On June 1, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) released some incredible video: a row of Russian strategic bombers lined up on the tarmac, all burning fiercely. The video was taken from a small drone which flew past the column of smoke from one burning aircraft as it lined up to attack another.
This was the culmination of Operation Spiderweb, in which small drones smuggled close to airbases in trucks simultaneously attacked four Russian airbases. According to the SBU, they hit 41 Russian strategic aircraft, mainly four-engined bombers, around a third the entire fleet. While these numbers cannot be confirmed, the strike was undoubtedly the most successful of the war, to the point where a BBC headline suggested it might be ‘a turning point for Ukraine’.
Less than two weeks later, Israel struck Iranian military installations in a surprise attack. While the details are not known (and may never be released), and some of the attacks used conventional means , according to the Times of Israel, the ‘Mossad agents set up a drone base on Iranian soil near Tehran. The drones were activated overnight, striking surface-to-surface missile launchers aimed at Israel’. Air defence sites, airbases and other targets may also have been hit by smuggled drones.
The small FPV quadcopters used in Operation Spiderweb were familiar from the battlefield. Developed from racing drones, they typically carry a two-kilo munition – such as the warhead from an RPG-7 anti-tank weapon – and are flown at 70mph or more by skilled pilots as miniature guided missiles. The range is around 20km and pilots are directed to targets by an advanced battlefield awareness system developed by Ukraine using data gathered from scout drones.
Easily assembled from commercial drone components and typically costing no more than $500, FPVs have become the definitive weapons of the conflict. Ukraine made around 200,000 in 2023, scaling up production to 1.5 million in 2024. It aims to make 4m in 2025.
According to a report from UK defence think tank RUSI released in February 2025, small drones were inflicting 60-70% of the damage to Russian forces. To put it another way, they were doing twice as much as every other weapon – artillery, guided missiles, aircraft, small arms, mines – put together, at a fraction of the cost. And they are becoming more numerous and more capable.
FPVs are effective against tanks and other heavy armour and have the range and speed to destroy supply trucks well behind enemy lines. They have proven efficient at destroying Russian artillery and are numerous enough to target Russian soldiers individually. And they are rapidly getting more capable and more autonomous – the Spiderweb FPVs has onboard AI to find targets if the connection to the operator was lost.
Ukraine recently announced the Drone Line project, which will knit together and reinforce drone units in a given area to create a killing zone more than 10km deep and destroy any Russian forces entering it. The Ukrainians also recently carried out their first assault which involved no human troops, just drones and ground robots.
Meanwhile Ukraine, while lacking a navy, has driven the Russian fleet back in the Black Sea and reopened trade routes for grain exports. This was achieved with a combination of locally made anti-ship missiles and sea drones, small uncrewed speed boats carrying explosive charges and other weapons. More recently Ukraine’s robot boats have shot down Russian helicopters and jets with surface to air missiles and acted as aircraft carriers for FPV drones to attack air defence sites.
In the air, Ukraine has made up for its lack of strike aircraft and long-range missiles with locally produced attack drones like the Lyutyi, a propeller-driven aircraft with a wingspan of 7 metres and carrying a 75-kilo warhead. These have attacked Russian strategic targets including oil and gas storage sites and refineries and air bases at ranges of over 1200 kilometres.
Operation Spiderweb, though audacious, was simply one of many Ukrainian initiatives using commercial technology to win asymmetric victories. So far, there is no good answer to the drones. In all domains, small, numerous, low-cost systems appear to be dominating.
The UK has been very supportive of Ukraine’s drone forces, and is a member of the drone coalition, an alliance of nations supplying drones to Ukraine. On June 4, the MoD said it would supply 100,000 drones to Ukraine, likely to be mainly low-cost FPVs.
Debate rages in the military community whether the next war will look anything like the current one. Progressives believe the drone revolution has arrived and traditional weapons are obsolete; the more conservative analysts argue that Ukraine only uses drones because it lacks conventional forces and that this war is an exception rather than a new pattern.
The UK’s long awaited Strategic Defence Review published on June 2 makes frequent mention of AI, digitalisation and the need to keep innovating, and even the importance of drones. But when it comes to spending money, it seems to be more on the side of tradition.
‘The Army will still need armoured platforms and attack helicopters to confront a major state adversary,’ states the SDR.
Attack helicopters have played virtually no role in Ukraine, having been forced off the battlefield by portable surface-to-air missiles. But the UK has just bought 50 of them at a cost of around £40m each and perhaps feels a need to justify the purchase. Meanwhile, any armour is rapidly decimated by FPVs; Ukraine withdrew its Abrams tanks from the front lines in 2024 because they were too vulnerable to Russian drones. The assumption appears to be that the next wars will be different.
The SDR also commits to buying new nuclear-powered attack submarines costing billions and which are likely to be increasingly threatened by proliferating uncrewed surface and underwater vehicles with AI capabilities. The UK will develop such craft itself, but they are not a major feature of the SDR and will attract a tiny fraction of the budget of the giant attack subs.
Similarly, the SDR mentions long-range attack drones and ‘autonomous collaborative platforms’ – uncrewed fighters which work alongside crewed jets – but these seem to be an afterthought compared to the plans for more F-35s (at perhaps £96m apiece), and the GCAP next-generation fighter (likely even more expensive).
The SDR is not just about defence. It also takes into account industry, and the need to create and maintain jobs in the UK and support British companies. Ukraine’s model of drones assembled at kitchen tables or in garage workshops by volunteers and small startups is not the sort of ‘engine for growth’ that the SDR envisages.
The SDR does talk about the need to ‘create mass’ as Ukraine has done with its drone force, and to stockpile large numbers of weapons. But it looks like UK Armed Forces will continue to look much the same as before. While Ukraine is seeking to remove humans from the front entirely with initiatives like Drone Line, the SDR wants more soldiers, cadets and reservists.
Others may embrace affordable, readily-availably drone technology more rapidly. The big concern is that the next time we see something like Operation Spiderweb, it will be expensive British assets on the receiving end – British F-35s blown up on the runway, or British Challenger tanks annihilated by enemy drones or even British submarines overwhelmed and sunk by swarms of miniature robot subs.
Turning British defence around to adapt to the new era is likely to be a slow process. The problem is that we may not have that much time.
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