For decades, the Pentagon war-gamed American inter-continental ballistic missile strikes on Soviet nuclear bases. Yesterday, Ukraine successfully attacked one, sending a huge orange cloud rising over Engels-2, on the Volga River. To duck Russian air defenses, Kyiv’s strategy was to use $50,000 drones modified from Ukraine’s equivalents of single-engine Piper Cubs.

Bearing the name of communist philosopher Friedrich Engels, the air base is the sole operations center for Russia’s most expensive strategic bomber, the sweep-winged Tupolev Tu-160, known in the West by its NATO codename, Blackjack. Explosions blew debris over a three-mile radius. Parked along the two-mile-long concrete runway were Tu-95 and Tu-160 bombers.