How Ukraine pulled off its drone attack on valuable Russian warplanes

Ukraine has carried many highly creative drone attacks against Russia. Now, they’ve destroyed some of Russia’s most valuable warplanes, parked at military bases deep inside Russia.

JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:

Ukraine has carried out many highly creative drone attacks against Russia throughout the course of the war, and now they’ve taken it to a whole new level. Over the weekend, Ukrainian drones destroyed some of Russia’s most valuable warplanes parked at military bases deep inside Russia. For more, we are joined by NPR national security correspondent Greg Myre, who has reported extensively on the war. Hi there.

GREG MYRE, BYLINE: Hi, Juana.

SUMMERS: Greg, I have to say, these attacks were quite stunning. So tell us – how did Ukraine pull this off?

MYRE: Yeah. Ukraine says civilian trucks were secretly driven deep into Russia and then parked just a few miles from these Russian military bases. The attacks were then launched remotely, allowing the hidden drones to fly out of the trucks and strike some of Russia’s most valuable heavy bombers that were just parked out in the open at the bases. Now, Ukraine says it hit more than 40 Russian planes at bases from the Arctic Circle in the north to deep inside Siberia in the eastern part of Russia, more than 2,500 miles from Ukraine’s border. Russia has acknowledged five bases were targeted, but has downplayed the damage and not offered details.

SUMMERS: Wow. Have we ever seen anything like this before?

MYRE: A short answer is no. I mean, Ukraine is officially calling this Operation Spider’s Web. Some Ukrainians on social media are calling it Operation Trojan Trucks, so perhaps there’s some ancient precedent here. Nothing like this in modern warfare. Here’s Kelly Grieco at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington.

KELLY GRIECO: The Russians are always sort of playing catch-up, and that the Ukrainians are the one innovating first and trying these sort of daring creative attacks, and then the Russians are left scrambling to figure out how to defend against it, prevent another one.

SUMMERS: Drone warfare is now central to both the Ukrainian and Russian military, so describe what this fight might look like on a typical day.

MYRE: Yeah, Juana, we’re now regularly seeing nights where – most attacks are at night – where both sides launch upwards of a hundred drones at each other. Russia fired 472 drones a couple nights ago – the most ever by either side. Ukraine shoots down or electronically jams most of these Russian drones, but, you know, even if 10% get through, they can cause a lot of damage. Russia is really looking in many ways to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defenses with drones, and this clears the way sometimes for a more powerful Russian missile, which usually follows. Ukraine tends to use its drones in two ways – one, against Russian troops on the front lines, and second, longer-range attacks which can be hundreds of miles inside Russia.

SUMMERS: I mean, both countries have developed drone capabilities quite rapidly. Let’s start off with Ukraine. How are they doing it?

MYRE: Well, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion three years ago, Ukrainians began buying cheap Chinese civilian drones – like a thousand dollars or less – and attaching grenades to drop on Russian positions. This proved extremely effective, and Ukraine soon began making their own. Many hundreds of private companies are now making them. Ukraine made more than 2 million drones last year, plans to make more than 4 million this year.

SUMMERS: And quickly, Greg, what about Russia?

MYRE: Well, Russia is not as innovative. It was buying drones from Iran. Now it’s bought that technology from Iran, making its own. The quality isn’t great, but they do make a lot of them.

SUMMERS: NPR’s Greg Myre, thanks.

MYRE: Sure thing.

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The many ways Ukraine carries out unprecedented drone attacks

toggle caption Genya Savilov/AFP via Getty Images

Ukraine’s recent attack on Russian warplanes was audacious, innovative and unprecedented. Ukraine’s stealthy strike was carried out with small drones, hidden in trucks parked near several Russian air bases.

Yet Operation Spider’s Web, orchestrated by the SBU intelligence service, was also part of a recurring theme: Ukraine keeps inventing new ways to wage war with drones, and regularly catches Russia by surprise.

“The Ukrainians are the ones innovating and trying these daring and creative attacks. And then the Russians are left scrambling to figure out how to defend against it, and prevent another one,” said Kelly Grieco, who studies the air war at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington.

