Expensive planes, tanks, and ships can be destroyed on the cheap.
Relying on its own resources, Ukraine has just carried out what might be the most complex, elaborately planned, and cost-effective military operation of its current war with Russia. Yesterday, the Ukrainians used drones to attack, almost simultaneously, at least four Russian airfields separated by thousands of miles. Among them were two airfields just inside Russia, but the targets also included Olenya air base, above the Arctic Circle, and, remarkably, Belaya air base, in Siberia, which lies just over the border from Mongolia.
The attack showed how much audacity, ingenuity, and effectiveness the Ukrainians can bring to their own defense when Western leaders aren’t pressuring them to hold back. It also revealed the vulnerability of the large, expensive planes and other hardware treasured by major powers around the world.
Images circulating immediately after the attacks appeared to show that Russian aircraft had been hit with remarkable accuracy at some of their most vulnerable points. The Ukrainians seem to have placed relatively small drone swarms in cavities built into the top of trailer trucks. Then, when the trucks were close to the targets, the trailer roofs opened up, and the swarms of drones flew out, surprising and overwhelming Russian defenses. Even how the drones themselves were operated represents something notable. In many cases, they seem to have been flying courses preprogrammed via the open-source software ArduPilot, which has proved effective in navigating unmanned aerial vehicles for hundreds of miles and precisely reaching targets.
Although details remain limited, the operation testifies to how rapidly drone technology is evolving. Human operators might well have been observing some of yesterday’s flights and been in a position to take control if necessary, but some of the vehicles may have operated outside of human authority, flying preprogrammed courses. Ukrainian officials have said that some of the drones were basically AI-trained to recognize the most vulnerable parts of Russian aircraft and automatically home in on those areas.
The Ukrainians have claimed that more than 40 advanced Russian aircraft were hit and that at least 13 were destroyed. How much of the damage is reparable is not yet clear. Kyiv boasted of destroying more than a third of Russia’s large Tu-95 bombers, which have been a primary launch system for the large volleys of missiles that regularly strike Ukrainian cities. The Tu-95s are literally irreplaceable: Russia has no production facilities making more of these aircraft, and it has not yet designed a successor to the model. Yesterday’s attack also appears to have damaged a large number of Tu-22 M3 bombers and probably one A-50 command aircraft, the Russian equivalent of a U.S.-made airborne warning and control aircraft. The total cost of Russian losses likely runs into several billion dollars.
In contrast, the cost of one of the Ukrainian drones used in yesterday’s attack has been estimated at about $1,200—so that even if the airfields were attacked with 100 drones each (a seemingly high estimate), the total cost of the drones used would have been less than $1 million. I struggle to think of a recent military operation where one side suffered so much damage at so little cost to the other.
In one sense, the Ukrainian attack represents a culmination of what we have seen happen since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022: Seemingly outmatched by Russia’s much larger military, Ukraine has used drones and other improvised equipment to destroy tanks, large warships, bombers, and other large legacy systems. Military planners and many outside commentators have been too slow to acknowledge the significance of Ukraine’s defensive tactics, but the most recent attacks plainly show the need for major changes in how all militaries are constructed and trained.
For the United States and other major Western militaries, Ukraine’s use of trucks parked outside secure areas near military sites will pose uncomfortable questions. How closely do they—or can they—monitor all the truck traffic that streams past their bases? Do they know what happens in every nearby property from which an adversary could hide drone swarms and then launch them with no warning? For many years now, for instance, Chinese interests have been buying large amounts of farmland right next to important U.S. military bases. They could be growing soybeans, but they could also be staging grounds for drone swarms that would make the Ukrainian attacks look minuscule.
Meanwhile, in Europe, military bases have in the past few years been regularly overflown by a large number of unknown drones, which are presumably gathering intelligence. Whichever power is responsible obviously has the ability to deploy a larger number of drones in kinetic attacks. The Ukrainians are showing U.S. and European militaries that better security against drone flights is long overdue.
For Ukraine’s doubters, these attacks should lead to a period of quiet reflection. President Donald Trump has insisted that Ukraine has “no cards.” The New York Times editorial board recently implied that Ukraine is unlikely to produce a military breakthrough that can change the basic course of the war. But pessimism about Ukraine’s capabilities is ahistorical and wrongheaded.
For three years, the Biden administration simultaneously supported Ukraine and discouraged major attacks on Russian soil, for fear of provoking Vladimir Putin too much. That constraint no longer exists, now that Trump has written off Ukraine and appears eager to end the war on Putin’s terms.
Until now, Ukraine has had only a limited ability to launch attacks as ambitious as the one it just executed. If Ukraine’s remaining allies help arm it properly to undertake similar operations at scale, it can still win the war.
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