"O n June 1, 2025, innocent-looking transport trucks rolled into assigned positions on the outskirts of remote Russian military airfields. The trucks carried metal storage units. By remote signal, the containers sprang open and released a swarm of armed drones, each hardly larger than a backpack. One by one, they whirred into the sky-117 in all-and slipped into formation. The armada flew low, and as they reached their targets, explosions engulfed the frames of parked aircraft."
"Operation Spiderweb, eighteen months in the making, was Ukraine's most audacious drone strike to date. According to Ukrainian government sources, as much as a third of Russian president Vladimir Putin's strategic bomber fleet, spread over four airbases, was wiped out in a single attack. That level of precision and ambition didn't come out of nowhere. Ever since it first stared down massive armoured columns headed for Kyiv in February 2022, Ukraine has been the world's innovator in drone warfare."
On June 1, 2025, transport trucks released a coordinated swarm of small armed drones that attacked and destroyed parked Russian aircraft at multiple airbases. Operation Spiderweb reportedly eliminated up to a third of Russia's strategic bomber fleet across four bases. Ukraine rapidly scaled drone capabilities after 2022, leveraging Turkish Bayraktar systems, commercial models, and domestic ingenuity to build a national drone industry and produce over one million drones in 2024. Russia responded by mass-producing Iranian-style Geran drones with support from Iran and China, and Russian drone strikes escalated dramatically in 2025.
Read at The Walrus
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