Ukraine may not win the protracted war with Russia and may even agree to an imposed ceasefire in future, but its Operation Spider Web will emerge as one of the major military achievements of smaller powers taking the battle to great powers. The operation, an audacious onslaught of Ukrainian strategy over Russia’s numerical prowess in a brazen and outlandish manner, has made Zelensky a war hero. However, while most scholarly write-ups see Operation Spider Web as a victory of drone warfare (i.e. technological superiority), it was Ukraine’s offensive-defence strategy and planning that added lethality to the drones.
Those who are mesmerised about the cost-effective drones causing damage to around 40 Russian fighter jets and its one-third cruise missile carriers far away in Siberia, forget that the Russia–Ukraine War, like most contemporary wars, has mostly been about drones. While technological evenness was ubiquitous in the drone–upmanship game, Russia enjoyed an upper hand in releasing large swarms of drones and carpeted Kiev and other Ukrainian cities with drone-operated munitions.
Ukraine’s has mostly been defensive operations through selective usage of drones and other arsenals in targeted attacks on Russian strategic hot spots. Battle evidence and changing war fortunes amply establish that drones are no more ‘disruptive technological innovation’ or the ‘lead-sector weapon’ but just another set of general-purpose technology (GPT), available with both the warring nations, besides other countries. Perhaps that also accounts for the drones’ inability in facilitating a swift and decisive war termination.
False Dichotomy Between Weapons and Strategy
With both countries making heavy use of drones, it was quite apparent that only the country with better applicational strategy would have ‘relative advantage’. Operation Spider Web was indeed a telling reminder to those who become readymade victims of ‘technological determinism’, obsession or ‘technological arrogance’ and believe that advanced weapons ‘alone’ win the war.
Such protagonists, in their zeal and overt dependence on technologically advanced weapons, create an artificial binary between weapons and strategy, something that is a recipe for disaster in winning contemporary wars. The US, for example, could not defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan despite having many decades’ experience in drone operations and advanced weapons-usage.
Preparedness Remain Integral to Success
Armed forces’ combat preparations remain the core of any warfare. Mismatches between technological aspirations and force preparedness lead to a certain disaster. Operation Spider Web, in fact, exposed the weak chinks in Russian armed forces’ combat preparation. Many research publications have pooh-poohed Russian army on various indices of combat preparedness and professional military education (PME). The Russian army has inherited the false legacy of the Soviet days even though it does not have much to boast off in the post–Cold War period and indeed suffered reverses in the Chechnya War. While Russia has, without any doubt, asymmetrical edge in numbers, weapons, and advanced technology, Russian war commanders suffered, perhaps, from a confidence overdose of not visualising attacks by Ukrainian forces in far-off Siberia!
Russia’s Strategic Flaws Have Partly Offset The Edge In Technology And Numbers
Beyond these weak generic features, Russian armed forces have also been on the wrong side of the strategy throughout this protracted war. This is manifest in several ways.
First, launching the war in the name of ‘special military operations’ itself was a mistake since Russia’s war objectives were ambiguous and went beyond the stated desire of seeing Ukraine out of NATO membership attempts. The war is in the fourth year and Russia remains clueless, has no withdrawal plans and makes light of Ukraine’s ‘just peace’ proposal.
Second, Russia’s defence budget has risen in an astronomical fashion. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Fact Sheet on ‘Trends in world military expenditure, 2024 (published in April 2025)’, Russia’s defence expenditure has gone up by 100 per cent during 2015-24 to $149 billion.
While Russia spends 7.1 per cent of its GDP on defence, this amount may go up further for some more years. However, Russia’s domestic military industrial complex (MIC) is badly shaken and unable to sustain the supply-chain logistics to the Russian armed forces. Russia’s lead position as an international arms exporter is also on decline. According to another SIPRI Fact Sheet (March 2025), Russia’s arms exports declined by 64 per cent during 2020-24 compared to 2025-19.
Third, Russia’s outdated military doctrines relies heavily on large troops, larger stocks of quantitative and qualitative weapons and coercive strategic culture (much like the Chinese). Concurrently, Russian army also suffers from organisational problems like low morale, indiscipline, corruption and politicisation.
Ukraine, on the contrary, made right strategic choices. For instance, it outsmarted the Russians in the intelligence game. A large-scale operation like the Spider Web was a possibility only if the enemy side was penetrated across the rank and file. Ukraine did this job in cold and calibrated fashion. It chose far-off targets in Siberia where visualised risk was minimum. Ukraine attacked Russia in an unconventional and daring manner.
The decision may not have sounded rational to the closed group around President Zelensky but he believed his strategic instincts and converted his intentions through a risky and dangerous strategy. For last few months, he was under US pressure for a negotiated ceasefire. A successful operation like the Spider Web may now add gravitas to Zelensky in bargaining peace from a position of strength!
Spider Web was all about successful strategic planning by Ukraine. The grand strategic vision was never lost – asymmetrical disadvantages, increasing loss of global support and supply-chain disruptions etc. Guerrilla tactics on key strategic hot spots worked. Most importantly, Ukraine optimised its scarce strategic resources throughout the war. This operation was one example.
Ukraine’s blitzkrieg bring home the point that strategy and technology cannot be exclusive of other. There is a wide spread constructed or artificial belief, popularised in recent times, that ‘drones are the exclusive future of warfare’. Operation Spider Web’s singular contribution remains in debunking such hypothetical proposition since ‘weapons alone do not win the wars; weapons and strategy does’.
(Note: The author is in the Indian Defence Accounts Service. Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.)
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