Ukraine's 'Unprecedented' Operation Spiderweb: Russia's 'Pearl Harbor'? Or Just More Soggy Silk?
Ukraine has carried out a mass drone strike operation on Russian strategic bases, damaging and potentially destroying several Tu-95 strategic bombers as well as some additional Tu-22s and transport planes:
The operation was reportedly planned and coordinated for over eighteen months, and thus represents the culmination of nearly two years’ worth of careful intelligence work:
NEW: Ukrainian SBU’s Operation “Web” Took 1.5 Years to Prepare Ukraine’s SBU spent over 18 months planning the massive “Web” operation that struck 41 Russian strategic aircraft today. President Zelensky personally oversaw the mission, with SBU chief Vasyl Maliuk leading execution. Sources say the complex logistics involved smuggling FPV drones and mobile wooden cabins into Russia. The drones were hidden under remote-controlled roofs on trucks. When triggered, the roofs opened and kamikaze drones launched toward Russian bombers. SBU insiders stress that all operatives involved are already safely back in Ukraine. Any arrests by Russian authorities will likely be staged for domestic propaganda.
The photos show a secret warehouse rented in the remote Chelyabinsk region of Russia to assemble the drone shelters:
One of the images claimed to show a fiber-optic drone being prepared for the operation:
A possible match from one of the videos of the attack:
Once again, what I have been writing about for two plus years comes into play—that Ukraine uses sabotage teams on Russian territory to slowly infiltrate in gear, assemble and stage operations, then carry out the ops from within, cutting Russian reaction times:
In this case, Zelensky himself announced that Ukrainian agents made it over the border back to Ukraine just before the attack began, after having set everything in motion:
“The office of our operation on Russian territory was located directly next to the Russian FSB headquarters in one of their regions,” Zelensky said in his evening address.
He also reported that a total of 117 drones, controlled by operators, were used in the operation. He stated that the Russian Federation lost more than 40 units of strategic aviation
The attack consisted of transport tractor trailers which parked near Russian airbases then unleashed a coordinated drone swarm at a chosen time.
Videos emerged showing the drones leaving the parked trailers; note, this longer compilation shows the drones exiting the trailers, as well as footage of Russian civilians who had noticed the attack and reportedly tried to shut the top of the trailers to prevent further drones from escaping. One video towards the end even shows some of the civilians being caught in the explosion after the trailer triggered a self-destruct mechanism:
Irkutsk oblast locals who witnessed the Ukrainian kamikaze drones launching from a truck climbed on top of it and tried to block the mechanism, close the hatches.
Olenegorsk in the Murmansk region. Drones flying out of the truck attack the airfield with Tu-95
Further, the attack appeared to have been even larger in design, but was to some extents foiled. Not only did some bases, like Ryazan according to reports, entirely repel the drones, but several of the trailers were mysteriously destroyed en route to their attack point:
One uncorroborated version was that a foreign driver had ‘suspected’ something and stopped the trailer to inspect it, upon which it ‘self-destructed’. If that’s the case, Ukrainian operators may have been watching with security cameras hidden inside and chose to detonate it, on failure of the mission.
It was said the drones used Russia’s LTE phone network, tapping into it via local SIM cards—a tactic long utilized by both sides.
Further, there were early claims these were ‘AI-powered’ drones, which is not true:
Drones that attacked Russian airfields were controlled by state-of-the-art artificial intelligence that was trained on aircraft from the Poltava Long-Range Aviation Museum.
Truth: The enemy's published footage of objective control shows that no artificial intelligence was used in the attacks. The drones were controlled via open-source software, and the communications were apparently conducted via mobile networks. This is indicated by the LTE signal receiver antennas that were captured in the footage.
It’s clear that with the loss of some of the trailers en route, and the intervening of Russian civilians on others, the operation was only a partial success—but, of course, such a result would have been calculated into the planning.
For Ukraine’s purposes, the success is enough: even destroying one or two of Russia’s strategic Tu-95 bombers is ample accomplishment because Russia no longer manufactures these airframes, and only has somewhere between 47-55 active—though it remains an open question whether 18 months of intense planning and sacrificed intel resources was ‘worth it’ for this result.
Thus far, Russian sources have reported that potentially anywhere between one to five Tu-95s were actually destroyed or disabled permanently, though nothing is conclusive yet, and the final tally could prove much smaller or greater than surmised. RussiansWithAttitude notes:
Final tally of confirmed hits so far seems to be 5 Tu-95s, 2 Tu-22s, one An-12. According to my info, two of the 95s can most likely be repaired relatively soon, as the damage is not super extensive. At least one is dead for good. The 22s, no idea. Sure hurts but not devastating
From what I’ve seen of the footage, only one looked to be potentially totally destroyed, with others merely suffering fires exaggerated by the heavy smoke of burning aviation fuel. Other videos show transport craft burning, which are mistaken for Tu-95s. For instance, here is said to be the Antonov AN-12BK burning:
The fact is, a tiny FPV drone will have a hard time entirely ‘destroying’ a gigantic strategic bomber—many different FPV hits would likely be needed unless the plane is full of fuel and on-base fire suppression teams do not respond in time—which is of course a possibility.
Russian bases have emergency fire suppression units for this very purpose, and Ukrainian-paid ‘saboteurs’ have lit several Russian aircraft on fire in the past two years which were always put out and repaired virtually in days. This means the likelihood of a large amount of Tu-95s being completely destroyed is low.
But as of this writing new Ukrainian OSINT Synthetic Aperture Radar pictures of Belaya airbase in Irkutsk claim to show 3 x Tu-95 ‘destroyed’: