The astonishing drone attack by Ukraine on military airfields inside Russia caught the Kremlin by surprise, destroyed at least a dozen strategic bombers, and marked a seismic shift in modern warfare. America – and not only it – is now discovering that it has a problem.
The Ukrainian mission, dubbed „Operation Spider Web,” was a fresh reminder for the leaders of the world’s most advanced armies that today’s most challenging threats are not limited to their usual rivals equipped with expensive gear.
Instead, swarms of small, standard drones capable of evading ground defenses are also able to instantly destroy military equipment worth billions of dollars.
What happened in Russia could happen in the United States or anywhere else. The risk facing military bases, ports, and command centers scattered around the globe is now evident without a shadow of a doubt, writes W.J. Hennigan, in an article published by The New York Times.
We still do not know if the operation will impact the Trump administration's efforts to broker a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia, but nonetheless, it has dealt a tactical blow to the Russian army and will put pressure on Vladimir Putin to react.
And what is almost certain is that the innovative use of inexpensive technology will inspire other asymmetric attacks that will cause serious damage to a powerful and wealthy adversary.
The scale of the attack — and the choice of targets — opens a new chapter in how drones are used in modern warfare, one that was unlikely even a decade ago.
The widespread availability of technology in recent years has allowed Ukraine to largely have access to the skies above its larger and wealthier enemy, despite having a limited traditional air force.
America is discovered in the era of drone supremacy
The American military understands from its own experience the vulnerability of Russia. While American pilots have managed to control the skies where they operate since the Korean War, American troops have been exposed to greater danger from drones in recent years.
Militant groups have used these aircraft, which are much smaller than American warplanes, to target American positions in the Middle East, launching rudimentary munitions that have maimed and killed American soldiers.
The US military has global-level technology to detect, track, and shoot down ballistic missiles, but its multimillion-dollar systems remain powerless against the threat posed by drones for now.
The Pentagon has tried to develop defensive technologies and tactics, but the results have been uneven at best.
The so-called hard-kill tactics to shoot down drones from the sky or soft-kill methods to electronically disable them have not proven to be miraculous solutions. Unmanned aircraft usually fly close to the ground and do not always transmit their positions. Current radar systems are designed to detect larger flying objects.
American commanders increasingly realize that US forces are just as exposed. General Gregory M. Guillot, head of US Northern Command, told Congress in February that last year approximately 350 drone flyovers were detected above 100 US military installations. Those small drones seemed more of a nuisance than a threat, but the Ukrainian operation showed what could happen if not taken seriously.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has authorized over a million drones in the US. Most fly in accordance with the rules, but reports of drones conducting illegal flights are on the rise. FAA reports 100 drone sightings around airports each month, despite federal law requiring them to avoid unauthorized flights near airports in controlled airspace.
The giant that brought drones into war is vulnerable to these weapons
Military bases and aircraft hangars should be fortified to protect against the most serious situations. Congress is prepared to allocate approximately $1.3 billion this fiscal year to the Pentagon for the development and implementation of anti-drone technologies. This is a good start. However, the Pentagon's most ambitious and costly plans fail to address this threat, the author emphasizes.
President Trump unveiled plans last month for his $175 billion missile defense shield, named Golden Dome, which aims to shoot down ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missiles. However, the program, still in development, would not protect the US from the types of small drones used by Ukraine in the "Spider Web" mission.
The US has spent millions to help Ukraine produce and perfect its drones, but has not pressured American contractors to do the same.
The Pentagon has been slow in acquiring smaller, cheaper, and less advanced brand drones, ubiquitous on the battlefields in Ukraine. In August 2023, it announced a project to place orders for thousands of autonomous systems. The one-billion-dollar initiative, named Replicator, was inspired by the lessons learned in Ukraine to manufacture inexpensive drones and make them widely available by this fall.
However, the Department of Defense has said very little about the systems and programs of the initiative since Donald Trump took office as president.
The most technologically advanced fighting force the world has ever known - the same one that ushered in the era of drone warfare with its Predator and Reaper drones armed with missiles at the beginning of the century - has been slow to adopt this technology.
The irony will not escape many at the Pentagon, the author writes, expressing hope that Ukraine's Sunday attack inside Russia will motivate America's war planners to address the nation's clear vulnerability to similar threats and its own urgent need to expand its fleet of small drones.
Ukraine shattered pessimism
The lesson Ukraine offers to the world's major military powers regarding the role of drones in warfare is analyzed by The Atlantic.
The attack showed how bold, ingenious, and effective Ukrainians can be in their own defense when Western leaders do not press them to abstain. It also revealed the vulnerability of large and expensive aircraft and other prized equipment of major powers worldwide, notes the American publication.
Ukrainians claimed that over 40 advanced Russian planes were hit and that at least 13 were destroyed. It is not yet clear how much of the damage is reparable.
Kyiv boasted of destroying over a third of Russia's large Tu-95 bombers, a mainstay for launching waves of missiles that regularly hit Ukrainian cities. Tu-95s are irreplaceable: Russia lacks production units to make more such aircraft, and has not yet designed a successor to the model.
The attack also appears to have damaged a large number of Tu-22 M3 bombers and likely an A-50 command aircraft, the Russian equivalent of a US-made airborne warning and control system. The total cost of Russian losses likely amounts to several billion dollars.
On the other hand, the cost of one of the Ukrainian drones used in the Russia attack was estimated at about $1,200 - so even if each airfield were attacked with 100 drones each - a rather rough estimate, the publication mentions - the total cost of the drones used would still be less than a million dollars.
"It's hard for me to think of a recent military operation in which one side suffered so much damage at such a low cost to the other," emphasizes the author of the analysis, Phillips Payson O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St Andrews, Scotland.
For those who doubt Ukraine, these attacks should lead to a period of quiet reflection. President Donald Trump insisted that Ukraine "has no cards" to play in the war with Russia and told this to Zelensky face to face in the infamous White House argument. O’Brien mentions that even The New York Times editorial board recently suggested that it is unlikely for Ukraine to generate a military development that could change the fundamental course of the war.
However, he believes that the pessimism regarding Ukraine's capabilities is wrong.
A series of questions and still no answers
For the United States and other major Western military forces, Ukraine's use of trucks parked outside secured areas near military sites will raise uncomfortable questions.
How closely are - or can - they monitor all truck traffic passing by their bases? Do they know what's happening on every property near where an adversary could hide swarms of drones and then launch them without warning?
For many years, for example, Chinese interests have been buying large tracts of farmland right next to important American military bases. They could grow soybeans, but they could also serve as training grounds for swarms of drones that would make Ukrainian attacks seem minuscule.
Meanwhile, in Europe, military bases have been repeatedly flown over in recent years by a large number of unknown drones, likely gathering intelligence. No matter which power is involved, it clearly has the ability to deploy a larger number of drones in potential attacks. The Ukrainians are now showing the American and European armies that better security against drone flights has long been needed, the author concludes.