Amos Chapple
On June 1, videos of bomb-laden quadcopters launching from trucks as fires blazed nearby spread through social media after Ukraine’s Security Services launched daylight strikes on air bases throughout Russia that destroyed many of the Kremlin’s long-range aircraft.
Those videos are undoubtedly now being studied in military planning rooms.
“This attack should be a wakeup call to militaries around the world,” Stacie Pettyjohn, the Director of the Defense Program at the Center for a New American Security, told RFE/RL.
“In many ways, the [June 1 attack] was more effective than the ones conducted by Ukrainian long-range drones because the small drones can disperse, navigate to different targets, and precisely hit multiple targets across a large airbase,” the drone expert said.
“The lynchpin of this attack was covert infiltration and operations very close to the airbases, which likely were rather lightly defended because there were few concerns about Ukraine being able to strike this deep [inside Russia],” she added.
It remains unclear where the drones were piloted from, or whether they relied on AI targeting to home in on the Russian aircraft. Ukraine has claimed the roofs of the trucks carrying the hidden drone fleet were opened “remotely” to enable the quadcopters to launch.
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