Success with simple means This is why Kiev's drone strike also shows the West's vulnerability

Using what are basically very simple means, Ukraine has hit its militarily superior opponent Russia hard. Experts believe that this should also be a wake-up call for other countries. Many targets would probably be poorly protected against this type of warfare.

The destroyed Russian military aircraft were worth hundreds of millions of euros. The weapons used by Ukraine were drones that cost less than a thousand euros each. They were launched from wooden containers on ordinary trucks. The "Operation Spider Web" was not only a serious blow to Moscow's prestige. Security experts emphasize that in view of such attacks, there may also be a need for improvements to NATO's air defence systems.

Kiev's recipe for success in Sunday's attack was a mixture of comparatively inexpensive drone technology, in which enormous progress has been made in recent years, and unconventional thinking. According to Ukrainian sources, more than 40 aircraft parked at air bases in various parts of the country were destroyed. The total damage caused was said to be seven billion dollars.

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Warning for Western governments

The Russian Foreign Ministry disputes this information. Some media outlets also assume lower figures. And in any case, Russia has enough military aircraft to continue attacking Ukraine with missiles anyway. In this respect, it remains to be seen what effect the surprise attack will have on the course of the war. However, the operation has shown what "modern war really looks like and why it is so important to always be one step ahead technologically", said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi.

This was an important warning for Western governments, says Douglas Barrie, a military aviation expert at the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) in London. "The range of threats they have to consider is getting wider and wider," he emphasizes. For many years, European countries have accused Russia of targeting companies and, in some cases, individual executives in the arms industry with sabotage campaigns. Recently, unidentified drones have also been spotted over military facilities in several countries.

High-value weapons and other technological equipment at such sites are "big, attractive targets for both state and non-state actors", says Caitlin Lee, an expert on drone warfare at the US Rand Institute. Now is really the time to invest in our own drone defense capabilities.

Drones smuggled into the country

Comparatively simple ways of protecting one's own military aircraft include robust physical shelters, the distribution of the aircraft across several bases, means of camouflage or even the production of dummies. In contrast to long-range missiles, drones are often difficult to detect because they fly low and slow and sometimes look like birds on radar, says Lee. They can also be launched within national borders.

Drones would "drastically increase" the possibilities of a hostile state or group to carry out significant sabotage, says weapons expert Fabian Hinz, who also works for the IISS. "How many targets are there in a country? How well can each of them be defended against such a threat?"

For "Operation Spiderweb", Ukraine reportedly smuggled small drones into Russia and had them transported by truck in wooden containers near the military airfields in the Irkutsk, Murmansk and Amur regions, which are far from its own territory, as well as in the west of the country. The Ukrainian secret service SBU explained that the highly automated drones were partly controlled by a pilot and partly by using artificial intelligence - they were therefore able to fly along a fixed route even when radio communication was disrupted.

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"Russians completely surprised"

"The way the Ukrainians pulled this off is creative - and it obviously took the Russians completely by surprise," says Barrie. Since the start of the Russian invasion in 2022, the defeated Ukrainian armed forces have repeatedly relied on creative solutions. Among other things, they built wooden dummies of expensive weapons systems from the West to misdirect Russian missile fire - or converted captured weapons.

More than ten years ago, the USA was already using "Predator" drones to kill extremists in Afghanistan from a great distance. Thanks to technological advances, this is now also possible with much smaller drones. And developments in this area still seem to be continuing at a rapid pace. "Things are changing so quickly that what works today may not work tomorrow," says expert Hinz.

Bombers cannot be replaced

According to satellite images analyzed by the AP news agency, the Russian aircraft destroyed on Sunday included Tu-95 bombers. These are practically irreplaceable because they are no longer produced, says Hinz. According to Ukrainian information, a high-quality "A-50" reconnaissance aircraft was also hit. Russia now has to bear enormous additional costs in any case, says Thomas Withington from the Royal United Services Institute in London. The country will have to repair damaged aircraft, better protect its remaining air fleet and significantly expand its capabilities to defend against such operations.

In the war against Ukraine, however, Moscow has also recently relied more on drones than long-range missiles. "Even if Ukraine succeeded in damaging a significant part of the Russian bomber fleet, it is not entirely clear to what extent the bomber fleet actually played a key role in the war," says Lee. According to Ukrainian Air Force data analyzed by the AP, Russia used long-range Tu-22M3 and Tu-95 bombers on 14 occasions from July to December 2024, while drones were used almost every night. And even if strategic missile strike capabilities were temporarily impaired, the Russian armed forces would probably find ways to compensate for this, says Lee.