Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, I have watched the conflict in both fascination and horror. A significant part of my interest stems from the photogenic nature of the war. From the earliest days of the conflict, we saw dramatic pictures and video of the fighting, while Ukrainian farmers stealing Russian armored vehicles became a meme. In subsequent years, a lot of the video came from drones.
Just over a year ago, I wrote about how the war has led to an explosion (pun intended) in combat drone technology. Modern drones are a lot like something out of the movies and can be reminiscent of the Terminator. Footage of drones chasing down Russian soldiers reminds me a lot of an old movie that I saw on television as an 80s kid.
“Runaway” featured Tom Selleck as the hero and KISS’s Gene Simmons as the villain. I watched the trailer as I was writing this, and it seems strikingly prescient for a film from 40 years ago, as you’d expect from something written by Michael Crichton. The evil Simmons would fire a small heat-seeker from his pistol, and the point of view would then shift to the perspective of this proto-drone as it chased its target through city streets. That old sci-fi movie has come to life on Ukrainian battlefields.
Over the weekend, Ukrainian drone pilots did even better, scoring one of the largest victories of the war. I woke up on Sunday to images of Ukrainian drones flying down the flight lines of Russian air bases, destroying aircraft. Operation Spider Web is estimated to have knocked out about a third of Russia’s strategic bomber fleet at four airbases across Russia, some thousands of kilometers from the front lines.
As the BBC explains, the attack was a long time in the making. The Ukrainians built special modular homes or sheds that contained a total of 117 remote-controlled drones and smuggled them into Russia on semi-trucks. The trucks parked outside the airbases, and then the drone attacks were launched simultaneously through retractable roofs in the buildings. The Daily Mail reports that the truck drivers had no idea that they were part of a secret plot to kneecap Russia’s bomber forces, which have been used to target Ukrainian cities but also have a nuclear mission.
The extent of the damage is unclear, but Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) claimed that 41 planes had been damaged or destroyed. Military bloggers using open source information have identified the targets as including TU-160M Blackjacks, Russia’s newest and most capable strategic bomber, TU-22 Backfires, similar to our B-1 Lancer, and TU-95 Bears, which have their roots in the US B-29 from WWII but are capable of reconnaissance and launching cruise missiles. Russia is also reported to have lost an A-50 AWACS radar plane. Many of the losses are irreplaceable since the planes are out of production. It is an attack that has been compared to Pearl Harbor, but Russia started this war three years ago, so they should not have been surprised.
But that made me think. We are not the only ones watching Ukraine wreak havoc on the Russian war machine. I am certain that other countries like Iran and China are watching as well. It’s easy to see what cheap, low-tech drones can do to a multi-billion-dollar air force in a matter of minutes.
I sincerely hope that Defense Secretary Hegspeth is also watching, between doing pushups and removing references to women and minorities from DOD websites. I’m old enough to remember that a lot of the same people who call our military too soft and woke are the same people who were saying that the Russian military was the height of professionalism and would subdue Ukraine within days.
I am far more concerned about whether our adversaries have the capability to launch their own Operation Spider Web attacks on the US military than whether the military celebrates the achievements of the Tuskegee Airmen, Navajo Code talkers, and pioneering military women. If the left lost its focus when it came to turning national defense into a sociology experiment, so has the right.
I want to know what we are doing to defend against potential drone attacks. Do we have systems in place at military bases to shoot down hostile drones? Can they be disabled through electronic warfare? Are we ready to take these defensive actions at a moment’s notice on a Sunday morning?
And what about the potential use of drones as weapons of terror? A few drones packed with explosives and shrapnel could be devastating to soft targets filled with civilians. Imagine Gene Simmons flying a few dozen such remotely-piloted weapons into a sports stadium.
We are laughing and celebrating along with the Ukrainians this week. At least those of us who aren’t pro-Putin are. Many in MAGA world seem apoplectic about Russia’s humiliation, and Trump has not commented on the attack.
Next week, however, might be a different story. Next week, we might be looking at our own Pearl Harbor or September 11 Part Deux as drones rise up to attack our bases or cities. The Ukraine war footage is fascinating to watch, but it’s also a harbinger of what may be to come, even if Skynet does not become self-aware in the near future.
It’s a dangerous world made more dangerous by incompetent leaders in our own government. While Trump is golfing, Noem is posing for law enforcement cosplay photos, Musk is taking an axe to entire federal agencies, and Hegseth is doing pushups or whatever, I sincerely hope that there are level-headed career professionals who haven’t been fired or driven into deep cover who are bearing the weight of the defense of the nation on their shoulders. Traditionally, it has been career soldiers, diplomats, and bureaucrats who kept the government on track as political appointees came and went, but a lot of those people are being replaced with Trump loyalists.
Operation Spider Web was a great victory for Ukraine (and an almost bloodless one), but it should be a wake-up call for us. Elections matter, and so does competence.
Ukraine seems to be providing a blueprint for how a much smaller community can go to war against a global superpower.
I’d hope that China, among other countries, is taking notes.
It does suggest that border security is pretty important actually, not something where you can just let trucks drive back and forth between countries without checking them.
I gotta think truck traffic is pretty minimal at the Ukraine-Russia border. We’ll probably never know where it crossed, but thinking every container entering the country can be manually checked is probably not feasible.
At least some of the photos that have appeared show the drones in a false floor in the truck itself. That may have been how they got them close to the targets rather than just into the country.
“I gotta think truck traffic is pretty minimal at the Ukraine-Russia border.”
Yes, that’s why they went through Estonia.
Ukraine seems to be providing a blueprint for how a much smaller community can go to war against a global superpower.
