On June 1, 2025, a series of explosions took place in the air table deep inside Russia, a rude awakening to the Moscow military strategist. Ukraine’s strike Russia’s strategic bombing capabilities may also subvert traditional rules of war: it provides a blueprint for smaller armies to resist the ability of larger countries to launch air strikes from the depths of the frontline.

Ukraine's operating spider web involves 117 remotely controlled drones that were smuggled to Russia in an 18-month period and pushed by operators to parked aircraft miles away.

According to Kiev officials, the raid destroyed or degenerated more than 40 strategic TU-95, TU-160 and TU-22 M3, as well as airborne shooting aircraft of the A-50. This will account for about one-third of Russia's long-range strike fleet, about $7 billion in hardware. Even if satellite images eventually offset these numbers, it is hard to miss the scale of damage.

The logic behind the strike is harder to ignore.

Traditional modern military movements rotate around depth. The warring states attempt to build combat power in a relatively safe "rear zone" - the logistics centers are usually millions of miles from the front line. In these places, new military forces formed and long-range bombers, such as those destroyed during Ukraine's June 1 operation.

The Kremlin has been leaning on its deep bomber base since the 2022 Ukrainian invasion - about 2,000 miles from the front of Ukraine. It combines this strategy with a wave of launching Iran-designed Shah attack drones to put Ukrainian cities at night.

Russia's theory of victory is very simple: compulsory air force. If missiles and one-way drones often land in Kiev, civilian morale in Ukraine would break down, even if the advance of Russian ground forces was trapped on the frontline.

For military planners in Kiev, the theory of destroying the launch platform is much cheaper than the only other option: intercepting every cruise missile in flight, which has so far achieved an 80% success rate, but has largely relied on the West's pending equipment to be shorter and shorter.

Airport vulnerability

Airports have always been a key goal in modern warfare, and the logic is to take root of bombers and fighters more vulnerable and easier to hit.

In the North African desert during World War II, Britain's special aviation service knocked down an estimated 367 enemy aircraft that were spread across North Africa using Jeep raids and delayed operation explosives - the Firepower Air Force never regenerated. In the same year, German paratroopers occupied the runway on Crete, denying the front base of the Royal Air Force and cutting the entire island battle.

A generation later in Vietnam, the attack teams of the Vietnamese and North Vietnamese troops repeatedly penetrated our perimeters as Saatchi charges and mortars, burning fighter jets on the ramps and forcing thousands of American soldiers to move to bases for safety.

The basic script to hit the ground plane is still valid because it imposes cascade fees. Each runway surrounded, and each bomber put a force to hit the army, pouring money into ways to foil such attacks, whether it strengthened the shelter or spreading squadrons across multiple bases. This air strike also moved the soldiers from the front line to the rear guard.

A new era of drone warfare

In spider web action, Ukraine attempted to repeat the strategy while also using surprises to achieve psychological shock and misalignment.

But Ukraine's actions involve the unique 21st century of war.

The advent of drone wars is increasingly seeing military practitioners talking about “air coasts” – military represents an atmosphere that sits above ground forces, but is higher than high-performance fighters and traditionally roaming heights.

Drones flourish in the region, bypassing most infantry weapons in the region, and flying too low to track for traditional radar-guided defenses, although they can incapacitate fuel trucks or strategic bomb attackers.

By smuggling small drone launch teams within a few miles of each runway, Kiev created pop-up launch pads that penetrated deep into Russia and were able to catch the enemy off guard and not ready.

The economic benefits of the Ukrainian approach are distinct. While a drone, lithium battery and warhead cost less than $3,000, the Russian TU-160 bomber costs $250 million.

Impact on Russia

Ukrainian spider web operations will have direct and expensive consequences for Russia, even if the strikes end up being less destructive than the ones currently advocated by Kiev.

Surviving bombers will need to be relocated. Protecting the base from repeated attacks will mean establishing a dirt-style sitting position, installing radar-guided 30mm cannons and electronic flux jammers to cover possible attack vectors. It all costs money. More importantly, the operation will transfer trained soldiers and technicians who might otherwise spin to the frontline to support the upcoming summer offensive.

The raid also made a hole in Russia's nuclear weapons capabilities.

Losing up to a dozen TU-95 and TU-160 aircraft, which are twice as many nuclear-capable bombers, would be strategically embarrassing and could lead the Kremlin to reconsider the frequency of long-range aviation patrols.

In addition to physical and economic damage to Russian convoys, Ukraine's actions also have effective psychological impacts. It shows that over three years of the war aimed at fighting morale Ukraine was able to launch delicate actions that penetrated into Russian territory.

Ukraine's security service operation unfolds in the patient, granular step: 18 months of dismantling drones and batteries on the boundary of harmless cargo, weeks of quiet reassembly kits and camera angles to search the lenses to ensure that the launch vehicle is indistinguishable from the ordinary warehouse on commercial satellites.

Operators drive these trucks to pre-monitor the ignition point and then deploy the drone at Treetop Height.

Since each drone is a one-way weapon, more than a dozen pilots can work in parallel near the launch site, or work remotely, turning to live videotapes to supply parked bombers. Video of the strike shows that the near-close effect of the runway wide--enough enough to flood the outer guards with any temporary forearm reaction.

A new frontline?

For Ukraine, this episode shows a repeatable way to hit depth and defend well. In principle, the same script could adapt to missile repositories, and more importantly, Russian mass-produced shahed attack drone factories.

Kiev needs to find a way to resist the wave of drone and ballistic missile attacks, which has done more damage in recent months than Russian cruise missiles. Fire strike trackers from the Center for Strategic and International Studies show that Shaheds are now the most common and cost-effective air weapon in the Russian campaign.

However, the implications of the spider-web operation go far beyond the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, which undermined the old notion of security in the rear area. Relatively cheap drones were launched from Russia's own territory, erasing billions of dollars in aircraft and supporting long-range strikes and nuclear signals in Moscow. This is a strategy, not a strategy that other attackers can easily replicate against other countries.

Anyone who can smuggle, hide and fly small drones can destroy the opponent's ability to launch air strikes.

Air forces relying on large fixed bases must harden, disperse or accept their runways as the new frontline.