Three Ukrainian attack drones struck a Sukhoi Su-57 fighter on June 8, 2024, at a base 365 mi. deep inside Russia. Satellite imagery showed the strike damaged the stealth fighter, a small victory for Kyiv in a long, difficult war.
That isolated action a year ago proved to be only a warning shot—or perhaps a sneak preview. On June 1, 2025, Ukraine struck again on a larger and deeper scale. In a creative aerial ambush devised 18 months and nine days earlier by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), semitrucks hauling portable cabins smuggled scores of armed drones deep into the Russian interior, parking in locations stretching from along the Finnish border on the Barents Sea to near the shores of Lake Baikal in Siberia.
- At least 11 Russian aircraft were destroyed in the June 1 attacks
- The strikes introduce new offensive options and reveal defensive vulnerabilities
Hiding in plain sight within range of several bomber bases, these “Trojan trucks” opened their cabin roofs and released more than 100 remotely piloted, first-person-view (FPV) drones. Satellite imagery confirms Ukrainian estimates that the drones destroyed at least 11 Russian aircraft, including nine bombers. Dozens more may have been damaged.
For Ukraine, the impact of Operation Spider’s Web—the SBU’s code name for the covert drone attacks—may play out for months. It is not clear how many of the aircraft destroyed were involved in strikes in Ukraine or even flyable, but the widespread nature of the attacks may still have some effect. In addition to the embarrassment from the failure to stop such a brazen operation, “Russia will likely struggle to replace the aircraft that Ukrainian forces damaged and destroyed,” the Institute for the Study of War states in a June 1 assessment.
The attack also highlights a global trend in aerial warfare with implications for offensive planning and defensive preparations.
Springing attacks on enemy aircraft while they are parked on seemingly friendly soil is nothing new. At the outset of the Six-Day War in 1967, the Israeli Air Force launched a surprise raid into Egypt, destroying 452 aircraft on the ground. Nor is it new to blend conventional airpower with special operations units like the SBU. In 1942 the British Special Air Service infiltrated a Luftwaffe base in Egypt, then used machine guns loaded with tracer rounds to destroy or damage 37 parked aircraft.
Attacks on enemy airfields also feature in planning for future wars. In 2017, U.S. Air Force then-Brig. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich published an online essay after spending a year drafting the strategy for acquiring what became the Boeing F-47. In a future conflict, Grynkewich wrote, Northrop Grumman B-21s would strike enemy airfields while the next air superiority fighter swept the skies of any aircraft that had managed to take off.
Meanwhile, interest in ground-launched, short-range FPV drones is spreading. A day after the Operation Spider’s Web attacks, the U.S. Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) launched Project GI, a competition offering $20 million in prizes to companies that can rapidly deliver such weapon systems with ranges beyond 20 km (12.4 mi.). Project GI aims to close a gap in the U.S. drone inventory.
“Today, warfighters lack the unmanned systems needed to train for combat and prevail if called upon to use them,” DIU Director Doug Beck said June 2. “Doing this [project] at speed will in turn help catalyze the necessary scaling and readiness through major acquisition and training efforts.”
Although Ukraine lacks air superiority and a long-range bomber fleet, the country’s repeated attacks on air bases inside Russia shows the advance of technology in the air littoral, a layer of airspace usually defined as below 10,000 ft. For Operation Spider’s Web, the SBU reportedly deployed Ukrainian manufacturer First Contact’s Osa drones. Each 5-kg (11-lb.) quadcopter can carry up to 3.3 kg of explosives to targets up to 8 km away, according to the manufacturer’s website.
Meager attempts to protect the Russian bombers by covering the upper surfaces with old tires—possibly to confuse vision-based, autonomous targeting systems—failed to save the aircraft.
In addition to creating new offensive opportunities, the successful Ukrainian operation exposes defensive vulnerabilities that are as common in Europe and the U.S. as they are in Russia. Over the past two years, reports of unauthorized drone sightings have plagued several U.S. air bases, including a Lockheed Martin F-22 operating base in Virginia and a space launch complex in California. Last year, the Air Force paused the award of the Next-Generation Air Dominance contract for several months to review the original requirements, including whether the vulnerability of air bases could negate the advantages of a powerful new fighter.
“The F-47 is an amazing aircraft, but it’s going to die on the ground like everything else if we don’t protect it,” Gen. David Allvin, the Air Force chief of staff, said at an event hosted by the Center for a New American Security in Washington on June 3.
Concerns about air base vulnerability are driving negotiations with the Army over whether the Air Force should be responsible for defending its own air bases. The Navy provides a layered air defense system to protect its fleet, but a long-standing policy requires the Air Force to rely on the Army for such protection.
“The bottom line is that the joint force needs more robust ground-based air defense, whether it’s from an airfield or someplace that the Marines are operating or the Army is operating,” Allvin said. “We do continue to need robust point defense for agile combat employment to work.”
In Europe, the threat of similar attacks is acute. Most air bases are in the open countryside and near public roads. Their movements are easily monitored, and the aircraft are parked in the open air, often undispersed. Many of these air bases lack anti-drone equipment or the spare personnel to operate it if they did.
Some countries, like France and Germany, have multiple bases with transport aircraft and airlifters, but the UK, for example, has piled all of its air transport assets into one location, Brize Norton, to save costs.
NATO’s Air Command is urging member countries to develop agile combat employment concepts to generate sustained combat airpower through dispersal. However, this does not necessarily work for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms, which are often tethered to main or forward operating bases so their intelligence products can be processed and distributed.
While tankers and transports can operate from commercial airports, they tend to stick out.
China is increasingly building air bases with shelter infrastructure for large aircraft, including the KJ-500 airborne early warning aircraft based on the Shaanxi Y-8 turboprop airlifter. While not hardened, these 60-m-wide (197-ft.) structures with closing doors at both ends make the aircraft difficult to target on the ground, as overhead imagery cannot identify what aircraft is in a shelter. They would also prevent attack by small drones like those Ukraine used in Russia. These structures can be found at a People’s Liberation Army Air Force base near Dalian, at Leizhuang near Guiyang, and at Jiujiang’s Lushan air base.