As did Vietnam before it.
I’d hope that China, among other countries, is taking notes.
I’m quite sure they are. We’ve people who are, too — if only our leaders will listen to them, cursed as they are with the label “Subject Matter Experts” and the task of trying to educate their pigheaded superiors holding political level office.
“As did Vietnam before it.”
Have a large technologically-advanced country give you a bunch of top-end equipment and all the materials you want for free because you’re bleeding their ideological opponents?
…actually, I guess up until Trump’s election that just about was what was happening, although the USAF wasn’t sending “volunteer pilots” the way Russia did for the NVAF.
Do you really think the NVA and the VC kicked our butts because they had all that “top-end equipment and materials”? Volunteer pilots in the NVAF? Trust me, none of us mud-encrusted butts getting kicked were very worried about MIGs or Sikorskys. You need to get out more. (Though I will grant you that the AK-47 was helluva lot more top-end than what I carried.) Light-weight black cotton, sandals cut from “top-end” tires, and sheer will were enough in that situation.
“Do you really think the NVA and the VC kicked our butts because they had all that “top-end equipment and materials”? ”
Do you really think the SA-2 was some garbage cobbled together out of sewer pipes and buffalo dung by dudes wearing straw hats?
First: interesting comment. Made me go do a bit of shallow and quick-time research.
Second: pretty racist phrasing.
Third: As a “buffalo dung dude” i.e., “grunt,” me and my buds spent very little time thinking about SAMs.
Fourth: the numbers that I came up with are a bit confusing. (All according to wikipedia) The U.S. military confirmed 206 aircraft lost to SAMs (the SA-2/S-75 was a SAM). Viet Nam says 1046 fixed-wing aircraft shot down by S-75s (six missiles launched per one kill). For numbers of reasons, both side’s figures seem quite questionable.
Fifth: I appreciate the high-tech world of the aerial war in VN, especially the free chopper rides, but despite our spectacular superiority in tech, and their large supply of SAMs, it was still the tough little buggers in straw hats who marched us right out of there.
For starters, the range on these things is less than the ocean so our moats will continue to protect the mainland USA. Being a navel power will make other aspects difficult, i.e. if Russia had the ability to randomly move it’s “bases” in a very large ocean then this attack wouldn’t have been possible.
So we’re a lot less vulnerable in general. Which doesn’t change that we have other bases all over the world.
One hopes we’re paying attention but we also have huge amounts of domestic drama to distract us with Trump firing anyone who disagrees with him. The military was supposed to keep him in power when the last election was “stolen” and that didn’t happen.
The drones that attacked Russian air bases were delivered to near their targets in standard 20 ft intermodal cargo containers.
Good news, then! We don’t have nearly so many of those coming to our shores anymore as we used to!
I disagree with your point here- if an attack of this type were tried in the US I presume the drones would be networked through our local internet and controlled that way so range for direct radio control may not be a limiter. That being said I do think we have a different advantage in that we’re not (currently) regularly bombing a neighbor from fixed terrestrial airbases so our various air platforms aren’t lined up outside in predictable locations and times.
A fellow Toastmaster who served in the National Guard came a description of how his unit, deployed “overseas,” addressed how to protect yourself against an enemy drone once. It sounded like essentially a large shield made out out chain link fence, positioned atop or slightly on front of an APC, AMTRAC, tank, missile launcher, or even a truck. The idea is that it will baffle the approach of the drone, so that when the drone detonates, it will do so farther away from the vehicle, increasing survivability.
This is of course subject to arms racing — if you knew your targets had a baffle shield, you could load the drone up with flechettes to pierce inside of the baffle.
So then the vehicle builds a second, finer-mesh screen put underneath the thicker, broad mesh front layer.
So then the drone attacker pilots TWO drones at the vehicle; the first blasts the baffle and the second penetrates into the vehicle.
And so on.
A baffle shield would probably have done the Russians little good for parked or hangared aircraft; you wouldn’t baffle them because the baffling would be really awkward and make servicing the aircraft difficult.
But what’s interesting here to me are the low-tech, low-cost nature of these measures and countermeasures. The drone costs about a day of skilled labor to assemble and probably under $10,000 worth of parts. Wikipedia estimates that a TU-160M Blackjack strategic bomber (they really do look like the B-1) has a cost to Russia of the equivalent of $163 million. If you can take one out for, let’s say, $10,000 per attack drone, that super equalizes things against a purportedly much more massive and technologically advanced opponent.
Welcome to the future of warfare.
The most extreme version of the anti-drone cage is the “turtle tank.
The IED thing in Iraq hurt a lot of soldiers and were the cause of a large number of “grim milestones”.
Destroy equipment that costs six or seven or eight figures with equipment that costs less than a guy could carry in his wallet.
It’s one thing to be able to do that against folks who are spending trillions of dollars to stand on your corner… quite another to deliver that equipment more than, oh, a bike ride away. If you need much more than a Fiat to carry it, it’s not going to get far.
What’s troublesome about the Ukraine thing is that they seem to have figured out how to get this equipment more than a bike ride away.
There was a line in Mel Gibson’s The Patriot that occurred to me the other day. It was when Tom Hiddleston was yelling at the jerky guy, I forget his name: “These colonials are our brethren, and when this conflict is over, we will reestablish commerce with them.”
There is war you engage in against people with whom you wish to reestablish commerce after hostilities have ended… and war you engage in against people with whom you do not give a flying leap about whether you engage in commerce with them after hostilities have ended.
There’s a lot of stuff that is on the table in the latter sitch that just ain’t there in the former.