Russia is on the brink of Operation “Spider Web” (Operation “Spider Web”), Russia is still in shock. Even if strategic deterrence experts are now increasingly speaking out and assessing the situation soberly, the destruction of irreplaceable strategic assets in deep space by Ukrainian FPV drones is difficult for Moscow to digest.
Experts in strategic deterrence are reporting this because the struck and destroyed aircraft form part of the so-called “nuclear triad” on which the entire Russian deterrence strategy is based. Starting with the escalation stages, which range from the threat of the use of nuclear weapons to limited nuclear retaliatory strikes and the massive use of strategic weapons with mutually assured destruction (MAD).
An aside: Moscow’s nuclear doctrine does not rule out the first use of nuclear weapons!
What is the nuclear triad?
The nuclear triad is a three-part military force structure consisting of land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) and strategic bombers with nuclear bombs and missiles.
Russia has some special features: For example, there are land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles not only in six silo districts, but also mobile ones.
Another special feature of Russia is that the majority of strategic nuclear warheads are concentrated in land-based missile systems. An estimated 333 ICBMs with presumably 1,254 warheads. Twelve submarines can also carry 192 missiles with up to 992 warheads.
The smallest part of the triad is made up of the bombers: 52 Tu-95 Bear with up to 430 warheads and 15 Tu-160 Blackjack with up to 156 warheads.
A further estimated 1,477 warheads are located in the non-strategic and defensive forces. 333 of these warheads are intended for use by Tu-22, Su-24, Su-34 and MiG-31 aircraft.
Why is Ukraine attacking nuclear forces?
On June 1, Ukraine carried out coordinated attacks using FPV drones from trucks disguised as civilian vehicles on six Russian air bases, all of them Strategic Air Forces bases (-> current news from the Ukraine war).
The action was planned well in advance. The timing was apparently precisely coordinated with the start of another round of negotiations in Istanbul. Ukrainian sources claim that the Russian bomber fleet was preparing for an operation called “Zeus”. Its aim is said to have been a major attack on Ukraine the night before the Istanbul negotiations.
Information about the provision of “Zeus” is said to have been shared on the website of the Russian TV station Tsargrad TV. However, this can no longer be found there, and it is possible that it has simply been removed in the meantime – this cannot be verified.
However, the pattern of exerting pressure at the negotiating table with military demonstrations of power before negotiations begin is a familiar one.
It is obvious from the videos that the bombers that were hit were not parked in their parking bays, but fully fueled in those areas of the airfields where flight preparation and arming is carried out.
The Russian strategic forces attacked by Ukraine have already been deployed many times in what Russia calls the “special military operation”, the attack on Ukraine. This usually involves bomber launches from several air bases followed by precisely timed mass launches of cruise missiles in the Caspian Sea area.
The “cloud” of cruise missiles is coordinated with the launch of a large number of Geran/Shahed-136 drones and Gerbera decoy drones. All this is planned with the aim of saturating the Ukrainian air defense. In terms of both the organization and the volume of defence capabilities, the Ukrainian defence capacities are to be overstretched and the chosen targets hit.
The largest attack of this kind on Ukraine to date involved a total of 108 air-to-ground missiles and cruise missiles on December 29, 2023. According to Ukrainian sources, 58 people were killed and over 160 civilians were injured.
What did the Ukrainians hit during Operation Spider Web?
There were confirmed hits at the Belaya, Olenya and Ivanovo airbases.
According to satellite images, four Tu-95MS and four Tu-22M3 were destroyed in Belaya. Another four Tu-95MS and one An-12 transport aircraft were destroyed in Olenya. An A-50 air surveillance system was also destroyed in Ivanovo. Attacks on the Dyagilevo and Ukrainka air bases apparently failed.
This visually confirms the destruction of a total of twelve bombers, an A-50 air surveillance system and an An-12 transport aircraft. Ukraine’s claim to have hit 41 aircraft can therefore not be substantiated.
However, the satellite images from civilian providers do not have a high enough resolution to detect minor damage. Where the aircraft were not parked in splinter protection boxes (earth walls that enclose the aircraft parking area on three sides), the probability of an aircraft being damaged by flying splinters or debris is quite real and correspondingly greater.
What are the consequences of Operation Spider Web?
