Operation Spider’s Web marks a strategic watershed in Kyiv’s resistance to Russia’s full-scale invasion, exemplifying the maturation of drone warfare and the effectiveness of asymmetric tactics against a conventionally superior adversary.
Launched on June 1, the operation struck at the core of Russia’s strategic aviation fleet, inflicting damage across geographically dispersed targets and significantly eroding Moscow’s long-range strike capabilities. According to open-source estimates, at least 22 aircraft were destroyed or damaged, including strategic bombers that are virtually impossible to replace.
The operation’s success, however, lies not only in the scale of destruction but in the synthesis of cheap commercially derived technologies, tactical ingenuity, and meticulous mission planning.
The defining feature of Operation Spider’s Web is its audacity and precision. Over an 18-month period, Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) orchestrated a clandestine campaign to infiltrate Russian territory with hundreds of Ukrainian-made Osa first-person view (FPV) drones. These platforms, produced by a company called First Contact, were concealed within wooden cabins mounted on standard cargo trucks, allowing for discreet movement into regions traditionally considered beyond Ukraine’s operational reach, including Siberia and the Arctic.
Open-source information suggests that these trucks passed through Russian security controls unnoticed and were covertly positioned near five key airbases: Amur, Belaya, Dyagilevo, Olenya, and Ivanovo. The extended preparation indicates a sophisticated intelligence operation involving multi-source inputs such as satellite reconnaissance, signals intelligence, and local human intelligence.
At the designated launch moment, remotely triggered mechanisms retracted the roofs of the cargo-mounted cabins, releasing packs of FPV drones poised for precision strikes on aircraft stationed at the bases. The minimal distance between launch points and targets constrained Russian response time and rendered air defense networks totally ineffective as Ukrainian FPV drones hit with speed and accuracy.
The operation’s timing, immediately preceding the second round of direct peace negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow, suggests a deliberate effort to bolster Ukraine’s bargaining position by demonstrating a credible capacity to strike high-value targets deep within Russia. Despite inflicting a major reputational blow on Russian security institutions and military capabilities, Moscow’s negotiating stance remained unchanged, confirming the Kremlin’s ultimate goal of subjugating Ukraine.
From a technical standpoint, the operation underscored a resourceful mix of open-source software integration, adaptive platforms, and reliance on civilian communications infrastructure. FPV drones were remotely piloted from Ukraine via Russia’s domestic 4G/LTE mobile networks using pre-installed sim cards. This approach provided real-time video transmission and manual control over vast distances, while embedding control signals amidst civilian data traffic, rendering them very difficult to detect and disrupt.
Imagery released the same day of the strike confirms the use of ArduPilot, a widely adopted open-source autopilot software. Leveraging its ArduCopter mission planner suite and UART-based control architecture, ArduPilot provided stable flight and low-latency responsiveness, essential for over-the-horizon missions. Its support for autonomous mission planning, 3D waypoint navigation, and flight stabilization features allowed Ukrainian operators to pre-program flight paths from the takeoff points to the designated airfields, minimizing reliance on active control signals and reducing electronic signature.
Ukrainian operators steered the drones against the most vulnerable aircraft components such as fuel tanks, missile pilons, and wing root sections that SBU planners meticulously marked during the planning phase. While there is no direct evidence, AI-assisted machine vision may have guided drones in their terminal phase to enhance strike precision. Ukraine has already integrated automated terminal guidance in a variety of short-range strike UAS, including commercial platforms. This human-AI teaming exemplifies the future trajectory of warfare, where low-cost, software-defined unmanned platforms augment or replace traditional manned systems.
To preserve operational secrecy and deny forensic analysis, the drones and launch systems were likely equipped with self-destruct mechanisms, effectively erasing evidence of the delivery method and internal design.
Ukraine’s choice to deploy small FPV drones was driven by two imperatives: first, operational stealth through easily concealable attack systems, and second, the need to tactically innovate around Russia’s increasingly effective layered air defense systems, which had drastically reduced the success rate of its deep strike campaign centered on the use of larger one-way attack (OWA) fixed-wing drones. In conversations with this author, Ukrainian military sources have confirmed the diminishing effectiveness of slow and larger long-range OWA drones in recent months.
Preliminary battle damage assessments indicate the destruction of at least seven Tu-95 “Bear” bombers, four Tu-22M3 “Backfire” bombers, one An-12 transport aircraft, and the damage of two A-50 airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft. The loss of the A-50s is particularly consequential, depriving Russia of airborne command and control and long-range surveillance capacity. These platforms are extremely hard to replace, considering their Soviet legacy, the challenges facing Russia’s aviation industry, and the woes of the country’s public finances.
While Russia retains a considerable bomber inventory, even partial attrition has disproportionate strategic implications. With fewer aircraft, remaining assets are likely to experience accelerated wear, and Russia’s capacity for sustained long-range strikes may be impaired over time. This has cascading consequences for Moscow’s power projection capabilities, further eroding its ability to operate over long distances.
Russia had already lost at least four Tu-22M3 and one Tu-95 during the all-out war, along with two A-50s, according to the tracking website, Oryx. None of these aircraft types are still manufactured. Russia had around 110 Tu-22M3 and Tu-95s at the outset of the war, but the operationally available number is now believed to be far lower, making the June 1 losses far more significant.
Beyond physical attrition, Operation Spiderweb yielded critical non-material effects. The strikes exposed the fallacy of geographic insulation even for the largest country on earth, revealing that remote bases are no longer beyond reach. In turn, this aspect may have deleterious effects on military morale and public confidence in the authorities, while prompting heightened internal security measures that further strain logistic and operational efficiency.
It is worth noting that the success of the operation hinged not on cutting-edge hardware, but on planning, creativity, and deception — reaffirming the centrality of the human element working with technology. It underscores the need to assess technology in context, particularly its integration within organizational structures and human decision-making.
The Spider’s Web operation is yet another example of how the deliberate and clever use of commercial, low-cost technologies can yield outsized battlefield effects. Ukraine’s approach to technology once again demonstrates how under-resourced actors can offset conventional disadvantages through imagination and agility.
Against this backdrop, it would have been difficult to envision a comparable operation conducted by Western states, given their structural and doctrinal differences. Ukraine’s recourse to asymmetric methods is a direct function of its constrained resources and existential threat, prompting innovations that might otherwise be deemed unconventional or infeasible in more risk-averse and traditional defense cultures.
Federico Borsari is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) and a cohort of the NATO 2030 Global Fellowship. At CEPA, he focuses on issues at the intersection between technology and international security, in particular unmanned systems and autonomy, and his portfolio also includes NATO and transatlantic defense and security.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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