Russia’s Trojan horse moment and why Ukraine’s ‘Operation Spider’s Web’ upends scope of drone warfare

In an audacious attack that was planned for over a year and half, Ukraine carried out large scale drone attacks on multiple Russian air bases, including one in Siberia that was some 4,000 km away from the frontlines. Under its ‘Operation Spider’s Web’, a swarm of Ukrainian drones were unleashed on June 1 that attacked at least five military airbases deep inside Russia’s borders and left some 41 bomber aircraft in flames.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky described the operation as “an absolutely brilliant result” and said the Ukrainians’ actions will “undoubtedly be in the history books”. He said planning for the operation began 18 months ago, and those involved “were withdrawn from Russian territory in time”.

The attack comes close on the heels of a stepping up of Russia’s bombing of Ukrainian cities and was timed just ahead of crucial talks between the two sides. A new round of peace talks is scheduled to start in Istanbul on June 2.

Trojan Horse attack
Sources say specialised drones called FPV drones were smuggled into Russia, along with mobile wooden cabins. The cabins were carried by trucks with the drones hidden inside. The cabin roofs opened remotely – and then the drones took off, zoned in on the nearby bases to precisely mount the attacks.

Ukraine claimed the attack caused $7 billion in damage, with multiple combat planes destroyed in the attack. The Russian defence ministry on Sunday said Ukraine launched FPV drone attacks on five airbases across the Murmansk, Irkutsk, Ivanovo, Ryazan, and Amur regions, adding that all strikes on the Ivanovo, Ryazan, and Amur airfields were successfully repelled.

Audaciousness of the mission
“(For) All the long range missiles and fighter jets, but it was 150 drones in shipping containers or trucks that took out a reported 1/3 of Russia’s strategic bomber fleet and unmanned surface drones that neutered the Black Fleet. Warfare as we knew it just a decade ago, is over,” according to Alex Plitsas, a nonresident senior fellow with the Middle East Programs’ Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative who leads the Initiative’s Counterterrorism Project and was formerly associated with Bridgewater Associates and NorthropGrumman.

There are at least five reasons why the attack changes the rules of battlefield engagement:

It was one of significant raiding actions in modern warfare, given that the mission was planned for 18 months. This differed from the sort of attacks Ukraine has mounted so far – larger fixed-wing drones attacking at night, closer to areas adjoining Russia’s border with Ukraine. This upends that pattern entirely, given that small drones were used this time during the day, and this was done far away from the front lines and deep into Russian territory. In Irkutsk province in eastern Siberia, thousands of kilometres away from Ukraine, locals posted footage of small quadcopter drones emerging from the roof of trucks and then flying toward a nearby airfield, followed by the smoke after impact.

The attacks at these Russian airfields are said to have destroyed 41 aircraft, including A-50 early-warning planes and Tu-22M3 and Tu-95 strategic bombers, most of which are now out of production and extremely difficult to replace. Russia is estimated to have less than 100 strategic bombers, and around a third of that fleet is impacted with this attack.

These attacks were carried out by the SBU, Ukraine’s main security agency. The agency released footage in which its chief, Vasily Maliuk, said: “Russian strategic bombers… all burning delightfully.” Commentators on X aligned to Ukraine’s security services indicated that over a 100 quadcopter FPV drones with bombs were smuggled into Russia for the operations. These were then meticulously housed in specially-built wooden cabins, loaded on top of lorries and then released after the roofs of the cabins were retracted remotely.

FPV or first-person view drones are smaller in size and have cameras built in on the front, which sends live video to the operator. This enables precise flying and manoeuvrability by the operator from a remote location, almost like an aircraft. The Economist reported that these drones used Russian mobile-telephone networks to relay their footage back to Ukraine, much of which then shared on social media.

It is entirely possible that the drivers of the trucks did not know what they were carrying. In that respect, analysts said this operation was similar to the 2022 attack on Kerch bridge, where a bomb concealed in a lorry destroyed part of the bridge linking Crimea with the Russian mainland.

The planning was elaborate. A source quoted by The Economist said that the Russians were first encouraged to move more of their planes to particular bases by Ukrainian strikes on other ones. Three days before this drone attack, dozens of planes were moved to the Olenya airfield in Murmansk province, according to reports published at the time. It was precisely here that the most damage was done after the June 1 attack.

The scope of drone warfare
The fact that Ukraine was able to destroy such a large number of Russia’s aircraft deep inside Russia territory demonstrates the effectiveness of such deep-strike programmes and taking the possibilities of drone warfare to another level.

According to Thomas Shugart, an Adjunct Senior Fellow with the Defense Programme at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) and someone who served for over 25 years in the US Navy, where he last worked in the Defense Department’s Office of Net Assessment: “Imagine, on game-day, containers at railyards, on Chinese-owned container ships in port or offshore, on trucks parked at random properties…spewing forth thousands of drones that sally forth and at least mission-kill the crown jewels of the [US Air Force]… would be “entirely feasible”.

The America-specific warning issued by Shugart, who has previously written about the threat to airfields from drones and recommended specifically that key aircraft such as bombers should also have hardened shelters for just this sort of attack, could now resonate across geographies, including India.