Russia Is Putting Tires on Many of Its Planes for a Specific, Tactical Reason

Although it's been more than three years since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, the war is still ongoing and has in fact escalated. That has meant that, after months of being out of the news, Russia and Ukraine are once again making headlines. Although it's not a new development exactly, some have also taken note of the fact that Russia appears to put tires on a lot of their planes.

The planes look quite strange with tires strewn about their top and wings, which has led many to wonder why Russia might do something of that sort. Here's what we know about why Russia puts tires on planes.

According to The War Zone, U.S. intelligence has confirmed that the reason Russia puts tires on the top of its planes is to mess with image-matching software that is embedded in lots of munitions. Essentially, if you put tires on a plane, it makes it harder for the software in a missile to recognize that what it's looking at is a plane, and therefore also less likely to target it.

Schuyler Moore, U.S. Central Command’s (CENTCOM) first-ever Chief Technology Officer, confirmed that's what the tires were for in 2024.

A “sort of classic unclassified example that exists is like a picture of a plane from the top, and you’re looking for a plane, and then if you put tires on top of the wings, all of a sudden, a lot of computer vision models have difficulty identifying that that’s a plane,” she explained.

Russia is mainly putting tires on bombers and other aircraft, and that's in part designed to throw off anti-aircraft drones and other missiles meant to take down the planes. At this point, it's largely a military tactic, and one that has been somewhat effective in thwarting various missile softwares. Ukraine has been quite innovative in its use of drone warfare, and it seems that Russia's tire move is something of a countermeasure.

While some had speculated that the tires could give the planes some additional level of concrete defense against attack, the image recognition explanation is much more straightforward and intuitive. Of course, Moore also made it clear in her comments that the tires were a tactic that these models could eventually adapt to.

“If you were able, in that single moment for a user to say, I identified that the adversary has changed what they are doing visually [with the tires], I am going to go back and start labeling to at least adjust for maybe I’m looking for a different type of plane shape, or I’m looking for a nuance that accounts for a change in coloration on top of the wings, that may be able to get me there,” she explained.

“But if it takes you six months to get to that answer, and then the next day, they said ‘Oh, perfect. You didn’t like tires? OK, I’ll put something else on top,’ and it breaks the model … Again, we are spending inordinate amounts of time on computer vision with very little to gain," she continued.