August 26, 2025: Two months ago Ukraine launched a surprise drone attack on five Russian air bases located all over Russia. The farthest target was over 4,o00 kilometers from Ukraine. The three target airbases were located near the Arctic Circle; another was near the Pacific coast and the last two were in Siberia and near the Mongolian border.

Russia believed these bases were too far from Ukraine to be attacked. The bases contained the last 120 long range bombers Russia possessed. These aircraft were not produced any more. If some were lost, there would be no replacements.

It took Ukrainians nearly two years to plan what they called Operations Spider Web. Ukraine infiltrated trucks carrying crates containing drones into Russia. Most of the drivers were Russian who were paid well to drive these trucks to remote locations where they had orders to leave the trucks and take local buses or trains home. After that drone operators based in Ukraine or Ukraine friendly areas of Russia took control of the drones and launched them. After that the Artificial Intelligence software in each drone used visual sensors to spot and home in on their targets. This operation destroyed 41 aircraft, which was more than a third of Russia's heavy bomber fleet. After that attacks by the remaining bombers on Ukraine were rare, especially when it was discovered that the Ukrainians were prepared to go after and disrupt these attacks and frequently destroy the bombers. After that Russia relied mostly on ballistic missiles. Ukraine had also become more adept at intercepting these. The Ukrainians developed new techniques that enabled the U.S. Patriot missile to regularly interest the fastest Russian missiles that everyone believed could not be intercepted. Russia continued to use these missiles, but in large numbers during an attack to overwhelm the Ukrainian defenses. These attacks often succeeded, but at huge cost to the Russians who often spent as much as $3 million for an Iskander or $6 million for KN23 missiles. Russia has used over 700 Iskanders in one attack to ensure the defenses were overwhelmed. That’s an attack costing over $2 billion to destroy a target costing much less. The KN23 is imported from North Korea and is also regularly intercepted.

Russian heavy bombers also used long range Kh-103 cruise missiles against Ukrainian targets, These are similar to the Americans Cruise Missile but cost much more at over $12 million each.

So far this year Russia has used about 500 cruise and ballistic missiles against Ukrainian targets. Most of these were intercepted or failed before they reached the target. This did not discourage the Russian, who were at last inflicting some damage on Ukrainian targets. Most of those targets were now economic targets that were less likely to have missile defenses.

So far in the war few targets have been hit but the NATO nations providing Ukraine with these systems have gained a lot of experience in using these weapons against modern missiles. That means if the United States is ever at war with China their missile defenses will be much more capable.