Operation Spiderweb is a military operation that can alter the nature of war into the future. The more inexpensive drones, also being developed as cottage industry products, in Ukraine, are fast becoming an alternate and more incisive, penetrative action; what is more, these do not involve loss of human lives, they are proving more lethal.
Introduction
On Sunday 01 June, 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.”
Ukraine, stated at least 40 aircrafts 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 km and 4,300 km 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. It marks a turning point in how low-cost, improvised unmanned systems can be employed with strategic impact deep behind enemy lines.
The Conduct
The Ukrainian media claimed that the large-scale special operation was conducted by 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 by-passing 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 obliterating forensic evidence and preventing Russia from analyzing the technology used.
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 swiftly.
The SBU stated that the strikes had managed to hit Russian aircrafts worth $7 billion 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.
Use of Commercial Technology
Ukraine demonstrated a hybrid approach to drone warfare that combined remote human control with elements of autonomy and potentially AI-assisted functionality. While the operation was not fully autonomous, the available evidence suggests that artificial intelligence likely played a supporting role in both flight stability and targeting, particularly in enabling precise strikes on vulnerable components of high-value aircraft.
Apparently the FPV drones were controlled through Russian mobile telecommunications networks, including 4G and LTE connections. These networks provided sufficient bandwidth to support real-time video transmission and command inputs across vast distances, allowing Ukrainian operators to manage drone flights from outside Russian territory. This avoided the need for any physical ground control stations or nearby operators.
As per reports the drones relied on a software-hardware system built around ArduPilot a widely used, open-source autopilot framework designed for unmanned aerial vehicles. In this case, each drone was integrated with a compact onboard computer, connected to a webcam and an LTE modem via Ethernet. The camera feed was used for visual navigation, while control signals were routed through ArduPilot’.
In addition, AI-assisted targeting appears to have been integrated into the drones’ attack logic. According to open-source intelligence, SSU teams studied construction and visual profiles of the targeted aircraft to identify precise weak points which enabled rapid and precise final-stage maneuvering during the dive attack.
Operation Spider’s Web also appears to show the growing use of AI in one-way attack drones. AI in this context does not mean the most advanced and expensive large language models, but often simple algorithms trained on very specific datasets.
Ubiquitous Role of Drones
Drones first came to the fore during the Azerbaijan-Armenian Conflict and were Turkish TB2 Bayraktar used mainly to target tanks. However, the Russia-Ukraine War has seen the rise of an array of military capabilities including the use of drones en-masse as one-way attack systems previously only used in small quantities.
Prior to the war, drones were associated with remotely-piloted platforms, like HALE 9 High Altitude Long Endurance) platforms like the MQ-9B Reaper that operate at altitudes beyond 40,000 feet and can stay airborne for over 40 hours, doubling or tripling the endurance of most MALE (Medium-Altitude Long-Endurance ) drones like the Heron, Dristi-10 or indigenous TAPAS-BH. Basically, large systems that can loiter thousands of feet in the air for days to conduct surveillance missions and/or fire precision missiles against potential targets.
There is also the tactical use of quadcopters for small-unit surveillance, first-person view (FPV) one-way attack systems flown in short ranges into targets, and longer-range one-way attack systems like the Iranian-built Shahed-136, which can go hundreds or thousands of kilometers and that has been used regularly by Russia in this conflict.
The Indian Army operates drones like the Heron Mark-I and Mark-II, Searcher-II, and the IAI Harpy from Israel. India is also developing and deploying indigenous kamikaze drones, such as the Nagastra-1.
The use of these drones for attack has become a new, ubiquitous form of conventional warfare. Many are based on commercially-available technology and they are relatively cheap from as little as a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands of dollars. They are easy to produce and often have open architectures, which means the software is easy to update in response to jamming or other defensive countermeasures.
In Ukraine, drones in large numbers are also produced by the volunteer cottage industry. One such group called Klyn – whose name means “wedge” or describes the V formation of migrating geese – delivers drones in batches of 150 to Army units they have established a relationship with. In return, the soldiers send back drone footage that demonstrates their effectiveness.
Producing one-way attack drones of different sizes and ranges at speed and scale have helped Ukraine throughout the war by providing additional options for generating firepower. Drones now serve as supplements or replacements in some instances for traditional artillery or more expensive cruise missiles.
