Operational lessons from Ukraine’s deep-strike campaign - The World of Intelligence

Unpacking Ukraine's Audacious Deep-Strike Operation Spiderweb Hello and welcome to the World of Intelligence App. Jane's coming to you from our new studio. I'm your host, Kate Cox, Director of Strategic Programs in Jane's Analysis division. And as always, I'm here with my Co host, Shordon Corbett's chair of Jane's Advisory Board. Hello, To talk us through today's topic, Russian Strategic Aviation. We have two Jane's experts with us in the room also. So we have Miko Ranich, lead Jane's analyst specialising in Russian military capability. Hi, Miko. Speaker 2 Hi, Kate. Speaker 1 And Alex Strono, the manager of the Russia Osent force monitoring desk at Jane's Hi. Speaker 3 Hi, Kate. Speaker 1 So today, we will cast our minds back to mid 2025 when Ukraine conducted unprecedented strikes on aviation assets in Russian territory. This operation known as spider web, has had lasting significance for reasons that we'll look at today. So Alex, let's set the scene, please. Could you give us a bit of a refresher on what happened on the 1st of June? How many bases were attacked, with what capability? And what was Jane's assessment of the damage to inventories? Speaker 3 Sure thing. So the 1st of June 2025, the Security Service of Ukraine, the SBU, they launched a series of pretty impressive drone strikes on on Russian air bases, primarily targeting the the Russian strategic bomber fleet and particularly but not exclusively the TU22M3's and TU90 fives. So there were 4 bases that were struck, Oliano Gorsk in Mamansko blast, Ivanovostavini in Ivanovo blast whereas and Yagilevo, excuse me, in Ariasan Oblast and Belaya in a Kurzko blast. And in addition to this, there was one other targeted in Ugurang Kasser Shivo, which is an Amor oblast. So to give you an idea if this is, you know, like sort of Russian to you guys, that's pretty much, well, it's not pretty much it's from European Russia all the way over to the Far East that were targeted. It was a very, very ambitious operation. And in terms of the damage we, well, we reckon our assessment is that about 7% of the TU22MS strategic former fleet was destroyed. So we've that would be based on satellite imagery and about 13% of the TU 95 fleet. You can be a bit more generous to the Ukrainians if you consider, you know, things like, you know, damaged aircraft, aircraft that we visually confirmed were targeted. So for example, we think about 17% of both fleets were what we know about 17% of both fleets were visually confirmed to have been targeted in this operation. So it was it was very ambitious. And there were also a couple of other aircraft targeted. So the A50, which is an airborne early warning aircraft, two of those were targeted as well. And we know that they also took out an AM 12 tactical transport aircraft. Interestingly, they left alone, at least we believe they left alone the T160 supersonic strategic bombers in the course of this of this operation, which is somewhat smaller fleets. So takeaways. Yes, it was damaging, extremely damaging. You know, 7% is not a small amount. It's going to make you change the way that you do things. It's going to make, it's going to change a lot of things about the way that you do things. But it's not it's not a knockout blow, it's not massively damaging. That would be that would be my my take away, Yeah. Exposing Russian Defense Vulnerabilities Through Strategic Shock So the key, thanks for that. I think the key take away from me was the strategic shock element. The fact is that, I mean, this was audacious, no question about it, but it took 18 months worth of planning. So it wasn't just a well, let's just do this. And, and as you say, the geographical span was enormous. So that the amount of planning, but the fact that, you know, Ukraine could reach into strategic depth, but also strategic assets is, is probably the greatest thing. Just just latching onto the, the, the difference in opinions on damage or the rest. Obviously, you know, battle damage assessment, I think I mentioned in a recent podcast is notoriously difficult, particularly when you're looking at individual assets in terms of were they damaged? Are they still operational? And that really comes aware over time. A lot, a lot of the aircraft out there or some aircraft on those bases are derelict anyway. I think their targeting was much better than that. And they did target active assets. So, you know, the the best way of telling exactly how much damage was done is which of the ones go to, you know, back to Kazan for any repair, but also which ones are dispersed and which ones are just left there. So you know, functional damage versus physical damage is is quite hard to do. Speaker 3 I think to really not about this operation is that it's an intelligence operation. It's not a primarily a military operation. These are small copter UAVSFPV drones that are launched from mainly inside of trucks that are inside of Russia. Just a few kilometres in many cases, in some cases I think less than 6 kilometres from the actual perimeter of the of the air bases there. There's been an, according to the Ukrainians, 18 months of planning goes into this. There's a significant amount of material of effort, of planning that goes into smuggling the explosives and smuggling the FPV drones in like in some cases, well, not in