The most significant world event since 9/11

Military actions with a singular impact on the future usually come at the beginning of a conflict. The Dec. 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor plunged the United States unreservedly into World War II. The toppling of the twin towers on 9/11 didn't just end 3,000 lives, it also provided the excuse that left the United States pouring men, machines, and money into a hopeless situation for two decades.

Other critical moments represent the end for one side or another in a conflict. Though Germany would keep fighting until the spring, it was the failure of the "bulge" counteroffensive launched on December 19, 1941, that signalled the futility of those final months. Texans still celebrate a famous defeat each year on March 6.

In terms of global significance, there's another date that should be added to these lists: June 1, 2025. Whether that day is a beginning, and end, or something else altogether is still unclear.

That was the day when Ukraine executed on its long-planned "Operation Spiderweb," launching a simultaneous attack on air bases scattered across Russia and specifically targeting Russia's fleet of strategic nuclear bombers. Ukrainian-made drones, smuggled into Russia over a period of a year, were unleashed from trucks, sheds, and warehouses in an assault that destroyed the single most costly assets of the Russian military.

Ukraine set the total number of Russian planes damaged at 41. That includes Tupolev Tu-95 "Bear" strategic bombers, Tu-160 "Blackjack" bombers, and Tu-22M "Backfire" bombers. All three of these planes are critical components of Russia's nuclear triad. Two of them have not been built in decades.

The number of planes destroyed is open to dispute, but the truth is that the price of the planes and the exact tally are almost irrelevant. Russia cannot replace these planes at any price within the next decade. Vladimir Putin, 72, is unlikely to see the replacements for these planes in his lifetime.

Not only did Spiderweb generate a significant strategic loss for Russia—one that leaves it more vulnerable to further attack—it's also a colossal embarrassment. Russia's security, both on the ground and in the air, was revealed to be less than a paper tiger. It's not even a paper kitten.

Ukraine conducted an extensive military operation inside Russia for over a year. That operation involved renting warehouses, moving a fleet of large trucks, erecting sheds, transporting thousands of drones, and targeting bases over 4,800 km (3000 miles) from Ukraine. This was an operation that not only involved hundreds of Ukrainians working inside Russia, it almost certainly involved hundreds of Russians. And Ukraine pulled it off without Russia's vaunted security services ever becoming aware it was underway.

There's also an immediate tactical benefit to Ukraine. Russia has made a habit of keeping many of these bombers in the air to present the constant threat of a missile attack and make it more difficult for Ukraine to mount a successful defense. Russia is going to have a much harder time sustaining that kind of operational screen after undergoing such significant losses.

You can bet that heads are rolling around the basement of the Lubyanka this week. Putin will be lucky if he doesn't join them.

At this point, Ukrainian drones have done extensive damage to Russian oil fields and storage facilities, they have repeatedly hit Russian airfields and ammunition depots, and they have functionally ended Russia's Black Sea Fleet.

As one of the military officers interviewed in this video notes, Russian ships were designed to fight other ships and conventional aircraft. They were not designed to fend off swarms of smart, high-speed drones. Something similar could be said about the Russian air force. Something similar could be said about every navy and every air force.

The only thing that's keeping Russia in this fight is that Russian ground forces were not designed to fight other comparable militaries. They are built to destroy villages, towns, and cities. It's what they did in Chechnya and Georgia. It's what they've been doing in Ukraine.

So long as Russia can keep sending "meat waves" of men and keep fitting new barrels on rusty Soviet artillery, it can keep on executing the same tactics that it has used throughout Putin's reign. Ukrainian drone swarms have made those tactics much more expensive in terms of both men and equipment. They have not made it expensive enough so that Putin has been unable or unwilling to keep feeding the hoppers. Without significant outside help, Ukraine may never be able to make the price so high that Putin won't pay it—though at some point there's a serious possibility that Russian military leaders determine that the biggest threat is Putin.

Just one day after Operation Spiderweb destroyed tactical and strategic aircraft across Russia, an underwater drone exploded against a pillar of the Kersh Bridge, once again threatening Putin's beloved link to Crimea.

Here's what Russia should be taking away from all this: The only reason that the civilian center of Moscow is not in flames is because Volodymyr Zelenskyy believes that it benefits Ukraine to limit attacks to primarily military targets. Should that calculation change, Putin has no means of defending his nation or its people against a swarm of drones that may strike at any time or place.

“Russia’s whole narrative, which they spread everywhere, in Europe, in Britain, in America, that they’re safe, they’re winning the war—this narrative is not working,” Zelenskyy said during a press conference on Monday. “They’re not safe.”

And here's what everyone else should be taking away from all this: The idea of "conventional warfare" that has dominated the world's militaries since the end of World War II is dead. The combined arms tactics that much of the world has been planning and training for decades are now about as valuable as being well-versed in the use of the phalanx or how to position pikemen. The same thing applies to naval ships, including aircraft carriers. That era of warfare is over, and if some political and military leaders are frustrated about how much of the trillion-dollar equipment designed for those tactics never got used in the field, well, too bad. They should count themselves lucky.

Spiderweb also underscores (if any more evidence was needed) just how foolish it is to spend a fortune building a "golden dome" that would be utterly ineffective against a similar assault. The threat of an attack using long-range ballistic missiles is absolutely minuscule compared to the threat represented by swarming drones; not least of all because those drone swarms are available to anyone with a budget greater than a mid-sized high school football team. And they're getting cheaper.

As The Washington Post notes, Ukraine's massive drone attack delivered a none-too-hidden message.

With the drone attack against Russia’s aviation fleet, Ukraine is showing Trump that it can use its wits and scrappiness to keep fighting; its cause is not lost. Kyiv also signaled to Trump and Ukraine’s European allies that, though Ukraine might be outmanned and outgunned, it still has the capacity to inflict considerable damage on Russia’s military and cannot be ignored in any negotiations. Kyiv can resist a bad deal if Trump attempts to force one on it — even if the United States backs away from the conflict — particularly if European countries continue their support.

Considering the skills that Ukraine has demonstrated in not just fighting, but developing the next era of combat, it's time to forget the idea of Ukraine joining NATO. NATO should be more concerned about whether it gets to join Ukraine.

The West should be hugely worried that, should Putin's meat-based strategy prove effective in the end, it would deliver Ukraine's demonstrated skills at technology and tactical innovation into his hands. That's a threat that should be taken very seriously. The war in Ukraine has seen the death of one world and the rise of another; a world in which the greatest immediate asset may be access to the minds and skills of Ukraine's military and civilian innovators.

At the end of World War II, despite Germany's defeat, there was a mad scramble to gain access to the scientists and engineers who had made the German war machine so capable and deadly. It would be very nice to have a new Operation Paperclip in which the West got to recruit the people who fought against the Nazis. That's only going to happen if Ukraine remains free.

Ukraine may not be leading the news in the United States, but what's happening there is shaping the world to come. We should hope that world includes U.S. military officials going to Ukraine to learn new skills in the use of drones rather than having those skills vanish behind a new Iron Curtain.

If we don't go to the future, it is certainly going to come to us.