THE first report, as an old military saying goes, is always wrong. Ukrainian sources claimed a spectacular drone attack on Sunday, confirmed by Russian ministry of defence officials, which struck 40 aircraft using 117 drones. This figure would correspond to around one-third of Russia’s 160 nuclear-capable, and therefore strategic, cruise missile carrying aircraft and would cost the Russian military around $7billion. The aircraft in question are the Tupolev Tu-95 and Tu-22, the supersonic Tu-160 and the Beriev A-50 AWACS (airborne warning and control systems) aircraft. None of these models is currently in production and will therefore be difficult, if not impossible, to replace. However, 40 already seems an exaggerated figure; satellite imagery confirms so far 13 aircraft destroyed, a cost therefore of perhaps $1.9billion – still considerable but magnified by the inability quickly to replace the losses. The cost of re-opening factories would multiply even this more modest figure many times. Russian sources most recently report up to five Tu-95s, two Tu-22s and an Antonov-12BK transport aircraft. It seems possible that two of the Tu-95s could be repaired.
Operation Spiderweb is alleged to have taken 18 months to plan and prepare. Four Russian airfields were hit, the furthest some 4,300km from Ukraine’s borders, at Olenya in the Arctic Murmansk region, Belaya in Siberian Irkutsk, Diaghilev in Ryazan and Ivanovo, northeast of Moscow. Ukrainian sources claim that the large number of small drones were smuggled into Russia in freight vehicles, and hidden in other vehicles or wooden sheds. They were remotely launched from multiple locations, and independently targeted.
This was clearly a major failure by the Russian intelligence and security services, who will have some hard questions to answer. The attack will force the Russians to review their basing strategy for these scarce assets, perhaps harden the sites further, or disperse the aircraft and even move them frequently. Air defence platforms will also have to be increased at these sites, which will require redeployment of units from other theatres. All these further increase the costs to the Russians – although given the amount of money that Russia is receiving from the West for oil and gas (far more than is being given to Ukraine), this may be less of an impact than we might at first think.
Why these aircraft, and why now? First of all, these are aircraft that have not been used to attack Ukraine with nuclear weapons, but they have been used to launch conventional munitions with considerable effect, that is, their use has been sub-strategic.So the morale of both sides is one of the Ukrainian targets for this message. The timing, of course, was impeccable – a day before the second round of ‘peace’ talks in Istanbul – and therefore a huge dig in Putin’s ribs. Dig it may be, but it is unlikely to change Russia’s strategic priorities, not least because over recent days, Russia was able to hit Ukraine with 400 missiles and drones. It does, of course, stress the impact of UAV (drone) technologies on the modern battlefield: plentiful, cheap, easy to hide and hard to detect, just the sort of message to send before a major Nato country publishes a strategic defence review whose thrust is likely to be away from conventional war and more towards the cyber and drone systems that are, wrongly, seen as replacements for men and hardware.
One major question that remains for me is whether or not Ukraine has the capability to identify these distant targets, infiltrate weapons as it claims, and then carry out the necessary targeting. This is a highly sophisticated business; few countries other than the US and Russia can come close to managing it, and I must say, I have my doubts. So, if someone else’s hand was in the Zelensky glove-puppet, whose was it?