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Ukraine has also pioneered the use of drones in the waters of the Black Sea. Last month, a Ukrainian sea drone shot down a Russian warplane — the first time this type of attack has been recorded.

Michael Kofman, with Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, often travels to Ukraine and is always struck by the pace of change in drone warfare.

“My experience, going back to Ukraine numerous times during this war, this typically evolves around every 3 to 4 months,” said Kofman.

Ukraine pioneered sea drones a couple of years ago. They were essentially jet skis packed with explosives and guided by remote control. Those drones — and more sophisticated models that followed — proved so effective that Russian warships no longer venture anywhere near Ukraine’s Black Sea coast.

toggle caption SERGEY BOBOK/AFP via Getty Images

Tracking Russian ground troops

Ukraine’s drones are also creating huge problems for Russia’s ground forces. When the troops gather in large numbers for an operation, Ukrainian drones are virtually certain to spot them and attack.

“It is becoming harder to move because drones are providing eyes on the battlefield,” said Grieco. “It’s not just being seen, but it’s also very quickly you’re able to act on it. You find lots of people saying, ‘If you move on the battlefield in Ukraine, you’re dead.'”

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Russia has many more troops than Ukraine and is gaining ground incrementally. But Michael Kofman says Ukraine’s drones play a critical role in limiting this Russian advantage.

“They add a huge force multiplier,” said Kofman. “This makes it such that the Russian advances on the battlefield come at a very high cost.”

In the early days of the war, artillery caused most of the deaths and injuries. Now, he says, it’s drones.

“I think it became quite clear [last year] that drones were starting to be responsible for a higher share of the battlefield casualties,” he said.

Ukrainian officials say drones inflict around 70 percent of the casualties suffered by both militaries.

toggle caption OLEKSANDR MAGULA/AFP via Getty Images

Russia builds its own arsenal

The Russians began the war with a limited drone arsenal. But as the Ukrainians hammered them, the Russians realized they needed help — and fast.

“There is a history between the Russians and the Iranians in regards to collaboration on military items,” said Omar al-Ghusbi, with the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, a Washington research institute. He just wrote a detailed report on the Russia-Iran drone partnership.

Early in the war, the Russians began buying an Iranian drone, the Shahed 136. The Iranian model is considered serviceable, but with limitations. It’s propeller driven, relatively loud and slow, and sometimes described as a lawnmower in the sky.

But the main problem was Iran wasn’t making nearly as many as Russia wanted. So Russia paid Iran for the technology, and began making a Russian version domestically, known as the Geran.

“The most groundbreaking, revolutionary thing about the Geran is the mass production capability as well as the capability of striking targets at a long range,” said al-Ghusbi.

Both countries mass produce drones

Ukraine says it made more than 1 million drones last year and plans to build well over 2 million this year. The Russians have not offered numbers, but Ukrainian officials say Russia is catching up quickly and is likely to produce a similar number.

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On many nights, both countries now unleash more than 100 attack drones at each other. In the past week, Russia has fired more than 400 drones at Ukraine on two separate nights — the largest numbers recorded by either side.

Both sides shoot down, or electronically jam, most incoming drones. But even if 10 or 20 percent get through, they can cause extensive damage. This is especially true in Ukraine, where many Russian drones strike civilian areas.

“I think it is overwhelming Ukraine’s defensive systems,” said al-Ghusbi. “If you’re launching hundreds of drones, that requires a lot of people on a lot of different weapons systems monitoring the skies.”

Before this war, drones were expensive, high-end hardware with a few specialized uses, but were not the main battlefield weapon.

Now, they’re cheap, disposable, mass-produced weapons reshaping the Russia-Ukraine war — and many more conflicts yet to come.

Ukraine struck aircraft like this Tu-95 “Bear” bomber at air bases across Russia on Sunday.