some cases, constructing the, you know, the wooden structure that these things fly out of when they're attacking the bases. It's it's extremely audacious. It's it, it is, it is impressive. There's no doubt about it. Yeah. Speaker 1 So picking up on the strategic shock element of this, since they're the the striking deep into Russian territory and thinking also about the tactical and strategic significance of this event more broadly, what other observations do we have there, thinking about, for example, the targeting of the attack or the impact on exposing vulnerabilities and Russian defence capability, for example? Speaker 4 So, so for me, I think they learnt a very hard lesson actually. And, and it's a lesson that we should learn ourselves having rows and rolls of, of, of aircraft or any asset in a nice neat line, even though though, you know, there were tyres on, on some of the wings presumably to, to sort of try obfuscate any AI targeting. Clearly that didn't work. I think there were, there was probably a, an institutional arrogance that they wouldn't be able to get that close or that the air defences that will work or they wouldn't be able to do it with those sort of of, you know, RPVS. So I think, I think from that perspective, they've probably learnt a big lesson. We'll talk about no doubt about the dispersal and and in terms of the capability of the fleet, I think we're going to cover that in a moment. But you know, it's all very well to say, oh, that was really bad. And you know, they've got a bloody nose there. But for me, almost pre empting, my final lesson is that we need to learn lessons of that because that could happen anywhere in the world. Assessing Operation Spiderweb's Impact on Russia's Nuclear Deterrence And Miko, coming to you next and thinking about the impact of the strikes, how have they affected the airborne element of Russia's nuclear strike capability? Speaker 2 Well, I think as my colleague said, the liberation was indeed very, very impressive. However, I do feel that impact on the Russian long range aviation, while it was significant, it was by no means critical and I would say that it is questionable if the attacks had had a major operational impact, let alone strategic. Right. It's also interesting that you know, tuple of one 60s were were targeted while as you claimed that they were we we didn't through our assessment, no tuple of one 60s were damaged. Obviously just just to give you a brief sort of insight, tuple of 160 is far more capable aircraft. It is a super Sonic long grade bomber or, or or you know, both aircraft tuple of 95 and tuple of 160. Russians call them Rakitanosti. They have missile carriers, that's how how they refer to them. So this is quite interesting. And whether they focus on tuple of 95 because this is the platform that is used extensively to deliver cruise missiles on Ukraine or for some other reason, it, it is not clear. Also, I think it's important to keep in mind that the Jupiter 90 fives are cheaper to run and are used for airborne patrols. And obviously, you know, in the Ukrainian theatre, they were used in Syria. And essentially they're used for, for force of show force missions and, and, and also to, to test response time times of, of NATO adversaries and for, for military diplomacy. But obviously, you know, we said that, you know, around 7% of, of, of 2 + 90 fleet was taken out. I think it's probably also as Sean, Sean said, sorry, BDA is notoriously challenging and it's difficult to say, you know, this could be categorical whether they were, you know, definitely in service aircraft, whether all of those were operational, right. So I think, you know, the, the Duplev 160 is, you know, a prime asset, whereas Duplev 95 is also very relevant. But I think what Russians will likely do, they will not try to replace the lost aircraft or right, they've got probably, you know, a number of airframes that are in in in a decent state. But I think instead they're focusing on upgrading the existing 2 + 160 fleet and producing new 2 + 160 M aircraft. Also, I think it's important to keep in mind that the strategic bomber fleet or those missile carriers, they are actually not. They're the least significant component of the Russian second strike capability of of deterrence. If you like the nuclear payloads for cruise missiles such as gauge 102, KH 55, they're of a much lower yield. OK, then ICBMSNSLBMS all right, so, so I think and and also, you know, it is much easier to intercept a cruise missile than it is a ballistic missile. Where do you know multiple re entry vehicles which happen entering in the in the terminal phase when they re enter the atmosphere, they travel at hypersonic speed, right. So and, and, and actually, you know, when they're deployed, you know, both mobile ICBM launchers and SOBMS, when they're sorry, SSBMS deployed with their, you know, SLBMS, they're also more difficult to take out. So, so for those reasons, you know, essentially the long range aviation fleet is, is, you know, the least significant. So yeah, I think that would be kind of my, those would be my observations. Speaker 4 So I totally agree with that. The strategic perspective, you know, very, very limited in terms of where they sit within the triad, but also, you know, the fact that they can still operate them. From what I understand though that operationally there, there are a little bit