Russia’s Su-35 and Su-34 Nuclear Bombers Just Practiced a War with NATO

By Nicholas J. Myers,The National Interest

Just when it seemed that Zapad-2017 was finally moving into the rear-view mirror, it came back to life. Unlike in September 2017, when the whole world was watching [3] (and counter-exercising [4]), this time it passed by virtually unnoticed. Russia has a long history of breaking up its strategic-operational exercises to give its commanders the opportunity to practice General Staff plans in real time and so it is no surprise that more Zapad activities were added later; however, controlling the amount of interest in the West has been much easier this time around.

From March 26 to 29, Russia held the exercise Ladoga-2018 [5]. Officially, this was a relatively small affair by Russian military exercise standards: a little more than fifty pilots [6] practiced detecting a conventional enemy and launching a variety of missiles in the northwest of Russia (Ladoga is the largest lake in Europe, northeast of St. Petersburg and famous for being crossed while frozen to relieve Leningrad during World War II).

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However, those fifty pilots were paired with anything up to one hundred aircraft, including the 4++-generation Su-35 interceptor and the new nuclear-capable Su-34 bomber. This makes Ladoga easily the largest air exercise in Russia since Zapad-2017, indeed larger as Zapad claimed only seventy aircraft [10] officially. In 2009, Ladoga was part of the Zapad-2009narrative, deploying units from all services [11] as it was the strategic-operational capstone exercise of the now-merged Northwest Military District. Since then, Ladoga has been an annual Russian Air Force event for fifty-odd pilots, though it again added substantial ground elements in 2013 [12] as Zapad-2013 approached. However, Ladoga-2017 never happened and so my interest rose as the exercise returned in 2018.

Ladoga-2018 did feature substantial deployments of aircraft from across the Western Military District to the Besovets Air Base near the Finnish border. It seems to have simulated the mammoth air operation that the Soviet Air Force trained to conduct at the start of a major war with NATO during the Cold War, firing expensive guided rockets Russia rarely uses during ordinary training. However, there was no ground component as there was in the Ladoga exercises leading up to Zapad-2009 and 2013.