‘A psychological victory': 3 writers discuss Ukraine's drone strikes
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On Sunday, Ukraine launched surprise drone strikes that targeted strategic bombers parked deep inside Russian territory. Ukrainian officials claimed the strikes damaged or destroyed dozens of planes. This development feels like a game changer, but how exactly? I sat down with two of my colleagues, Max Boot and Jim Geraghty, to discuss if Ukraine's sneak attack on Russia could change the outlook of the war. — Damir Marusic, assignment editor
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Damir Marusic Do you think the strikes change things, practically, on the battlefield? What lessons, if any, do you think Russian President Vladimir Putin has taken away from them?
Max Boot It probably won't be a big change on the battlefield but it will certainly hamper Russia's ability to fire missiles at Ukrainian cities. This is not a game changer but it's a significant operational and psychological victory for Ukraine. I doubt the message will get through but it should help convince Putin he is not going to win this war.
Jim Geraghty I'm sure any alleviation of Russia's ability to launch cruise missiles at Ukraine will be welcomed, but I agree with Max, this is primarily a psychological and symbolic blow to Putin and the Russians.
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Jim On my second trip to Ukraine, I spoke with Akhmed Zakayev, the prime minister of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, the Chechen government in exile; Chechens are fighting against the Russians in Ukraine. He told me, 'Russians like to fight wars on other people's territory. They hate to fight wars on Russian territory.' Putin won't feel any pressure to cut a deal until the elites in Moscow and St. Petersburg feel the consequences of the war. Strikes deep in Siberia send a strong signal that no spot in Russia is safe from Ukrainian retaliatory strikes.
Damir Ukrainians have long argued that hitting Russia hard does not lead to further escalation — that the support of the West is enough of a deterrent. Do you expect Russia to escalate after this, or will it just be more of the same grind?
Max Short of nuclear weapons (which I don't expect) there is not much Putin can do that he hasn't already done. Russian hard-liners keep demanding carpet bombing of Ukrainian cities. The reason Putin isn't doing that is not because he's a closet humanitarian: It's because Ukrainian air defenses are too strong. Of course, the Kremlin will claim some big air attack on Kyiv as 'revenge' but they've been mounting air attacks since the start of the war. It's not like Putin would be going easy if the Ukrainians weren't hitting back.
Jim Agreed. One of the many problems of fighting a war with maximum brutality is there's not much room to escalate in response to the enemy's actions.
Damir The Ukrainians had been planning this strike for more than 18 months, and the United States knew nothing about it. Max, you mentioned there was a message for Putin there. Was there a message for the United States, and specifically the Trump administration, here as well?
Jim That this was the finest operational secrecy since the Dallas Mavericks traded Luka Doncic to the Lakers.
Max 😂
Max I think the message is that the Ukrainians don't trust the United States. They have scar tissue from all of the overly restrictive limitations imposed by the Biden administration on the use of U.S. weapons, so they are using drones not only because they are so effective but also because they are made in Ukraine. Of course, the level of mistrust between Kyiv and Washington has gone up exponentially since President Donald Trump came to office. The Ukrainians know they are dealing with an American president who has a soft spot in his heart for the war criminals in the Kremlin.
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Jim Hey, if Trump wants to get back into the inner circle of Ukraine's operations, I'm sure Kyiv would loop him in on the memos in exchange for some more Patriot missiles.
Damir Max, you wrote a terrific piece over the weekend about what these strikes mean for the future of warfare — that the era of the drone is upon us. Zooming out, what do you guys think this means for the defense of Taiwan, for example?
Max This attack confirms the lesson we've been learning for more than three years in Ukraine: Drones are the future of warfare. In the war's early days, more than 70 percent of the casualties were being inflicted by artillery. Now 70 percent are being inflicted by drones. This is a lesson that every nation in the world, including Taiwan, needs to take onboard. Taiwan needs to crank up drone production to make it too difficult for China to invade. The U.S. also needs to crank up production. As I noted in a recent column, the U.S. can only manufacture about 100,000 drones a year. Ukraine made 2.2 million last year and is aiming to make 4.5 million this year. We've fallen behind in the drone revolution.
Jim Like Max, my first reaction was 'Wow, this is an amazing accomplishment for the Ukrainians. The Russians must feel like a Ukrainian drone could hit them anytime, anywhere.' My second reaction was, 'Whoa, wait a minute, how secure are our air bases from an attack like this?' My guess is: not particularly protected. Although, when I visited Kyiv earlier this year, a lot of European allies were in town, looking for drone warfare lessons and suppliers from the Ukrainians …
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Damir Jim, regarding our own security, that's exactly what popped into my mind. Remember those stories about Chinese entities buying up land near our military installations? At the time, I assumed it was about espionage, but since this weekend, I wonder if there might be other reasons.
Max Counterdrone warfare has to become an urgent priority for every military in the world. The Ukrainian attack revealed the vulnerability of airfields (and other installations) all over the world to similar sneak attacks. It used to be that you needed to build long-range missiles to have long-range strike capacity. No longer. Now you can achieve the same result with ultracheap drones that can be reconfigured to carry explosives in a ramshackle workshop; terrorist groups could easily manufacture them. If we aren't worried, we aren't paying attention.
Damir And it's not just military airfields, right? Civilian defense has to be in the mix — power stations, airports, data centers …
Jim Okay, I wondered if this was a silly thing to bring up, but in the 2013 … er, cinematic classic featuring Gerard Butler, 'Olympus Has Fallen,' the North Koreans launch a devastating attack on the White House using machine guns hidden in garbage trucks. It seemed cheesy and implausible at the time, but the scenes at those Russian airfields must have felt like that — ordinary trucks opening up and unleashing an arsenal upon unsuspecting targets nearby. Every military and spy agency around the world is looking at the Ukrainian operation and asking, 'If they can pull that off, why can't we?'
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Damir Final question: Do you think that efforts such as Trump's Golden Dome missile defense project are now less of a priority? Should there be a pivot?
Jim The threat from ballistic missiles isn't mythical, but I think there will be a lot of fair questions about why we would spend so much on large missile defense and not take action to defend against smaller, lighter, cheaper drones.
Max I've long thought that Golden Dome was a monumental boondoggle that will not achieve its objective of space-based missile defenses. We should be spending that money on drones and drone defenses. That is the real future of warfare.
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