Inside Operation Spiderweb: Ukraine's drone triumph is a blow against Russia that will spook friend and foe alike

Independent

5 days ago

When the lorry stopped close to the Belaya airfield and the wooden sheds onboard opened their roofs to release a swarm of quadcopters over the weekend, warfare changed forever.
The success of Ukraine's Operation Spiderweb, which destroyed more than 40 Russian bombers, will have caused delight and terror in the hearts of Kyiv's allies.
The homegrown operation to hide drones in the false compartments of prefabricated sheds and unleash them simultaneously many thousands of miles apart, and many thousands of miles behind enemy lines, has clipped the wings of Vladimir Putin's strategic air operations.
Ukraine claims that its SBU intelligence services destroyed 41 Russian aircraft doing $7 billion worth of damage to long range bombers that carried the cruise missiles Putin has been using against Ukraine.
Videos of the attack on Belaya show aircraft bursting into flames as drones, which may have been autonomous or semi-autonomous, dived onto planes sitting on the Tarmac in a raid as daring at the first successful Special Air Service attack on the Italian airfield at Tamet in 1941 destroying 23 aircraft.
But, aside from a handful of agents who were part of the 18 months it took to bring Operation Spiderweb to its conclusion, no commandos had to risk their lives to blow up Tu-95 Tu-22M3 bombers and Russian A-50 early warning spy planes. Kyiv said that the 41 aircraft attacked represented 34 per cent of the Kremlin's long range bomber capability.
The operation involved assembling sheds with hidden compartments for the nests of drones, sneaking them onto lorries and in the case of the Belaya assault, driving the trucks more than 4,000km across the Russian Federation.
The vehicles were then parked and the roofs of the sheds opened by remote control to release the drones which were flown onto their targets using the Russian mobile telephone network.
Given that 117 drones were used in the four attacks it is unlikely they were all flown by human pilots, so it is likely that a form of artificial intelligence was used in the drone targeting system – although no Ukrainian officials have said as much.
Operation Spiderweb came as Russia has drastically increased its air campaign against Ukraine using primitive Iranian-designed long range Shahed drones as well as ballistic and cruise missiles.
The airfields hit were in Belaya in Irkutsk oblast (region), Siberia, Olenya in Murmansk oblast, Russia's extreme north-west Dyagilevo in central Ryazan oblast, Ivanovo in central Ivanovo oblast
In conventional military doctrine, the destruction of so many strategic aircraft would form part of a multi-million dollar operation using long range missiles, probably involving an aircraft carrier and risk the lives of pilots, as the US and UK have been doing in recent attacks against the Houthis in Yemen.
But Ukraine has achieved dramatic strategic effects with guile and cheaply produced quadcopters similar to what can be bought on any high street in Britain.
'Putin has realized that Russia is not winning the war and that Ukraine is capable of such ingenious military operations. In fact, Ukraine has debunked the myth that it 'doesn't have the cards', said Olekandr Morezkho, chairman Ukraine's parliamentary foreign affairs committee.
'Before this attack Trump thought that Ukraine is losing the war and didn't want to help much, remembering experiences of Vietnam and Afghanistan. Yet all of a sudden Ukraine has proved that its military is very active and creative and capable of delivering painful and humiliating blows to the enemy.
'People are less inclined to support the side which they believe is losing the war, but they want to help more when they see that the side is capable of gaining victories on the battlefield. In a word, it might be beginning of turning the tide in the course of war.'
Ukraine focused on attacking other airfields in recent weeks in order to get the Russians to concentrate their strategic bombers in a small number of locations, Ukrainian sources said.
Russia's intelligence agencies said they had detained an undisclosed number of people allegedly involved in Operation Spiderweb – but Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine's president, said that all operatives had left the country before the attacks were triggered.
Eyewitnesses in Siberia reported that they had seen one of the lorry drivers 'running about' after this vehicle released its swarm and it is not clear if the Russians involved in the plot were even aware of what they were doing.
Ukraine's latest operation has been the culmination of home-grown long-range attacks against Russian energy infrastructure, airfields, and transport hubs. Secret agents working for Kyiv have also targeted Russian generals killing at least two in recent assassinations on the streets of Moscow.
Ukraine has been forced to lead the world in drone operations because of severe restrictions on its use of long range conventional weapons imposed by the US and, until recently, the UK.
With the latest phase of the war now well into its fourth year Germany has signalled that it would help Ukraine with longer range strikes into Russia which would not require the stealth and cunning of Operation Spiderweb.
But the success of the drone campaign will be noted by intelligence officials, military leaders, and terrorist groups around the world.
The home-made adaptations of commercially available drones into guided missiles pioneered on Ukraine's frontline with Russian forces have already been adopted by militant groups in the Middle East and Africa.
Operation Spiderweb shows how 'non-state actors' could humble a superpower.