Ukraine’s Pavutina–“Spider Web”–operation points to budget decisions ahead for the U.S. Air Force in hardening its bases in the United States and abroad, especially in the Indo-Pacific, where analysts have pointed to the significant kamikaze drone threat.
More than 100 small quadcopter kamikaze drones hidden in trucks took off on cue on Sunday to destroy dozens of Russian Tupolev strategic bombers inside Russia. The strategic bombers make up one-third of Russia’s nuclear triad.
“I wouldn’t say it’s a wake-up moment–we’ve been awake, it’s just sort of an eyebrow raising moment,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Dave Allvin said of Pavutina during a Center for a New American Security (CNAS) forum on Tuesday. “We’ve always known that hardening our bases is something that we need to do. We have that in our budgets to be able to get more resilient basing, and we have some hardening for the shelters, and we have some more survivable capabilities of our bases forward. Right now, I don’t think it’s where we need to be.”
“I think the fascinating thing will be to what extent in the future–it’s not under this first instantiation, as I understand it–that the Golden Dome will integrate not only [defense against] larger ballistic, cruise, and hypersonic missiles, but also some of these closer-in more effective ones [threats],” Allvin added.
The operation occurred a day before ceasefire talks were to resume between the Kremlin and Kyiv. According to Zelenskyy on X, 34% of the strategic cruise missile carriers at three Russian air bases were hit. The attacks were reported by websites for all the major television news networks.
The strategic bombers destroyed included the Tu-95MS and Tu-22M3 strategic bombers, which are not still being manufactured. At least 40 military aircrafts were damaged and destroyed, according to Military Watch Magazine.
A version of this story was first published by Exchange Monitor affiliate Defense Daily.
