Operation Spiderweb: How SBU Hit Russia’s Bomber Fleet

June 2, 2025November 10, 2025

News about Operation Spiderweb has already flown around the world. All leading media reported the destruction of Russia’s strategic aviation, which they trained people to fear for decades. But as usual, the point here is not that relatively cheap drones managed to process extremely valuable aircraft worth at least hundreds of millions of dollars. The point is that the idea emerged to work this way, and there was the skill to implement this idea.

Let’s just remember how Mossad worked back in the day. Pagers had been in everyone’s sight for decades. But nobody figured out how the enemy uses them. Nobody thought of how to turn pagers into a strike means and how to achieve a situation where they end up in the pockets and hands of the necessary people. Post factum, this seems not so complicated. But the trick is that you can pull this off once. Then it becomes a precedent. And whoever thought of it first gets the profit.

The Fog of War Still Lingers

Same thing here. The fog of war regarding the SBU operation to cut out the enemy’s strategic aviation has not yet cleared. Discrepancies exist not only in the number of destroyed enemy aircraft but even in the number of airfields that friendly drones attacked. More precisely, not quite: the enemy itself officially confirmed attacks on five airbases. But according to them, only two suffered losses, and at three — they shot down everything.

Now satellite images of the hit locations started appearing on the Network. On them, you can see not only burned aircraft but also something truly funny. The satellite captured strategic aviation aircraft parking areas surrounded by protective ramparts “at full height”. Their purpose is not so much to protect from some shelling as to avoid a chain reaction if suddenly some aircraft catches fire and ammunition starts exploding in it.

How the Strikes Actually Worked

Amateur videos that filmed the fire at “Olenya” airbase clearly capture secondary detonation. It’s clear that not an ammunition depot is detonating but what was suspended on some aircraft. These could only be cruise missiles. This indicates that a methodology for destroying precisely such targets with miserable ammunition like FPV drones has already been worked out. You just need to bring the device to the place where the aircraft’s fuel tanks are located and make bada-boom.

After this, fuel in the amount of a railway tanker — 64 tons for the Tu-95MS and 40 tons for the Tu-22M3 respectively, if the airplane had a full tank — starts burning. With suspended cruise missiles present, they already explode just from the fire. You could hardly achieve this with a small drone alone. This is already the signature of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. With a small munition they strike something that can cause either a massive fire or a much more powerful secondary detonation.

The bombers were protected from precisely such a course of events by corresponding ramparts. The sense of the measure is that even one aircraft that exploded for any reason won’t “take down” the entire aircraft parking area. Probably, in their worst nightmare, the Orcs¹ imagined that a single Armed Forces missile might still reach the airfield. But if it hits an aircraft, that would be the only loss from the attack. But who could have assumed that a flock of little birds would arrive, striking aircraft one by one, and for them protective ramparts are not an obstacle at all?

SBU Trolls FSB With Operation Details

Currently, the SBU only publishes information that doesn’t constitute secrets and doesn’t endanger people involved in the operation. And if at the same time it’s possible to troll the FSB — the SBU doesn’t miss the opportunity to rub their faces in shit. This happened with the photo of a room with the landlord’s phone number written on the wall. Here are additional photos published by the SBU:

Operation Spiderweb: The Numbers and Timeline

SBU Head Lieutenant General Vasyl Malyuk commanded Operation Spiderweb. The operation started on November 23, 2023. Thus, preparation for the operation lasted 1 year, 6 months, and 9 days. The operation control center was located near the FSB headquarters on Russian territory. In my opinion, this shouldn’t be viewed as just another way to troll the Orcs. After all, it’s quite logical to assume that the FSB won’t thoroughly search for what “is right under their nose”. In that case, this is a tactically justified choice.

First, the SBU transferred FPV drones to Russia, and later — modular wooden houses. Already on Russian territory, operators hid drones under the roofs of houses and placed them on cargo trucks.

They used 117 strike drones. Completely destroyed — to the state of “disassembled into atoms” according to the Ukrainian General Staff — 12 strategic bombers. This is what Ukrainian drone cameras and satellite images captured. However, Orc social networks called the figure 15 bombers. Disabled — brought to the state of “they will never fly again” according to Ukrainian data — 28 bombers. ing to data on Orc channels — 17. Total figures range from 32 to 40. This means “slightly less” or “slightly more” than a third of the Orcs’ airborne nuclear triad.

Unprecedented Scale and Future Implications

In terms of scale, you can compare this perhaps only with the destruction of the Russian military fleet in the Black Sea. They worked out the operation. Now the world’s intelligence services have a precedent. Repeating something similar is unlikely to succeed for anyone.

But you can have no doubt that something similar to Operation Spiderweb in content but completely different in form is just now in development. These may not be containers and not drones but something completely different. It’s possible that all of it has already been brought to the necessary places and installed, having the most innocent appearance — until a certain time, of course. Lieutenant General Vasyl Malyuk, who commanded Operation Spiderweb, has already announced new surprises for the enemy:

The SBU will strike the enemy where he considers himself unreachable.

¹Orcs – a common term for Russians who support or participate in the armed aggression against Ukraine. Dehumanizing? Yes. Accurate? Also yes.