Ukraine struck aircraft like this Tu-95 “Bear” bomber at air bases across Russia on Sunday. EYEPRESS via Reuters Connect

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The new tactics deployed by Ukraine in striking a reported 41 Russian warplanes have devastating implications — not only for Russia’s air power but for all advanced militaries, defense experts told Business Insider.

“This attack is a window to future war,” said James Patton Rogers, a drone expert who’s the executive director of the Cornell Brooks Tech Policy Institute.

Ukraine has attacked Russia with drones many times before. But on Sunday, its Security Service, or SBU, targeted four Russian airfields simultaneously with a wildly creative gambit it dubbed “Operation Spiderweb.”

Related video Ukraine carries out massive drone attack on Russian bombers

The SBU said operatives smuggled the military quadcopters into Russia, later packing them into wooden house-like structures. These were then mounted on trucks, which were driven close to the airfields, where the drones were launched, causing a reported $7 billion in damage. The proximity and number of small attack drones appear to have given air defense crews little, if any, chance to respond.

While details of the attack need to be independently confirmed, initial visual information suggests that this is “a stunning success for Ukraine’s special services,” said Justin Bronk, an influential air power expert at the Royal United Services Institute.

Here’s what it could mean for Russia and the Ukraine war — and the rest of the world.

Ukraine’s Security Service used containers carried on trucks to smuggle attack drones near Russian military bases. EYEPRESS via Reuters Connect

Limiting conventional air defences

Ukraine’s previous drone attacks have frequently been countered by Russia’s advanced air defense systems, such as its S-300 and S-400 missile launchers. But, it seems, these latest drones didn’t need to run the S-400 gauntlet.

The SBU said that rather than flying larger, long-range drones through Russian airspace from Ukraine, it trucked the containers out to the airfields, activating the smuggled drones after remotely retracting the roofs to release them.

With a much-shortened and simplified journey to their target, the drones struck warplanes at the airfields of Belaya, Diaghilev, Olenya, and Ivanovo, the SBU said.

A powerful statement of Ukraine going it alone

Lithuania’s former foreign minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said on Monday that the attack showed Ukraine’s ability to innovate and surprise the world.

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“Its scale and ingenuity — carried out without visible Western intelligence or logistical support — suggests Ukraine is now less reliant on outside help,” he wrote.

(Ukraine’s Western backers, such as the US, have resisted providing the weaponry and intelligence Ukraine has sought for retaliation against Russian bases, from which it launches regular attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure and defensive lines.)

Powered largely by domestically produced armaments, Ukraine once again innovated “while the world talks, hosts meetings, and forms yet another ‘coalition of the willing,'” Landsbergis wrote.

“Ukraine is preparing to fight on its own terms,” he added. “If you ever wondered what strategic autonomy looks like — this might be it.”

Ukraine showed that a fleet of $150 million bombers on a runway can be made prey to the kind of cheap drones modified slightly from racing and wedding photos.

It enables Ukraine to hit deeper into Russia

Prior to these coordinated strikes, Ukraine’s drone attacks on Russia have reached as far as 1,100 miles from their shared border.

That distance is dwarfed by the reach of Sunday’s attack, where the farthest airfield, at Belaya in the eastern-central Irkutsk region, was more than 2,500 miles from Ukraine.

Russia most likely viewed bases far from Ukraine as being at less risk of attack.

Bronk said that even if only half of the reported 41 planes were damaged or destroyed, it would have a “significant impact” on Russia’s ability to launch long-range cruise missile attacks on Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure.

Bronk estimates that Russia had about 60 active Tu-95 “Bear” bombers and about 20 Tu-160 “Blackjack” bombers involved in this aerial campaign, and he said replacing damaged planes would be a huge challenge, as production on both models has either slowed or halted completely in recent decades.

An image from a Ukrainian drone shows the large-scale attack on Russian military bombers in Siberia on Sunday. EYEPRESS via Reuters Connect

No hard shelter for planes

Videos and images from the attack show that the planes were parked in the open air, outside any shelter. This may have made them an easy target.

Satellite images have suggested that this is a point of some anxiety for Russia, which appears to have tried to pile tires onto the wings of its bombers to try to trick visual guidance systems. An aircraft on the ground is highly vulnerable to attack and is wholly dependent on airborne aircraft and nearby air defenses.

