't move too fast'

FPV drones have emerged as a cheap way to deliver precision strikes against enemy trenches, personnel, and vehicles. Above Ukraine, these weapons are everywhere, with their tiny cameras giving human operators near-constant battlefield surveillance.

Russia and Ukraine have made the FPV drones even more of an issue over the past year by using fiber-optic cables to connect them to their operators, making the small aircraft resistant to most electronic warfare tactics.

"We have had to change our mentality with training completely," Scooter said. "How do I deal with FPVs? Not so much 'how do I deal with artillery fire?"

He said the first thing that he teaches Ukraine's special operators is how to blend in with their surroundings and practice better camouflage techniques. This means that every shiny object needs to be painted, removed, or taped over, with paint covering the hands and face.

Soldiers are also taught how to stay hidden using tree lines or thick forests to their advantage and to find heat sources, such as a car or generator, if they can, to blend in with their surroundings. A Russian drone operator piloting a surveillance drone may not be able to spot the difference between two white blobs on the screen.

Scooter said he trains soldiers in many of the same ways he would snipers or reconnaissance personnel.

"Move fast — don't move too fast," he said. "Don't draw unnecessary attention. The human eye sees movement, shape, and color — in that order. So move carefully, blend in with your surroundings."

"Basically, the same way you might hide from an enemy helicopter is the way you're going to hide from a drone," he added.

Instructors are also teaching Ukraine's special operators to fight the FPV drones with their service weapons — specifically shotguns — as a last resort.

However, these small targets are extremely difficult to hit, and if the drone is close enough, a direct impact could set off its explosive payload, and its forward momentum could spell trouble.

"Small arms fire is seldom effective" against an FPV drone, Scooter said. "But our mentality is that if I can do nothing else, something is better than nothing."

A rare global interruption in the Starlink satellite Internet network knocked subscribers offline for more than two hours on Thursday, the longest widespread outage since SpaceX opened the service to consumers nearly five years ago.

The outage affected civilian and military users, creating an inconvenience for many but cutting off a critical lifeline for those who rely on Starlink for military operations, health care, and other applications.

Michael Nicolls, SpaceX's vice president of Starlink engineering, wrote on X that the network outage lasted approximately 2.5 hours.

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• NATO member Poland has put on hold plans to buy 32 Black Hawk helicopters.
• It suggested that Russia's invasion of Ukraine shows they're not the right weapon to focus on.
• It's not abandoned helicopters, but they have proven vulnerable in Ukraine.

NATO member Poland has postponed its purchase of 32 S-70i Black Hawk helicopters, with military officials there suggesting the way Russia is fighting in Ukraine shows they're not the right equipment for it to focus on.

General Wieslaw Kukula, the Polish armed forces chief of staff, said at a Friday press conference that "we have decided to change the priorities of the helicopter programs" in order to "better adapt to the challenges of future warfare," Reuters reported.

Poland's deputy defense minister, Pawel Bejda, said on X that his country's military, pilots, and experts were analyzing the geopolitical situation, as well as "the war in Ukraine" and what Russia is buying and equipping its military with.

Poland shares a land border with Ukraine.

Grzegorz Polak, a spokesman for Poland's Armament Agency, which buys equipment for its military, told Reuters that its priorities needed "some correction" and that it might be necessary to buy other equipment instead of the helicopters, "such as drones, or tanks, or some kind of communication."

He also told Polish outlet Defence24 that the armed force's priorities have changed amid evolving threats.

Poland, like other European countries, has warned that Russia could attack elsewhere on the continent.

Its prime minister, Donald Tusk, warned in March that Russia's big military investments suggest it's readying for a conflict with someone bigger than Ukraine in the next three to four years.

Poland is already the highest spender on defense in NATO, as a proportion of its GDP, and has been a major ally of Ukraine throughout the invasion.

Helicopters over Ukraine

Helicopters have played a role in Russia's invasion, with both sides using them to counter drones, offer air support, and launch attacks.

They were particularly effective for Ukraine against Russia's attempts to seize a key airfield shortly after the invasion began in February 2022, and for Russia during Ukraine's 2023 counteroffensive.

But they have also proved vulnerable.

The proliferation of air defenses has meant that they, like other aircraft, have had to hang back from frontline fighting more than in past conflicts, making them far less useful.

Ukraine's success at taking down Russia's Ka-52 helicopters in 2023 meant Russia started using them less. Many were hit by US-provided M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS.

Reports suggest that Russia lost more than 100 helicopters in the first two years of the war.

Ukraine has also destroyed some Russian helicopters at bases far from the front lines.

Even so, losses could have been higher. Mark Hertling, a former commander of United States Army Europe, told BI in January that Russia has been "very poor" in the way it used helicopters and other air assets, but also that Ukraine's air-defense shortages have protected them.

Andrew Curtis, an independent defence and security researcher who spent 35 years as a UK Royal Air Force officer, told BI last year that one lesson Western countries could take from the war is "about the vulnerability of helicopters in the modern battlefield where hiding and seeking is not a child's game, it's a matter of life and death."

A helicopter strategy

The S-70i is a variant of the UH-60 Black Hawk made by PZL Mielec, a Polish company owned by the US's Lockheed Martin.

Poland's plan to buy them began in 2023, under a previous government. The aim was for the helicopters to be used for combat and logistics, and to work with AH-64E Apache Guardian attack helicopters ordered from the US.

Bejda, the deputy defense minister, said the latest move did not involve terminating a contract, as one was never signed.

But it has still led to some domestic issues.

Mariusz Blaszczak, Poland's former defense minister, described the decision as a disgrace in a post on X, saying it would lead to job losses, delays in replacing the country's helicopter fleet, and a loss of interoperability because Poland's military already uses some Black Hawks.

The postponement comes after Poland spent years investing in helicopter technology, including ordering 96 Apache Guardians in a deal signed last year, and 32 Leonardo AW149s in a deal signed in 2022.

Bejda said Poland would still prioritize some helicopters, including training and combat helicopters, a heavy transport helicopter, and search and rescue helicopters.

But the government, which took office at the end of 2023, clearly views increasing the fleet as less important than investing in other military assets.

The war in Ukraine has led Western countries to boost their own defense spending and to change their priorities, including through buying more air defenses and drones, investing more in tanks, and even bringing back old types of training like trench warfare.