How Ukraine's drone strike upends the rules of warfare

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

By Benjamin Jensen / For The Conversation

A series of blasts at airbases deep inside Russia on June 1, came as a rude awakening to Moscow’s military strategists.

The Ukrainian strike at the heart Russia’s strategic bombing capability could also upend the traditional rules of war: It provides smaller military a blueprint for countering a larger nation’s ability to launch airstrikes from deep behind the front lines.

Ukraine’s Operation Spider Web involved 117 remote-controlled drones that were smuggled into Russia over an 18-month period and launched toward parked aircraft by operators miles away.

The raid destroyed or degraded more than 40 Tu-95, Tu-160 and Tu-22 M3 strategic bombers, as well as an A-50 airborne-early-warning jet, according to officials in Kyiv. That would represent roughly one-third of Russia’s long-range strike fleet and about $7 billion in hardware. Even if satellite imagery ultimately pares back those numbers, the scale of the damage is hard to miss.

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/comment-how-ukraines-drone-strike-upends-the-rules-of-warfare/

[PermatexNo.2]

1. I thought the same thing the first time I saw videos of a drone taking out a Russian tank by dropping.....

.......a grenade into an open hatch. "Well there goes Tom Clancy's ideas about tank warfare in Europe". When military drone operators sat in air conditioned office in Air Force bases and controlled million dollar drones via satellite it was one thing. Now a Ukrainian school teacher is miles from the front and is destroying a bomber that the U.S. has spent billions of dollars worrying about and defending against. Everything from Nike missiles on the shore of Lake Erie in the fifties, to the DEW Line, to networks of satellites today. All kind of obsolete.

[Norrrm]

2. Drones, airborne and seaborne, are shaking it all up.

Ukraine has used them very effectively to clobber both the Russian Navy and Russian Air Force.

Their intel ain't bad either.

It's either a new sixth generation of warfare or a significant advancement of the third generation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generations_of_warfare

Many countries' War Colleges are going to have new courses of study.