Ukraine’s smart munitions deliver a punch—and a warning about the future of warfare

Erik Lin-Greenberg 

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President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky listening to the report of the head of the Security Service of Ukraine Vasyl Malyuk on the success of the operation “Spider's Web.” Image: president.gov.ua, CC BY 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

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Earlier this month, Ukraine’s security services launched an audacious, multi-pronged drone attack on military airbases deep in Russian territory. The attacks degraded Russia’s military capability, damaging or destroying dozens of bombers, transports, and command and control aircraft, and highlighted how drones are changing the character of armed conflict.

In the early days of the Russia-Ukraine war, Ukraine relied heavily on drones for intelligence gathering, employing remotely piloted aircraft to locate and help target enemy troops. Russia has launched thousands of one-way attack drones at Ukraine, destroying both civilian and military infrastructure. Both sides have increasingly used first-person view (FPV) drones—small and highly maneuverable platforms with relatively short flight times that transmit live video feed to operators—to attack their rivals. Most first-person view drones target troops and equipment near the frontlines, but Kyiv’s June 1st airbase attacks marked a significant shift in the employment of these drones.

Rather than using first-person view drones along the battlefront, the Ukrainian Security Service launched these drones to strike critical military assets thousands of miles from Ukraine in a mission dubbed “Operation Spider’s Web.” According to Ukrainian officials, the operation involved more than 100 small Osa quadcopter Ukrainian-made drones, each with four rotating propellers and carrying roughly seven pounds of explosives. Given their relatively short range—about 15 minutes of flying time—these drones were deployed near their targets, hidden in the roof compartments of prefabricated buildings loaded onto trucks. Once the trucks arrived at designated locations near the targeted airfields, the drones were launched and guided to their targets by pilots operating far from the front lines, reportedly aided by artificial intelligence systems.