Ukraine's drone attacks will spook friends and foes alike

Operation Spiderweb was a feat of technological cunning by Kyiv that confirmed its military capability

- Sam Kiley

When the lorry stopped close to the Belaya airfield at the weekend, and the wooden sheds onboard opened their roofs to release a swarm of quadcopters, warfare changed for ever. The success of Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb, which destroyed more than 40 Russian bombers, will have elicited both delight and terror in the hearts of Kyiv’s allies.

The homegrown operation to hide drones in false compartments within 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 service destroyed 41 Russian aircraft, causing $7bn (£5bn) worth of damage to longrange 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 semiautonomous, dived onto planes sitting on the tarmac in a raid as daring as the first successful Special Air Service attack on the Italian airfield at Tamet, Libya, in 1941, which destroyed 24 aircraft.

But, aside from a handful of agents who were involved in the 18 months of preparation it took to bring Operation Spiderweb to its conclusion, no commandos had to risk their lives to blow up the Tu-95 and Tu-22M3 bombers and the Russian A-50 early warning spy plane. Kyiv said that the 41 aircraft attacked represented 34 per cent of the Kremlin’s long-range bomber capability.