Ukraine’s Operation Spider’s Web attack on Russian airbases caused shockwaves among strategists and military planners around the world. Analysts said more than 20 of Moscow’s hugely expensive long-range bombers, which it will struggle to replace quickly, were destroyed by drones developed from hobbyists’ craft supplies at a cost of just a few thousand pounds each.
The audacious strike has been described as Russia’s Pearl Harbor: an unforeseen sucker punch that has revealed deep vulnerabilities.
New technology, innovatively and daringly used, appears to be denying Russia its strategic advantages — from the size of the country, where bases deep in Siberia were assumed to be safe, to a population more than three times the size of Ukraine’s.