more significance particularly in the Ukraine theatre for because they're now having to fly from further distances, though there are fewer sorties, but I understand that they are more loaded up. So, so whereas in the past they wouldn't be fully loaded in terms of their armaments, now they are. So you know, that's been mitigated, but I think there isn't almost a different perspective in terms of from certainly the the sorties that I've seen that the incursions into air defence identification zones, North America stuff that they've actually increased a little bit. And I suspect that's just messaging saying look, we're still here, we're still active, we can do our do our business. So even though they're not armed, but of course they're not hopefully so. So I think there is, there is operationally some changes and also certainly the strategic narrative is maintained. Russia's Deterrence Signaling and Mitigation Strategies Post-Attack Yeah. So Miko, you mentioned deterrence. So coming to you, Alex, could you tell us a little bit more about the deterrence role of Russian long range aviation as a key member of the nuclear triads? Well. Speaker 3 They don't want to repeat too much of what Miko just said because that was that was a very on point. But I will say that they, they certainly continue to send signals that, you know, this is very much an operational part of their, of their nuclear triads. So I can talk a little bit, for example, about the exercises we continue to see taking place. So for example, late October 2025, Russia conducted its strategic nuclear forces exercises, you know, signalling to the West to potential adversaries that it's nuclear trade is still operational. And in and as part of that, they, you know, continue to show us that they were capable of operating AT-95 Ms. strategic bomber. So, for example, they released footage of what we believe to be a cage one O 1 cruise Nassar being loaded into ATE 95 at Ukranka. So that's in the in in in amoral blast in the in the Russian Far East. We've continued to see other as, as you mentioned, show on exercises, testing the testing the the quest and response times, making, you know, keeping, keeping, keeping the West on its toes. So it's certainly they, their signals have been to the West that it's still an up and running part of their nuclear, of their nuclear triad. I would also add to this that pretty much, I wouldn't say immediately, but within days of the of operation spider web, they were conducting exercises. So we have a, we know we have a record here from, I believe it's the 8th of June, so excuse me, the 11th of June. And the MOD is released for Jusanga T22322 and three strategic from, you know, from conducting a training flight over the portic sea. So as soon as the, as soon as the operation takes place, that's in the world, we're still running, our strategic aviation is still perfectly functioning. And that is unsurprising to me. Yeah, I, I, I would also add to that as well that, you know, as as part of, for example, the Zapad exercises in 2025, we counted at least five that we know of distinct sub exercises as part of this, which involves strategic bombers, of which four involved the two types of bombers that were that were struck in, in Operation Spider Webs. So in terms of signalling, they're telling us that their strategic aviation force is still working and still functioning. And that isn't, you know, that isn't surprising given the the numbers we saw. Speaker 1 So returning to a couple of points that you made earlier, Miko, on what Russia's doing to mitigate capability setbacks and perhaps not focusing on replacing equipment to the same extent as upgrading. And any other views or observations from yourself, Sean, Alex on on that question? What's Russia doing to mitigate these set setbacks? Speaker 4 So the the usual thing that you'd expect the increased dispersals, I suspect they're bolstering up. There are defences a lot of this was you know, in the environment. So Grazer morpher if you want to call it that or certainly asymmetric warfare. They will be reverse engineering how on earth all this equipment, people capability got into Russia. And, and, and as ever, they're going to make it more difficult. You know, so I suspect and I haven't seen this on imagery, but I haven't been looking recently that there will be probably a new focus on perhaps hardened shelters for the for the certainly for some of the air base, whether that includes the G bombs or not, because these are big, big pieces of kit. But as always, they will be reviewing their internal security, which causes the the opposition a problem. Speaker 1 And Miko, back to you what? What action has Russia taken since June to prevent this sort of attack from happening again? Speaker 2 Well, I think as Sean already mentioned, they're dispersing the aircraft, which is obviously having impact on on operations. But I, you know, I'm sure that base protection, you know, is, is likely being improved. We know that there are establishing what are known as mobile fire support groups or mogs, Mobineer or by a groupie, and these are actually manned by reservists and, and, and are supposed to protect critical infrastructure. All right. But I'm also pretty sure that the Aerospace Forces or long range aviation in particular is, you know, likely doing the same things because, I mean, I do remember a couple