On June 1, Ukraine launched one of its largest ever drone-based operations on Russia, striking five airbases deep inside Russian territory.
Following this, the Russian Defence Ministry said in a statement, "Today, the Kyiv regime staged a terror attack with the use of FPV drones on airfields in the Murmansk, Irkutsk, Ivanovo, Ryazan, and Amur Regions. All terror attacks were repelled. No casualties were reported either among servicemen or civilians. Some of those involved in the terror attacks were detained.”
Ukraine, however, stated that at least 40 aircraft had been damaged, specifying that these included nuclear capable Tu-95 and Tu-22 strategic bombers earlier used to “bomb Ukrainian cities”. Russia’s Defence Ministry only confirmed that “several aircraft caught fire.”
Two of the airbases struck, Olenya and Belaya, are around 1,900 kilometres and 4,300 kilometres from Ukraine. The first is located in the Russian Arctic and the other in Eastern Siberia. The operation is also one more example of just how rapidly technology and innovative thinking are changing the battlefield.
Operation
The Ukrainian media claimed that the large-scale special operation was conducted by the SBU, Ukraine's Special Security Service. The planning and preparation started 18 months ago. Russia has highly capable air defence systems and so, it was impossible to strike it from Ukraine. Hence, a plan was made to hit Russia from within Russia, thereby bypassing its air defence wall.
The operation has been launched under a special operation, code-named "Pavutyna" or "Spider Web", aimed at degrading Russia's long-range strike capabilities.
Ukraine reportedly planned the attack for a year. The drones were packed onto pallets inside wooden containers with remote-controlled lids and then loaded onto cargo trucks, with the crates being rigged to self-destruct after the drones were released.
These cargo trucks then smuggled the drones into Russia, blending with normal Russian highway traffic. The trucks were camouflaged with wooden structures, likely posing their payload as cargo shipments, such as lumber or construction materials. Some of these may also have had false license plates or forged documents to pass Russian checkpoints unnoticed.
As an added advantage, Russia's vast road network and relatively porous internal transport system make it hard to monitor every vehicle. The trucks were then apparently driven to locations near airbases by drivers who were seemingly unaware of their cargo. Finally, the drones were launched and set upon their targets.
Roofs of the wooden cabins carried by the trucks were opened by remote control, with the drones being simultaneously launched to attack Russian air bases. Once launched, these aerial vehicles relied on GPS/inertial guidance systems to fly autonomously toward distant Russian airbases. The drones were adapted to first-person-view (FPV) multirotor platforms, which allows the operator to get a first-person perspective from the aerial vehicle’s onboard camera.
Apparently, Ukraine used NATO-supplied satellite data and ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) to identify the exact positions of Russian bombers, gaps in radar coverage, and safe launch zones deep inside Russia.
Videos circulating online show the drones emerging from the roof of one of the vehicles involved. A lorry driver interviewed by Russian state outlet Ria Novosti claimed that he and other drivers tried to knock down drones flying out of a truck with rocks. "They were in the back of the truck and we threw stones to keep them from flying up, to keep them pinned down," he said.
Using 117 drones, Ukraine was able to reach regions thousands of kilometres from the front, compared to its previous attacks,which generally focused on areas close to its borders.
Once the drones were launched from within their territory, Russia’s defences had very little time to react, as the aerial vehicles bypassed border surveillance.
The SBU stated that the strikes had managed to hit Russian aircraft worth $7billion at four airbases. The cost curve, using relatively cheap systems to destroy billions of dollars’ worth of Russian combat power, has also been turned on its head.
Evaluation
The idea behind Operation “Spider Web” was to transport small, first-person-view drones close enough to Russian airfields to render traditional air defence systems useless.
President Zelensky said the attack “had an absolutely brilliant outcome” and dubbed it as “Russia’s Pearl Harbor”, one that demonstrated Ukraine’s capability to hit high-value targets anywhere on enemy turf, dealing a significant and humiliating blow to the Kremlin’s stature and Moscow’s war machine.
“Our people operated across several Russian regions in three different time zones. And the people who assisted us were withdrawn from Russian territory before the operation, they are now safe,” the Ukrainian President stated.
Dr Steve Wright, a UK-based drone expert, told the BBC that the drones used were simple quadcopters carrying relatively heavy payloads.
However, in his view, what made this attack "quite extraordinary" was the ability to smuggle them into Russia, and then launch and command them remotely. This, he concluded, had been potentially achieved through a link relayed through a satellite or the internet.
Although the full extent of the damage from these Ukrainian strikes is unknown, the attacks showed that Kyiv was adapting and evolving in the face of a larger military with deeper resources.
As per Justin Bronk of the Royal United Services Institute, “If even half the total claim of 41 aircraft damaged/destroyed is confirmed, it will have a significant impact on the capacity of the Russian Long-Range Aviation force to keep up its regular large-scale cruise missile salvos against Ukrainian cities and infrastructure.”
Conclusion
This will undoubtedly go down as one of the most sophisticated covert operations of the Russia-Ukraine War so far. Ukraine, though outgunned by Russia, has responded by developing a cheap and sizeable inventory of attack drones. The innovative use of these drones has now been clearly exhibited, showcasing the strategic value of this asset.
Nations treat their airspace as sovereign, a controlled environment that is mapped, regulated, and watched over. Air defence systems are built on the assumption that threats come from beyond national borders.
Operation “Spider Web” exposed what happens when countries are attacked from within. The drones flew low, through unmonitored gaps, exploiting assumptions about what kind of threat was faced and from where. In low-level airspace, responsibility fragments and detection tools evidently lose their edge.
“Spider Web” worked, not because of what each drone could do individually, but how the operation was designed. The cost of each drone was low but the overall effect was high. This isn’t just asymmetric warfare, it’s a different kind of offensive capability for which nations need to adapt.
Beyond the battlefield, the impact of this operation is perhaps even more significant. What “Spider Web” confirms is that the gaps in airspace can be used by an adversary with enough planning and the right technology. They can be exploited not just by states and not just in war. The technology is not rare and the tactics are not complicated. What Ukraine did was to combine them in a way that existing systems could not see the attack coming.
Drones in low-level airspace are now a universal vulnerability and a defining challenge. It is difficult to keep out drones with unpredictable flight paths. The operation showed how little the margin for error is when cheap systems can be used precisely. As demonstrated, the cost of failure can be strategic.
Though the consequences of the attacks on Russian military capabilities are difficult to estimate at this stage, their symbolic significance is important for Ukraine, as it has been facing setbacks on the battlefront. Ukraine, which has banked on expanding the use of domestically produced drones during the ongoing conflict, has now surprised Russia and the world with this new approach.
However, the attacks are unlikely to alter the political calculus of President Putin or change Russia’s belief that it holds an advantage over Ukraine, and that it sees a weakening resolve in some of Ukraine’s allies.
There is no doubt that this attack will go down as one of the finest out-of-the-box ideas of this conflict rendering the entire air defence system sterile and raising huge questions regarding the management of airspace with repercussions far beyond the conflict.
