June 1, 2025 will likely forever be remembered as a day that changed the history of warfare. Using around 117 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones, costing around $3 million in total, Ukraine destroyed approximately 41 Russian aircraft, including fighter-bombers, fifth-generation stealth fighters, early warning aircraft and long-range strategic bombers – inflicting damage estimated to be around $3 billion and achieving a cost-to-kill ratio of 1:1000. The attack has been named ‘Operation Spider’s Web’. Almost all of the destroyed or damaged Russian aircraft were located on bases deep inside Russian territory, with the furthest base known to have been struck deep inside Siberia and closer to Russia’s border with China than the one in Ukraine. Even more noteworthy is the fact that all of this was done without jeopardising the life of a single Ukrainian soldier, with the drones piloted remotely but still equipped with enough sophisticated technology to find, identify and hit their targets with precision. According to reports, the drone components were covertly smuggled into Russian territory and assembled inside wooden sheds mounted on modified transport trucks. The drones were then positioned close to high-value airbases and their launch platforms were remotely activated, allowing them to launch directly toward their designated targets. Russia’s layered and formidable air defence architecture was simply bypassed.
Going all the way back to the Vietnam War in the 1960s, we have seen large armies with every advantage on paper being frustrated and even defeated by much smaller and lightly equipped guerrilla forces that use asymmetric tactics to compensate for their conventional inferiority. But what ‘Operation Spider’s Web’ showed was a conventional military force combining powerful but relatively cheap technology and asymmetric tactics to inflict significant strategic damage and render billions of dollars of investment in military defences effectively useless. And while one can marvel at the strategic brilliance of Ukraine’s operation, there should be no illusions about the fact that the world has just gotten a lot more dangerous. Putting aside the fact that this attack takes humanity closer to nuclear escalation, one can be sure that every military force and terror group in the world is taking a close look at what happened and some will be wondering if and how they can do the same. Particularly sinister is how these drones were smuggled, assembled and launched virtually undetected. What if next time it is a terror group targeting civilians that is remotely operating the UAVs? Also, if such dangerous weapons can be smuggled so easily, what implications does that have for the free movement of goods and people across borders? And how easy, or not, is it to convert the many drones being used for civil purposes into weapons of war or even covert and illicit surveillance tools?
Not only is Ukraine’s operation threatening to escalate a conflict that has already claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, but it has profound and dangerous implications for security and liberty across the world. After all the death, destruction and global economic damage the Russia-Ukraine war has caused, neither country can claim to have gained much. And now, the effects of the war on the world in general are going beyond supply chain disruptions and expensive commodities. The war has to stop – and only the US has the power to achieve this. US President Donald Trump has already ended one confrontation between nuclear powers by brokering a peace between India and Pakistan and has made global shipping safer for all through his deal with the Houthis. Can he get Ukraine and Russia to see sense?