of years ago, there were, there was some imagery we came across for our research that they had, you know, guys with shotguns and, you know, having machine guns at some of the bases. But I think, you know, since the attack, that has probably proliferated even more. So yeah. Speaker 3 And just in response to what Sean said about dispersal, it was immediate and we have the SASSA imagery to prove it. Like as soon as the attack took place they dispersed, the 100 don't. Speaker 2 Remember there to you. Speaker 3 Into multiple different bases. Yeah. And this obviously is going is, you know, not just the way they've responded, but the way they've continued to to respond. Jane's Intelligence Tradecraft and Open-Source Information Challenges All right. And a more methodological question, so a question about the trade craft, but how we do what we do, how does this work at Jane's in terms of how we conduct these battle damage assessments, how we do force monitoring what what are some of their trade craft tools and approaches that we apply? Speaker 2 Well, obviously, satellite imagery analysis also any chatter on the social media, He'd be surprised if you can find, you know, people who have links to the military often want to get to know many sorts of likes and that they delete those posts because, you know, they've shared something that was sensitive and somebody maybe told him to remove those posts. So. Yeah. So. So you know, those definitely help. Speaker 3 Unsurprisingly, when we conducted the BDA, which we got to work on immediately, as soon as we found out this had happened, we used high resolution satellite imagery. That was our first go to place, our first go to source. Obviously there are people like you mentioned on social media who are going to be posting things and that includes satellite imagery that we don't have access to. So we're not stingy. We don't we're not snobby perhaps is the word we will use that if someone has posted a high resolution imagery showing, you know, a bomber that's clearly, you know, gone up in flames and burns pieces, then we will we'll integrate that into our into our BDA, you know, multiple other things as well. We're going to study and geolocate the footage that the Ukrainians released. Like we spent a lot of time looking in that footage and and watching, you know, identifying the aircraft that they targeted, looking at the things that were, you know, visible in the footage. Like, you know, if in the footage you see an FPV drone flying over a burning bomber, then you can, you know, if that bomber is engulfed in flames, then you can make an assessment as to, you know, the likelihood that that bomber is coming is coming back from that. And also there were cases of Russian soldiers who put videos of the burning aircraft on social media as well, which I imagine they probably got in quite a lot of trouble for. But you know, you can't set me integrate that into your into your analysis because really the Internet is forever. Like, even if they immediately delete it, someone saved it somewhere. And so it's going to be circulated. And that did happen, I believe one guy, one of the propagandists on Russian state TV was conference to be executed for, for doing it. So it's, yeah, it's, we will use whatever we can find from open sources in order to, in order to conduct our, our battle damage assessment. And obviously we're going to conduct all of the usual, you know, safeguards to make sure it's credible, to make sure, you know, we're happy with it, to verify it. That's the word I'm looking for. But yes, we, you know we will. You know, multi layered, multi source analysis is is is the thing that we aim for certainly on my team. Speaker 4 I think there's a general point in terms of look, when we're looking at the, the, the whole Ukraine conflict is that there is so much social media out there. You've got bloggers, you've got just interested parties. Some are neutral, some are pro Russian, some are pro Ukrainian, But that there is such a body of that. And as once it's verified, I think we, we've got really good visibilities and we noticed this. I mean, I called it the coming of age of OSINT and the start of it because our, our outstanding at what's going on, whether that's without tech data, whether it's with looking at all the social media tweets, etcetera, etcetera. Is, is really quite strong. Now that there's a difference between repeating what you've heard and actually doing the analysis, which these guys do obviously on a daily basis to, to verify, to cross refer, to check your assumptions to make sure that you've got more than one source. But in this particular case, because there's all those sources going on, I think we've got a pretty good handle in the open source environment of of what we're seeing. Speaker 1 So Sean, we've done quite a few podcasts recently on countries or topics where analysts are working with closed open source environments. And in this case, we're talking about the explosion of open source information following the outbreak of of the conflict. What kind of challenges does this present and how do our analysts go about addressing those? Speaker 4 In terms of the tradecraft or in terms of getting to the truth? Speaker 1 In terms of the tradecraft. Speaker 4 OK. Yeah. So as always, you can never have enough source data. In this case, though, you've probably in some cases got