Operational Art and the Salvation of Ukraine
Guerrilla drone strikes, the spiritual resources to achieve victory, and the survival of the free world
There’s a Japanese manga/anime series, Berserk, that is particularly popular among younger members of the Ukrainian armed forces. Like all such things, the plot is complex, but the basics are pretty straightforward: a warrior, changed by incalculable loss, continues to fight against the idea of fate, or that he can’t shape his own destiny against much greater forces.
It makes sense that this subject matter resonates with young people fighting for their own survival and survival of their nation — a task which just about everyone who isn’t Ukrainian is constantly telling them is impossible. But what’s interesting to me is the first volume, set in medieval Europe, was written in 1989. It doesn’t take long to see the clear influences from the end days of the Cold War, echoing fears of nuclear annihilation, and the iconic pop anti-heroes of the ‘80s — Mad Max, Kaneda (from Akira), Conan, even the Highlander. Existential survival epics playing out across wasted landscapes. Things are breaking down. Something has been lost. The time and context isn’t clear. There is just survival — and the men who achieve those goals by doing horrific and brutal things for the right reasons.
Ukraine’s youngest soldiers don’t remember the Soviet Union, or the days when its captive nations finally tore it apart, or the eeriness of the 1980s and how it evolved into the frenetic uncertainty of the 1990s. They don’t remember, but they understand it anyway. The voices of those times speak to them as they fight their own existential war. Their destiny is their own to forge, even when the cost is dear.
The cost, the journey, and the destination are constantly on the mind of every Ukrainian in this war. The silent tallying of resources — what is needed, what is there, what is left, what will be after — is a cadence to their thoughts. And this cadence becomes the heartbeat of Ukrainian operational art.
Operational art is a military term everyone defines a vaguely different way. But essentially, it’s how you decide to connect tactics to strategy, a kind of “cognitive approach” to ensuring your tactical execution will lead to the strategic objective. Operational “art” because there’s never really one way to do that — it’s an inherently creative and adaptive process for commanders. Better art can yield huge advantages in the deployment of resources.
The US military seems to spend an inordinate amount of wordage arguing about what the definition of operational art actually is, primarily in order to argue we need to completely redefine it. This haggling over definitions is meant to provide some deeper answer to the question of why it is that our tactically-sound modern wars are failing to achieve our stated strategic objectives. Something has been lost. Very few people would define where we ended up in Iraq or Afghanistan as any kind of art, especially the men and women who fought in those wars.
But it was the operational art of Ukraine’s June 1st Pavutyna (spiderweb) operation — which used small drones to hit Russian airbases — that made the strategic outcome so satisfying, and which reminds us that Ukraine is operating cognitively at a different level than other modern militaries.
By now you know the basics of Pavutyna. Over the course of 18 months — as Russian bombers continued to play an integral role in the daily bombing of Ukrainian civilians and critical infrastructure, and as Ukraine was still denied deep-strike weapons that might reach the airfields those bombers launch from — Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) planned and executed a drone strike on Russia’s strategic bomber fleet that was launched from within Russian territory. They studied the aircraft in the national Air Force museum to determine where targeted explosive charges could be most effective at disabling the bombers. They figured out how to do that with small drones, which Ukraine now manufactures itself and the use of which can’t be constrained by foreign (primarily American) providers. They figured out how to run those drones through the Russian mobile network so they could do it from far beyond the range of the drones themselves. They programmed back-up AI targeting systems, just in case.
Then small FPV drones strapped with explosive were smuggled into Russia, as were small prefab wooden structures with secret compartments under their rooves. The drones were hidden in the structures under launch doors that could be remotely opened. The structures were placed on trucks, and drivers were hired to deliver them to locations near Moscow, near the Arctic Circle, and all the way in Siberia just north of Mongolia. En route, the drivers report receiving messages to divert to specific locations — cafes, gas stations, etc — near five strategic airfields. Then the rooves opened and the drones were activated one at a time and piloted to their targets.
Ukraine says 41 aircraft were hit, including strategic bombers and an A-50 (AWAC-type/early warning and control aircraft). The estimated losses would tally $7 billion. Russians officials of course say the planes were out to lunch at the time of the attack. But so far some 13 of those strikes have been confirmed by satellite photos of two bases (the others were under clouds). Whether the number is 13 or 41, it’s a significant loss for Russia, which hasn’t built bombers or AWACs since the early 1990s. It can’t buy them. They can’t be replaced. And while they have mostly been using them to kill Ukrainian civilians (and harass our Japanese allies in the east), they are an integral part of Russia’s strategic nuclear capabilities and strategic flexibility. Now there’s a lot of smoldering parking slots on the tarmac for a nation that uses nuclear threats to control escalation at least once a month.
