The Hot Mess of the Russian Air Force
Basic operational failings call into question its ability to survive a war against a stronger opponent, particularly as NATO improves its capabilities
Some weeks in advance of the recent Ukrainian attacks against Russian long-range aviation, Professors Andrew Lim and James Fearon were asking in Foreign Affairs magazine whether the US military was actually serious about distributed, autonomous, war-fighting architectures. After the attacks, some four-star officers immediately started saying the right things. At an artificial intelligence conference this past Monday, US Army Chief of Staff General Randy George spent some time talking about the implications. At the same venue, US Air Force Chief of Staff General David Allvin asked “why don't we think about including that in our Air Force, and doing like the Ukrainians do?”
Going to war that way might not be difficult, at least not against the Russians. Reviewing video from the Ukrainians drones, visual imagery from Maxar, and radar imagery from ICEYE indicates that the Russian Air Force was a hot mess that day:
Parking aircraft in the open, three years into the war, indicates an ignorance of basic security. The Russians should know that other potential adversaries have very accurate cruise missiles with large warheads, which may be able to penetrate hardened shelters. Even hangars would have kept out the drones that the Ukrainians used.
Badly weathered radomes on the surveillance aircraft suggests indifference to basic maintenance.
Tires placed atop the wings were not likely to confuse the pattern-matching sensors of the drones, when they needed to shift to autonomous seeking. Fairly, some of the drones were confused by something, given the number of grassfires they started, but the tires trick had been known for some time, which should have given the Ukrainians plenty of time to reprogram their machines.
The video footage showed no aircrews scrambling to get aircraft off the ground and no firefighting trucks racing to limit the damage. Indeed, there was almost no sign of life at all, except a few days later, evidence that some bulldozers drove through to clean up debris. Was everyone still sleeping off their vodka-induced hangovers?
“GPS No Fix” on the screens suggests that the Russians were jamming satellite navigation signals around the airfields, but many video uplinks were still getting through. Russian electronic warfare may not be as uniformly awesome as advertised.
On that video point — feeds from the drones show a remarkable amount of Latin script, and specifically English wording, on their screens alongside the Cyrillic Ukrainian. This points to participation in the programming by Anglo-Saxon firms. As Brandon Tseng, CEO of Shield AI, recently said about his people working in Ukraine,
The Russians will start to do things where we have to be very, very proximal to the problem, so that we can implement these quick changes. That's the speed of warfare these days. If you want to be relevant again, you have to be right next to the problem… We want to start trying to solve the problem in 24 hours.
Whether the Russian or US militaries understand how warfare has changed, some people in NATO and Ukrainian industries clearly do. While the war is tragic for Ukraine, the learnings are being leveraged to build capabilities for fighting Russia in the event of a wider war.
James M. Hasik PhD
Further Reading
Abbey Fenbert, “Rare Russian A-50 spy planes damaged in Ukraine's Operation Spiderweb, Telegraph reports,” Kyiv Independent, 4 June 2025.
Aliaksandr Kudrytski, Jake Rudnitsky & Olesia Safronova, “How Ukraine’s Drone Arsenal Shocked Russia and Changed Modern Warfare,” Bloomberg, 2 June 2025.
Andrew S. Lim & James D. Fearon, “The Conventional Balance of Terror: America Needs a New Triad to Restore Its Eroding Deterrence,” Foreign Affairs, May/June (published 22 April) 2025.
Brian Everstine, “Debrief: Base Defenses ‘Not Where We Need To Be,’ USAF Chief Says,” Aviation Week & Space Technology, 3 June 2025.
Byron Callan, “Opinion: The How, Who And When Of U.S. Defense Mobilization,” Aviation Week & Space Technology, 25 April 2025.
Howard Altman, “What We Know About Ukraine’s Mass Drone Assault On Russian Bombers,” The War Zone, 2 June 2025.
James Marson, Jane Lytvynenko & Brenna T. Smith, “The Ukrainian Spy Agency Behind the Stunning Strike on Russia’s Bomber Fleet,” Wall Street Journal, 4 June 2025.
James Marson, Jane Lytvynenko, Brenna T. Smith & Serhii Bosak, “Inside the Ukrainian Drone Operation That Devastated Russia’s Bomber Fleet,” Wall Street Journal, 3 June 2025.
James Rushton, “Ukraine strikes Putin’s prized spy planes,” The Telegraph, 3 June 2025.
Jeff Schogol, “No ‘silver bullet’ against a drone attack like Operation Spider’s Web,” Task & Purpose, 3 June 2025.
Joseph Trevithick, “Latest On Russian Aircraft Loss Assessments From Ukrainian Drone Strikes,” The War Zone, 3 June 2025.
Leo Shane III, “Allvin calls Ukraine drone strikes a wake-up call for US air defense,” Military Times, 3 June 2025.
Mark Pomerleau, “U.S. Army is already taking lessons from Ukraine’s drone attack on Russia’s strategic bombers,” Defense Scoop, 2 June 2025.
Martin Fornusek, “Russia lost 12 aircraft, Ukraine's military claims days after drone strike on Russian bombers,” Kyiv Independent, 3 June 2025.
Patrick Tucker, “Pentagon pushes US dronemakers to innovate as quickly as Ukraine does,” Defense One, 2 June 2025.
Seth Cropsey & Harry Halem, “Ukraine Is Winning the Shadow War,” Barron’s, 2 June 2025.
Shaun Waterman, “Allvin: Ukrainian Drone Attack Highlights Need for Diverse Arsenal,” Air & Space Forces, 3 June 2025.
Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., “Pentagon chiefs eye Ukraine’s surprise drone strike with anxiety – and envy,” Breaking Defense, 4 June 2025.
Thomas Newdick, “Confirmed Losses Of Russian Aircraft Mount After Ukrainian Drone Assault,” The War Zone, 4 June 2025.
Thomas Newdick, “What Ukraine’s Unprecedented Drone Attack Means For Russia’s Bomber Force,” The War Zone, 2 June 2025.
Todd South, “Seeing farther, striking deeper, this brigade is pushing its drones,” Defense News, 2 June 2025.