When Ukraine used relatively inexpensive drones in a recent Trojan-horse attack that destroyed several Russian strategic bombers, some observers called it a pivotal moment in asymmetric warfare.
Ukraine’s “Operation Spiderweb” targeted warplanes at Russian air bases worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and the drones each cost less than $1,000, according to The Associated Press (AP). The June 2025 attack destroyed at least 14 planes, including nuclear-capable bombers that formed part of Moscow’s strategic deterrent, and damaged many others, according to the AP.
The attacks took 18 months to plan and involved smuggling drones inside Russia on commercial trucks, which were then parked near the air bases, The Washington Post newspaper reported. The drones, also known as unmanned aerial systems (UAS), were remotely activated and piloted.
In an analysis of satellite photos, the AP counted seven destroyed bombers on the tarmac at the Belaya Air Base, which it called a “major installation for Russia’s long-range bomber force.” The analysis said at least three Tu-95 four-engine turboprop bombers and four Tu-22M twin-engine supersonic bombers appeared to be destroyed.
“Any country that has strategic bombers, strategic missiles and silos, or strategic nuclear submarines at port is looking at the attack and thinking the risk to our arsenal from a containerized set of drones disguised as a semitrailer poses a real risk,” Jason Matheny, CEO of the RAND Corp. think tank, told the Washington Post.
United States Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin said at the Center for a New American Security conference in Washington, D.C., in June 2025: “This shows us that seemingly impenetrable locations maybe are not,” he said, according to DefenseNews.com. “We need to pay more attention to that.”
Recent actions show the U.S. is paying attention to the need to increase its drone defenses for both civilian and military infrastructure. The White House issued an executive order in June 2025 aimed at mitigating such threats to the homeland. Allvin said that such measures must extend to U.S. bases and interests around the world.
“Seeing how we do that in our own homeland defense is one thing … but we need to think about how we integrate that into our force design to ensure that we create dilemmas for our adversaries as well.” he said at the June 2025 conference.
The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), in a 2024 fact sheet, said it is working to deter the “potential negative effects of unmanned systems on U.S. forces, assets, and installations — at home and abroad.”
The White House’s executive order will boost the U.S. counterdrone capabilities, said Sebastian Gorka, the senior director of counterterrorism at the National Security Council, according to a report by National Public Radio (NPR).
“The timing couldn’t even be better … given what we witnessed with the remarkable [Ukrainian] drone operation that occurred … in Russia,” Gorka said, according to NPR.
The U.S. military’s current counterdrone systems include kinetic interceptors, electronic warfare tools, directed-energy weapons (DEWs), and integrated platforms, according to a June 2025 report by The Heritage Foundation. Those systems either physically destroy drones or neutralize them through signal disruption, the report said.
“The challenge of antidrone defense … combines the need for both militarily reliable and cost-effective countermeasures, so that the defenses are cheaper than their targets,” said a March 2023 report in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which said one counterdrone option could be “combining anti-aircraft guns with compact radar and laser systems for detection and ranging.”
The Heritage Foundation’s report, while recognizing the U.S. need to respond to evolving drone threats, concluded: “UAS are a challenge to be met, but they do not render legacy systems obsolete. … The proliferation of cheap drones, in particular among nonstate actors, does, however, pose a threat that must be met with [counterdrone] capabilities.”