Pavutyna was Ukraine’s latest act of existential defiance. There was an elegance, a brilliance, to this necessary drone operation which will be the stuff of legend for armies, special operators, intelligence organizations, and guerrilla fighters for generations to come.
Many bombers that haunted Ukrainian skies are no more. In the most straightforward sense, the tactical means (drone strikes delivered from covert launch vehicles) achieved the strategic ends (less bombers).
But beyond the unfathomable technical work and sensitivity of planning a covert operation on enemy territory, how the strategic objective was met really, deeply matters and achieves secondary effects that contribute to the overall strategic objectives for Ukraine in this war. This is the “art.”
As always, a component of the Ukrainian art is about the morale of its own population — the most vital asset in any war on your own territory — and then the rest is half about Russia and half about the allies. After months of lazy “Russian victory is inevitable” commentary that has been unfortunately amplified by a US administration focused on making a “deal,” operation pavutyna provided a narrative reset on the war for Ukraine and its partners.
But for Ukraine and the designers of this operation, the targeting was quite specific.
First, as mentioned, these are the bombers that have been used to launch strikes on Ukrainian civilians and critical infrastructure from beyond the range of Ukraine’s defenses. Ukraine continually asked for capabilities to strike the airfields these attacks are launched from, and got a lot of squishy responses in return. In the days before the June 1 strike, Russia was sending hundreds of drones and missiles into Ukrainian skies. Shooting down (or diverting with electronic warfare) hundreds of targets a day versus striking the origin points of those attacks was always bad resource math. It befuddled Ukrainians that so many outside partners seemed to think it was sustainable.
Second, June 1, 1996 was the date of removal of the last nuclear warhead that Ukraine agreed to “return” to Russia under the terms of the Budapest Memorandum — an agreement which Ukraine lived up to the terms of, but which Russia and the western signatories promising security guarantees to Ukraine have not.
Third, at least some of the aging strategic bombers hit by Ukrainian drones were part of the same strategic arsenal that Ukraine had to “return.”
Finally, Russia keeps pulling those nuclear blackmail strings and getting the predictable responses from the Western partners that it needs to constrain Ukraine to a theory of victory that amounts to dying less in the meatgrinder than your aggressor if you can. That nuclear flexibility just took a hit. Ukraine continues to pursue a theory of victory that is not through the meatgrinder.
We left Ukraine out in the cold on this one — so they figured out how to deal with it themselves. They did it in a way to send a message. It’s a moment of poetry that adds purpose and meaning to necessary military actions — aka art.
Shaking us up a bit is also important. The default western mindset on Russia is a bit like that fancy slime that kids are obsessed with these days — you can pull it and smash it and stretch it to new limits, sometimes it sparkles and exudes soothing odors, but the second the pressure is off, it starts oozing back to its original form of wanting calm and stable relations with a Moscow that has no interest in any such thing. Periodically, our imagination has to be re-expanded, and the Ukrainians have been particularly good at this, forcing us to reimagine what is possible, forcing us to re-examine assumptions about Moscow, and forcing us to understand that in a war of endurance and adaptation, nothing is inevitable.
Ukraine has consistently targeted assets and capabilities in Russia that are essential to Moscow’s ability to make war on Ukraine, but which Ukraine’s network of allies have been reluctant to target directly — with sanctions or with weapons. For example, despite sanctions and other financial measures, Russia continues to pay for a chunk of its war machine with blackmarket oil revenues and Europe’s addiction to Russian energy. So Ukraine started targeting drone strikes on Russian oil refineries and terminals. The last US administration was famously unhappy about this, but for Ukraine this was just simple math and a legitimate military target. Their top strategic aims — that Russia be defeated/no longer able to continue the conduct of its illegal war of aggression against Ukraine, that Ukrainian territorial integrity and sovereignty be restored, that all Ukrainian prisoners and stolen children be returned — are tactically aided by the weakening of key economic sectors, as well as the psychological impact of Ukraine being able to hit infrastructure inside Russia that is critical to the wartime economy.