too much source data. So it's really being selective in terms of how you filter it all out and then how you turn it into, as I will say, the So what and the what if. So it's all very well reporting, reporting's great, but then you've got to do that next level assessment in terms of, OK, what does this actually mean? So, you know, those those aircraft have been taken out, but what does it mean for the for the system of systems, if you like, in terms of overall capability? And that's always a challenge. What I would say again in in the Ukraine conflict and particularly with this example, you know, I'm obviously old and bold in the intelligence community, but I was, I've been looking at these bases and these same aircraft since I started in the military, which was a long, long time ago. So you've got that, that in depth background and knowledge. So many people that have obviously leave the military or you know, have been looking at things for that long. You've got that context. So you know when something's changed. So you would know to expect that, you know this there's normally, you know, 6T90 fives there, but why is there only two? You've got that, you've got that knowledge, but also actually it's a good point as well in terms of using AI now to do automated object recognition. You don't, you actually need an analyst to go and log in and and actually search on these images if you've got it being monitored all the time because you can with very high fidelity automatically, automatically rather count these sort of types of aircraft where they are and what's different. And of course, pattern setting is really important. You know, there were days when we knew on a make it up now, but on a Tuesday, you know, that T-22 would generally go on a, on a practice bombing run and then come back to home and all the rest of it. Why didn't it do this time? We noticed this in Syria quite a lot on the open source side that, you know, aircraft would go missing from bases and lo and behold, they'd pop up somewhere else. So, so you know, that's a long answer, but it's, it's, it's a combination of tradecraft experience and using that, you know, the, the methodologies that actually allowed you to do structured analysis. Asymmetric Warfare and Modern Conflict: Key Takeaways Great. OK, Well, as we're moving towards the the close of the episodes, it'd be good, it'd be good to wrap this up with one key take away from each of our guests. So that can be focused either on the trade craft side or on the the topical sides relating back to our core subjects of of Russian strategic aviations. So, Sean? Speaker 4 I think we've got to really take asymmetric warfare seriously. You don't need all to match like with like in terms of numbers, in terms of caabilities. You can have a massive strategic effect and even tactical effect if you're clever. The OPSEC is good, which in this case it was clearly very, very good. A, you know, strategic surprise. But you've always got to be innovating because this probably won't work again. So what's next? What's the next surprise we're going to see? There will be something. We just need to make sure that we are fighting the next phase or or understanding the next phase of the war rather than the last one. Speaker 1 Thanks, Miko. Speaker 2 Well, I, I, I think, you know, I'm going to reiterate that this was really an impressive operation and which, you know, boost the morale of both population and Ukrainian soldiers at the front. And I think, you know, this was potentially, you know, one of the most important aspects of the operation. But I also would like to point out that, you know, it's, it's obviously a school less an example in asymmetric warfare that I'm sure will be studied, you know, for a very, very long time. But I also would like to reiterate what Sean said that nature also has to learn from this, OK. And I'm sure when, when it happened, there were, you know, people at, at, at the Pentagon, you know, scratching their heads, you know, and realising, yes, our base protection might be better than, you know, in Russia. But actually, you know, we're quite vulnerable to these, you know, asymmetric assets. You know, these drones cost, you know, like $500 plus, you know, up to, I don't know, $1000 taking out assets that are worth a lot, a lot of money. So yeah, it's Seminole. It was a Seminole operation. However, I, I believe that the, the impact on the Russian long range aviation was, was limited. Yeah. Speaker 1 Thank you. And Alex? Speaker 3 And I suppose, yeah, sort of dovetailing of of that, my key takeaways that there are no knockout blows in Modern Warfare. And and you see this not just in here, but in other operations as well. Everyone wants, including in the analyst community, everyone wants a, a silver bullet, a quick solution. But that's not the way. That's not the way it works in this particular case, an extremely impressive, audacious operation upset fantastic. It's, you know, they literally caught the well, they say literally, not literally, but they caught the Russians with their pants down and they did serious damage. But it's not a knockout blow. It made them change the way they do things and it made them think. But it's, it's emblematic, I think of, of, of Modern Warfare. Speaker 1 All right. Well, thank you. We'll, we'll leave it there. And thank you as always to our listeners for tuning in. Goodbye.