Is Pavutyna Taranto 1940?
You have to be under a rock to have not seen the news that Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) recently hit the button on an operation– dubbed “Pavutyna” (Spideweb)– some 18 months in the making.
The complex logistics involved smuggling nearly 200 FPV drones and their mobile storage hangars into Russia.
The drones, likely fiber-optic controlled (hence “Spider Web”) so as to counteract EW defenses, were hidden inside 20-foot ISO shipping containers with roofs rigged to slide open via remote control to allow their UAV cargoes to lift off toward their targets– Russian strategic aircraft, often nuclear-capable.
The trucks were staged very near bases and controlled via datalink back in Ukraine. Meanwhile, the drivers were already well on their way to exfiltrating.
Check this out for a great nuts and bolts on how the raid happened.
While one strike– on the Ukrainka air base near Seryshevo in far-off Amur oblast– failed when the truck exploded, four other strikes, using 117 drones, were more successful.
The strikes hit:
- Belaya Air Base in the Irkutsk Region of the Russian Far East, some 2,600 miles from Ukraine, damaging at least one Tu-95MS Bear and two Tu-22M3 Blackjacks. TASS reports it is the first strike into Siberia during the war.
- Near Murmansk, the Ukrainians hit Olenya Air Base, some 1,100 miles north of their border, damaging at least 4 Tu-95s, allegedly a Tu-160 Swan, and an An-12.
- At Ivanono Air Base, some 620 miles north of Ukraine and only 150 miles from Moscow, they hit an A-50 Mainstay (Russki AWACS).
- Closest to home, at Dyaglievo near Ryazan, some 320 miles north of Ukraine and some 120 miles from Moscow, they hit “more than 10” aircraft.
The damage assessments and claims are all over the place. Whereas Ukraine says they damaged/destroyed 41 strategic Russian airframes, according to the OSINT project AviVector, only 13 were hit on camera.
The Russians themselves are tight-lipped as to any losses.
It was dramatic, for sure, but it took 18 months to set up, and surely benefited from Western intelligence as to targeting packages.
Did it really accomplish a lot?
Probably not on a strategic scale, other than the fact that it will now stress the Russians into sanitizing their bases, far from the front lines, for random trucks and curious buildings anywhere within a few kilometers of their flight lines, as the fiber-optic controlled battery-powered drones have a very short range. This ties down troops. Lots of them. All for the cost of some cheap drones, some converted trucks, and the risk to some drivers who were already headed home before the button was pressed.
The big thing is the precedent.
‘Taranto Harbour, Swordfish from Illustrious Cripple the Italian Fleet, 11 November 1940′ by Charles David Cobb. Painting in the collection of the National Museum
Much how the nighttime raid on the Italian port of Taranto by 21 Fleet Air Arm Fairly Swordfish on 11/12 November 1940 left three Italian battleships and a heavy cruiser damaged, but paved the way for a much more successful and much larger strike by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor 13 months later, Pavutyna could be the rough blueprint for a first strike in the next big war.
USS SHAW exploding at Pearl Harbor. NARA 80-G-16871
What if China had 2,000 such drones set to attack 50 strategic bases and communication nodes in the U.S. on D1? What if they had another 2,000 set to go after infrastructure such as nuclear power plants, dams, and the like?
Now you have a Pearl Harbor 2.0.