Finally, then, there’s the part targeting the Russian mindset — the art of bringing fear and paranoia to Russia about its own security, the art of showing Russians they can’t live blissfully unaware of the slaughter of Ukrainians, the art of demonstrating that morale, will, and adaptability are assets on Ukraine’s balance sheet that Russia can never fully predict or account for. No, this drone strike won’t stop the war. But it took away a piece of the Soviet machinery that Moscow relies on. Unlike how they view the lives of their soldiers and conscripts, the Kremlin lost something it knows is irreplaceable.
Another secondary effect of pavutyna accepts the reality of the situation under the new US administration, evaluating it as opportunity and not just as loss. Before, Ukraine was always mindful of the rules of engagement their American counterparts applied, because America was keeping the coalition that supported Ukraine together, and Ukraine needed that coalition. But that’s changed a lot in four months. If the US isn’t invested in Ukrainian military support anymore, then Ukraine isn’t invested in observing the American constraints, either. And the jarring messaging from the administration has galvanized Europe, which now speaks much more openly of Ukraine as a definite part of Europe.
It isn’t 2022 anymore. Ukraine is confident in its ability to wage this war, even if it would still prefer that outside support make the costs for them less human, and it listens to its own counsel more and more as it finds itself beyond the edge of most Western military thinking. You can’t deal with an attacking navy without your own navy — well, Ukraine sank the Black Sea fleet. You can’t break Russian sanctuary without starting WWIII — well, Ukraine did that too.
Listening to some of the tortured commentary on the war in Ukraine — and the more recent statements from some of our new Pentagon officials — too many people are still seeing the wrong lessons from Ukraine. The lesson, as Ukraine well knows, is not “well now we can do everything with drones and robots and we don’t need armor and planes and ships anymore.” We still need armor and planes and ships — in fact, we need a lot more of all that than we have, and especially we need stockpiles of munitions and missiles that far exceed what we used to imagine.
As a Ukrainian involved in the strike planning told me: “[These Russian bombers] are just launchers, it doesn’t matter. [The United States] invests zillions in new platforms without having any missiles for them to launch.” He’s not wrong in the basic assessment. American missiles are exceedingly effective — and exceedingly expensive. Patriot missiles, ATACMs and other rockets for HIMARS, pretty much any surface-to-air or air-to-air missile that can be used for air defense — these are in high demand by us, by our allies, and absolutely by Ukraine. We don’t make enough. The stockpiles didn’t stand up to the needs of supporting Ukrainian defense against Russia’s illegal war of aggression, the joint NATO mission in the Red Sea, the varying questionable requests we get from Middle Eastern interests, and their regular deployment in defense of US and allied assets. The last US administration was far too slow in ordering more from manufacturers, and even then far too conservative in their estimations. We still aren’t making enough.
But we must account for the fact that those very expensive things can be destroyed by other things that are not expensive — that wealth and elaborate engineering and not the only ways to bridge gaps in capabilities. And we must account for the critical need for an adaptive mindset that can be quicker and more creative in conflict — above or below the threshold of hot wars.
For much of the conduct of the war, the United States of America was constraining the way Ukrainian brought the war to Russia — because we have a warped understanding of Moscow, because we are afraid of a Moscow that isn’t real — and the Ukrainians largely had to follow these constraints because they needed to keep America on-side to keep the broader coalition of support together, and they needed that support.
But now, America has signaled it’s done. It’s still trying to meddle in a set of negotiations that also are not real in order to try to get a slice of Ukraine when it survives, but there’s been no talk about additional military support for Ukraine or working with the coalition to drum up more support. Thankfully the non-American parts of this coalition, including our NATO allies and other American treaty allies in Asia, have continued to put out new support packages. But America stamping around Europe asking “can’t someone else do it?” has had this outcome. Ukraine has different choices, harder choices, freer choices maybe — and it will take them. Because it has no other choice but continuing to make its tactical possibilities achieve strategic success.
Russia has been a bogeyman for such a long time. But once the bogeyman is in the house, you can hide under the bed and imagine how much worse it might be, or you can smash a vase into its head and see if it bleeds like the rest of us.
Turns out Russia bleeds.
Young Ukrainians seek inspiration in this fantasy of a lone manga warrior fighting armies and the “godhand” for survival against the odds — but the inverse of this is grit in the gears of strategic thinking for big military powers like Russia and China and the United States. You start to think your out-sized capabilities are determinative in any conflict, and then some kids on dirt-bikes or a handful of Ukrainians with toy drones show you up.