Russia isn’t the only country with this issue.

While China is reported to have enough hardened air shelters to house the majority of its combat aircraft, the US has invested far less in this capability.

A US F-16 fighter jet in a hardened shelter at Spangdahlem Air Base in Germany in 2025. Senior Airman Demi M. Ebert/US Air Force

‘Sleeper’ drones

Ukraine didn’t detail how it successfully smuggled the drones past Russian authorities. But the fact that it did so “highlights the vulnerability of Russian transport and logistics system,” Patton Rogers said.

“The question for Russia must be, how many more are lying in wait?” he said.

At the same time, Russia has shown itself quick to learn throughout the war, which could worry the West.

The attack is a “stark reminder” of a new phase in war, Karl Rosander, the CEO and cofounder of the Swedish defence tech startup Nordic Air Defence, said in emailed comments. “One where drones can be covertly deployed and lie dormant behind enemy lines, waiting to strike.”

It’s “only a matter of time” before the tactic is taken up by Russia and other hostile state actors, he added.

The implications of this are wide-ranging. An air base needs a combination of armored shelters for aircraft, electronic jammers to disrupt drone guidance systems, and enough missiles or guns to shoot them down.

All are costs measured in billions of dollars — and Ukraine has just devised a new threat costing in the mere thousands.

Patton Rogers questioned how vulnerable NATO air bases are to such attacks, while pointing out how the tactic could be adopted elsewhere.

“Drones won’t be confined to a set battlefield,” he said.

While long-range drones will continue to strike, weaponized short-range drones will be “hidden and waiting for launch” to attack deep inside adversary territory, he said, adding: “The question is, are NATO allies ready for this new reality?”

Maliuk said the drones were first smuggled into Russia, then placed inside wooden cabins mounted on the back of lorries and concealed below remotely operated detachable roofs.

The lorries were then apparently driven to locations near airbases by drivers who were seemingly unaware of their cargo; then, the drones were launched and set upon their targets.

Videos circulating online show drones emerging from the roof of one of the vehicles involved. One lorry driver interviewed by Russian state outlet Ria Novosti said he and other drivers tried to knock down drones flying out of a lorry with rocks.

“They were in the back of the truck and we threw stones to keep them from flying up, to keep them pinned down,” he said.

According to unverified reports by Russian Telegram channel Baza – which is known for its links to the security services – the drivers of the lorries from which the drones took off all told similar stories of being booked by businessmen to deliver wooden cabins in various locations around Russia.

Fact-checkers getting ready for PMQs

Anthony Reuben

BBC Verify senior journalist

BBC Verify carries out fact-checking while Prime Minister’s Questions is taking place in the House of Commons. I’ve been speaking to senior journalist Tamara Kovacevic about what they do.

How do you prep ahead of PMQs?

We try to fact-check claims made at PMQs as quickly as possible and the key to being able to do that is preparing in advance. We try to identify which topics might come up and what specific claims might be made by the prime minister and the leader of the opposition. We look at what the evidence is for each claim, including what we can find from publicly available data.

How do you identify what the likely topics are going to be?

We check for claims that Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch have made on social media or in recent interviews, we stay across party press releases and other announcements and we also talk to our colleagues in Westminster. In the past week there has been plenty of talk about the government’s defence strategy and the numbers of people arriving in the UK on small boats, so we’ll be preparing for questions about those.

How is the team assigned?

Today we have a team of four who will all listen to PMQs and post claims in our internal chat as we hear them. Once we decide which claims to check – wrong or misleading ones are the priority – we’ll listen back to double check the exact wording to quote. The journalist who prepared that topic in advance will write the post and the editor will check it and sign off before publication.

What is the most challenging aspect of it all?

There are often claims that are not clearly wrong or right. We also get claims we haven’t prepared for. We have to work at speed to check them against all the available information and – if we can’t find any evidence for the claim – we may have to contact the politician who made it to ask them for their sources.