The first published assessments from Russia describe the losses as painful but not fatal. The Tu-95MS and Tu-22M3 are of advanced age. Russia wants to replace these ageing bombers and has decided on a long-term plan to build 50 new Tu-160 Blackjack supersonic bombers.
For the time being and in the short term, however, the losses are irreplaceable. Specifically, the Tu-95MS in particular offers capabilities that cannot be replaced in the future, even if planned. The subsonic long-range bomber is the Russian counterpart to the B-52 and can carry large quantities of missiles over distances of 10,000 kilometers and more. Fighter aircraft, which are instructed to intercept and follow these bombers, face a number of problems.
The missile carriers have to be intercepted far in advance of their potential targets, which often means flying at very high speeds and correspondingly very high fuel consumption. During the escort flight, the fighter aircraft move at an altitude/speed range that is not optimal for them, which is also detrimental to fuel economy. The fighter planes therefore also require support from tankers and possibly also relief. All in all, the effort required to control this threat is very high.
There is no way Russia can replace these bombers quickly. The Russian aviation industry is already overwhelmed by the huge increase in demand for both civilian and military aircraft, be it maintenance or new construction.
In particular, it can be assumed that the eight Tu-95MSs – 15 percent of the original fleet of 52 – represent a significant proportion of the clear inventory immediately available for operations.
Russia will be able to compensate for this over time. In any case, the effort required back into the logistics chain of other systems to be able to continue these missions with other forces at the usual intensity is no small matter and will limit Russia’s ability to act in the long term.
The loss of the A-50 is really dramatic for Moscow. down two aircraft at the beginning of last year Russia is said to have only two operational examples of this type left. And the successor system A-100 has failed due to the sanctions – Russia cannot obtain the necessary technologies. The last resort would be to procure such systems from China. The problems of such a solution are already being discussed in Russian forums.
Was that terror and against the terms of the START agreement?
In Russia, the attack is described as terrorism or an act of sabotage. Furthermore, Ukraine is not even capable of such operations, only NATO can, they say.
On various social channels, Russian propagandists claim that the bombers have to be in the open due to strategic agreements such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or START.
The fact is that in any case only military targets were attacked. It is also a fact that the trucks were not recognizable as military vehicles and could not be distinguished from civilian vehicles. However, at the time the attack was launched, they were apparently still recognizable to civilians as military systems. The published videos show that civilians tampered with the vehicles, or at least attempted to prevent the drones from taking off. However, this is no longer collateral damage, but these people put themselves in danger on their own initiative and contributed to military actions without combatant status.
It is also a fact that neither the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty nor the current New START treaty contains a specific obligation to leave bombers in the open. As a concrete example, the B-2 of the US Air Force (-> current news about the US armed forces), which are rarely left in the open.
Among other things, the New START Treaty includes transparency measures to enable control rights such as inspections, which have apparently never been exercised by either party. There is also a mandatory data transfer on contract-relevant goods twice a year. The New START treaty has been in force since February 5, 2011 until February 4, 2026 for the time being. However, on February 21, 2023, Russia announced a unilateral suspension of the treaty and, as a result, no longer complied with the obligation to submit updated data from March 2023.
The reference to treaty obligations by Russian propagandists can therefore be classified as clearly untrue. And there is no evidence to support the claim that NATO is in fact the origin of Operation Spider Web.
Even in Russia there are voices that state that it was in any case a Russian decision to deploy strategic forces with dual equipment as part of a regional armed conflict. It was naive to believe that they would be immune to retaliation by the enemy.
Both Russian sources and Western analysts expect Russia to react. How this might turn out is unclear for the time being. The Oreshnik mobile medium-range missile is repeatedly mentioned. It was used for the first time on November 21, 2024 against an industrial company in the city of Dnipro.
In any case, Russia is currently very busy reassessing its internal security. In fact, no one believes that this successful intelligence operation, which took around 18 months to prepare, is the only special operation carried out by Ukraine on Russian territory. Further proof of this is the third attack on the Kerch attack on the Kerch Bridge, which took place yesterday. According to the Ukrainian domestic intelligence service SBU, the preparations for the demolition of a bridge pillar also took several months.
Both the armed forces and the special services are forced to adapt to the military conflicts of the next generation. For Russia, it cannot be ruled out that other parts of the nuclear triad or important infrastructure facilities could also become the target of such actions.