This ability to use precise mass capabilities at speed and scale especially when fused with advancing AI for guidance place enormous pressure on defensive measures. Recently the U S Navy, spent billions of dollars in the Red Sea to defend itself and commercial shipping from inexpensive precise mass systems used by Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
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 not established, 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.”
Lessons Regarding Air Space
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 above and from beyond national borders.
Yet, 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.
As per Lieutenant General Ashok Shivane; “Air Defence grids are designed to track ballistic arcs, intercept radar signatures, counter drones and maintain exclusion zones. None of those countermeasures apply when the threat is pre-assembled behind the lines, activated by remote control, and flown by handheld devices. Russia’s vast air defence network was not breached; it was bypassed. And that distinction is fatal.”
“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. It also shattered the illusion that distance ensures safety.
The unmanned drones exploit the air space that is above ground forces yet below the altitude where high-performance fighters and bombers traditionally roam. Drones thrive in this region, where they bypass most infantry weapons and fly too low for traditional radar-guided defenses to track reliably.
By smuggling small launch teams of drones within a few miles of each runway, Kyiv created launchpads deep in Russia and were able to catch the enemy off guard and unprepared.
The economic benefits of Ukraine’s approach are stark. Whereas a drone, a lithium-battery and a warhead cost well under $3,000, a Russian Tu-160 bomber costs in the region of $250 million.
This is now a universal vulnerability and a defining governance challenge of drones in the low-level airspace. This means that airspace is widely accessible. It is also difficult to keep out drones with unpredictable flightpaths. It showed how little the margin for error is there is in an airspace where cheap systems can be used precisely. As demonstrated the cost of failure can be strategic.
One other aspect that stands out is the role of sleeper cells that facilitate such an operation in the form of providing trucks and their papers as well as information about targets. Operation Spider Web go far beyond the Russia-Ukraine conflict by undermining the fact that rear areas are no longer safe.
Conclusion
While speaking at the Shangri-la Dialogue a day before the attack Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Oleksandr Rozenko made comments about how the Ukraine war is changing the manner in which nations conduct their acquisition and how it has forced nations to rethink and streamline their R&D practices.
“This is a war of technology,” he said in reference to Ukraine’s war with Russia. “Whoever has the most and fastest scaling solutions will win.” That statement would turn out to be revealing 24 hours later.
This will undoubtedly go down as one of the most sophisticated covert operations of the Russo-Ukrainian 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.
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.
From critical military infrastructure to civilian sites, the vulnerability to small, precise, and hard-to-detect systems is growing. Conventional air defenses are often ill-suited for this new threat landscape, prompting an urgent call for innovation in early detection, electronic warfare, and layered physical defences. Together, these trends point to a future where technological agility, not just industrial scale, determines strategic advantage.
Ukraine’s devastating attack demonstrates that we have entered the era of precise mass in war. The combination of AI and autonomous weapons, precision guidance, and commercial manufacturing mean that low-cost precision strikes are now accessible to almost any state or militant group. There is a thus need for new tactics and anti-drone capabilities akin to an AD umbrella used for covering the move of offensive formations.
There is no doubt that this attack will go down as one of the finest out of the box ideas of this conflict executed with amazing ingenuity rendering the entire air defence system sterile and raising huge questions regarding the management of airspace with repercussions far beyond the conflict as it is increasingly difficult if not impossible to distinguish between the smaller models of armed drones and civilian drones.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Maj Gen VK Singh, VSM was commissioned into The Scinde Horse in Dec 1983. The officer has commanded an Independent Recce Sqn in the desert sector, and has the distinction of being the first Armoured Corps Officer to command an Assam Rifles Battalion in Counter Insurgency Operations in Manipur and Nagaland, as well as the first General Cadre Officer to command a Strategic Forces Brigade. He then commanded 12 Infantry Division (RAPID) in Western Sector. The General is a fourth generation army officer.
Major General Jagatbir Singh was commissioned into 18 Cavalry in December 1981. During his 38 years of service in the Army he has held various command, staff and instructional appointments and served in varied terrains in the country. He has served in a United Nations Peace Keeping Mission as a Military Observer in Iraq and Kuwait. He has been an instructor to Indian Military Academy and the Defence Services Staff College, Wellington. He is a prolific writer in defence & national security and adept at public speaking.