Ukrainians are amazing in every definition of that word — and every damn day we should consider ourselves lucky that this brave, innovative, persistent, dedicated nation is fighting this war to cripple one of the world’s nominal great military powers to be a free, democratic nation that’s on our team (well, if America decides to stay on the team).
A nation absolutely outmatched on every spreadsheet can design a theory of victory that defies every big army conception of how this stuff works. Ukraine used 117 drones — which themselves cost about $58,500 — to blow up or at least damage billions of dollars of irreplaceable strategic assets across a swath of territory that spans almost 4000 miles. Ukraine can build more than 6500 new drones tomorrow — in one day. Russia can’t build or buy a new bomber for any amount of money in a reasonable period of time because since 1991 its main superpower has been its smoke and mirrors.
The American behemoth may not be as rusty, but we have plenty of dust — or perhaps, cobwebs — to shake off, and, like the Russians, it’s best to learn the lesson now about not making strategic decisions based on your own propaganda narrative. The supposed air defense “golden dome,” for example — which to be clear everyone involved knows will not work — will be a fine enterprise to launder billions of dollars to American defense contractors who will happily take that money to make elaborately expensive partial solutions to expensive imaginary problems. But meanwhile, any “Chinese student” can fly an FPV drone over a US military base and we’re pretty chillax about it.
Yes, guerrilla warfare has always been guerrilla warfare, and asymmetric forces including terrorists, insurgents, special operators, and freedom fighters have always been able to use their smallness and decentralization to trip up large powers and somewhat equalize aspects of lethality. But this one’s a little different. It’s about control and risk and what you are willing to risk. And we aren’t. And someone else will.
Russia’s great expanse of territory, famously spanning nine time zones, did not protect its assets from deep strikes by an adversary with limited long range capabilities and air power. And we should get used to understanding our American island may be similarly open — especially if you decide to be in the business of alienating nations instead of cultivating alliances and systems that bring order.
What Ukraine has shown us is not that drones work, or that betting against Ukrainians was dumb, or that Moscow is as hollow as a maskirovka tank. The unnecessarily costly way we have made Ukraine fight to survive has been absolutely disruptive to how wars work — and also to the understanding of what power is in times of war and peace. What Ukraine has shown us is we don’t think right about war — strategically, operationally, and tactically — which means we don’t think right about power. The truth of this is right before our eyes.
Some people have been trying to reckon with this spiritual — as the Russians would define it — aspect of power. And some people are still trying to make a spreadsheet that will explain it in a way that the AI can conjure an answer to.
But the post-WWII order is done. There is no way back, only through. Ukrainian victory remains the shortest and most certain way through this transition in which the free world survives — renewed, reinvigorated, with a new story of victory to carry us on the way — on the other side. The adversaries of democracies understand this. The last American administration did not. The current American administration seems set on a strategy of American irrelevance — can’t someone else do it? Of allowing American futures to be defined by other nations. But — 117 toy drones later — we need to open our eyes about what the ongoing success of the American project will take before that opportunity is lost. America is a global power. And we need to act like it at home and abroad.
We gave the Ukrainians no choice but to redefine everything to survive. As on day one of the full-scale invasion, we told ourselves they couldn’t. But they have.
In this fundamental miscalculation, we also changed the rules for ourselves. And we have not lived up to the challenge. We’re sliding down the sand dune in the opposite direction, with leaders who think push-ups and tweets are a path to great power. The focus on alleged internal enemies — on the propaganda narrative — is a missed opportunity to decapitate a real strategic enemy of the nation and again help dictate the terms of the era that follows. Our commitment to doing this to win WWII and win the peace after gave us 80 years of untold prosperity and growth. We don’t know those stories or that lesson anymore. We desperately need to remember.
Where is our theory of victory? Where is the operational art that will define the tactics, operations, and strategic goals for American greatness in this century? Why do our leaders refuse to choose the most certain opportunity we have to keep our dominating influence in the global order?
Maybe we have no choice but to redefine modern democracies to survive. We tell ourselves we can’t, but maybe we have to anyway.
We don’t have a hero — or even an anti-hero — to guide us. Ukrainian operational art is defined by its need for survival and its belief that its salvation can bolster the strength of the free world. There is a lot of inspiration that we should take from this, a lot of gratitude we should have, and a lot of will we need to muster for what is coming.
—MM
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