Key Points – Two key messages emerged from the recent Shangri-La Dialogue: French President Macron warned that unchecked Russian aggression in Ukraine could inspire similar instability in Asia, and Ukraine demonstrated it’s not idly waiting for global action.
-On June 1st, a meticulously planned Ukrainian SBU drone strike hit multiple Russian airbases deep within Russia, using over 100 drones launched from concealed truck-borne sites.
-This “Operation Spiderweb” reportedly destroyed or severely damaged over 40 strategic bombers (Tu-95, Tu-22M3) and at least one A-50 AWACS aircraft—assets Russia cannot easily replace due to long-closed production lines and a depleted aerospace industrial base.
Russia’s Bomber Force Is In Trouble
SINGAPORE – This year’s Shangri-La Dialogue (SLD) Asia-Pacific Security Conference will probably be known for two specific messages being delivered to the worldwide community of security and defense officialdom.
The first was delivered in the keynote address to the event Friday evening by French President Emmanuel Macron. As the chief moderator for the forum noted just before Macron spoke, in the 22 years of the SLD “this is the first time that a leader of one the leaders of a ‘P5’ nation” – one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – “has given the keynote at this event.”
Macron’s comments – as well as those the next day by US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth – were that if Russia’s actions in Ukraine go unchecked this kind of instability can spread to Asia.
If Russian President Vladimir Putin could invade Ukraine “without any restrictions, without any constraints … what could happen in Taiwan? What will you do the day something happens in the Philippines?” Macron asked.
Having attended SLD for years, one could see this year was the continuation of a trend since the war began in 2022. Every year, the message of “this can happen to you here in Asia if Russia is not stopped” gets louder.
Ukraine is Not Waiting Around
The other message, which was delivered on the last day of SLD, was that Ukraine is not waiting around for the rest of the world to not only receive the message but also understand what it means.
On the afternoon of 1 June, Singapore time and early Sunday morning in Russia, more than four Russian airbases that are the home to much of Russia’s strategic bomber fleet were hit by a coordinated strike of kamikaze drones launched by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU).
This attack was a special operation that took 18 months to organize. More than 100 of these Ukrainian drones had been smuggled into Russia just for this one attack. The drones themselves had been hidden beneath the roofs of wooden cabins shipped into various locations in Russia near these airbases.
At a pre-arranged time and after, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, all of the people involved in the operation had been safely “led away” from Russia, the roofs of these cabins were opened simultaneously by a coded signal, and the drones launched to attack the bomber aircraft parked on these bases.
Russia’s Bomber Force Will Never Recover for Clear Reasons
The aircraft targeted at these bases were the fleets of bombers that have been hitting Ukrainian cities for three years now, using a variety of air-launched cruise missiles (ALCM). These are, most notably, two products from MKB Raduga, the Kh-101 ALCM and the Kh-59 air-to-surface missile (ASM).
Russia’s bomber fleet consists of three different Tupolev Design Bureau models, all of which were developed at different stages of the Cold War. The oldest of these is the Tu-95 Bear aircraft, followed by the 1970s-era Tu-22M3 Backfire, and the Tu-160 Blackjack that was designed and built in the 1980s.
Multiple reports now state that 40 or more of these aircraft, although the exact numbers of each are not yet known, were either destroyed or damaged to the point where they may be beyond repair.
Videos taken of the attacks show the Ukrainian drones specifically targeting the sections on the wings of these bombers where the fuel tanks are located.
Russian air bases had taken to stacking large numbers of rubber automobile tires on top of these aircraft to prevent drones from penetrating to their fuel tanks in case of such an attack, which appears not to have been successful in most cases on this 1 June raid.
If the numbers to date are accurate, the losses would constitute about 34 percent of the Russian bomber aircraft in service.
None of the aircraft have been in production for decades, and the engineers and workforce that built them are scattered to the proverbial “far winds.”
Bombers Destroyed Can’t Be Replaced
Even the Tupolev Design Bureau itself does not really exist any longer, explained a long-time and now-retired Russian military aircraft engineer who spoke to me.
“The design bureau’s offices have been leased out to a commercial company. The assembly line personnel at the Tupolev-associated plants have been gone for millennia, and – more importantly – the people responsible for the aircrafts’ engine production are gone with the wind as well,” he said.
Also lost on Sunday were one – and possibly two – of the very few Beriev A-50 airborne command post aircraft left in Russian service. The aircraft corresponds in function to the US Boeing E-3 AWACS, and Russia had already lost two of them in the war with Ukraine.
The A-50s are not only impossible to replace but are so few in number that one military commentator, Sergei Kuzan, told Ukraine TV, “today, the Russian Aerospace Forces lost not just two of their rarest aircraft, but truly two unicorns in the herd.”
It is hard to calculate the damage suffered by the Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) bomber command. Analysts are already making comparisons to the losses by the Egyptian Air Force while still on the ground in the famous Six-Day War with Israel.
The parallels with Israel do not end there, as more than one commentary points out. A frequent observation is that the 1 June attack is Ukraine’s version of Mossad’s “pager attack” of last year. All indications are as long as Russia continues this war the more that Ukraine will respond with Israeli-style reprisals on Russia.
About the Author:
Reuben F. Johnson is a survivor of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and is an Expert on Foreign Military Affairs with the Fundacja im. Kazimierza Pułaskiego in Warsaw. He has been a consultant to the Pentagon, several NATO governments and the Australian government in the fields of defense technology and weapon systems design. Over the past 30 years he has resided in and reported from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Brazil, the People’s Republic of China and Australia.
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