Ukraine’s long-range drone bombing campaign targeting military and industrial sites inside Russia has had a dramatic series of successes over the last few weeks. The most eye-catching achievement was the attack on Russia’s Morozovsk airbase, which Ukrainian officials claim damaged Russian jets and destroyed stockpiles of munitions including glide bombs used to pummel Ukraine’s military and cities.
This progress has come as no surprise: Ukrainian military planners have been working to capitalize on Russia’s air defense vulnerabilities from the first year of the full-scale invasion. Ukraine’s attacks have escalated significantly since the beginning of 2024, with oil refineries and airfields emerging as the priority targets.
In a July interview with Britain’s Guardian newspaper, Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi confirmed that Ukrainian drones had hit around two hundred sites connected to Russia’s war machine. Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has vowed to continue increasing the quality and quantity of Ukraine’s long-range drone fleet. Underlining the importance of drones to the Ukrainian war effort, Ukraine recently became the first country in the world to launch a new branch of the military dedicated to drone warfare.
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Long-range attack drones are a good fit for Ukraine’s limited offensive capabilities. Kyiv needs to be able to strike military targets inside Russia, but is prevented from doing do with Western-supplied missiles due to restrictions imposed by the country’s partners. While Ukraine has some capacity to produce its own missiles domestically, this is insufficient for a sustained bombing campaign.
Drones are enabling Ukraine to overcome these obstacles. Ukrainian drone production has expanded dramatically over the past two-and-a-half years. The low cost of manufacturing a long-range drone relative to the damage it can cause to Russian military and industrial facilities makes it in many ways the ideal weapon for a cash-strapped but innovative nation like Ukraine.
Ukraine’s drone industry is a diverse ecosystem featuring hundreds of participating companies producing different models. The Ukrainian military has used a variety of drones with different characteristics for attacks inside Russia, making the campaign even more challenging for Russia’s air defenses.
The decentralized nature of Ukraine’s drone manufacturing sector also makes it difficult for Russia to target. Even if the Kremlin is able to identify and hit individual production sites located across Ukraine, this is unlikely to have a major impact on the country’s overall output.
Since 2022, Ukraine has taken a number of steps to reduce bureaucracy and streamline cooperation between drone makers and the military. The result is a sector capable of adapting to changing battlefield conditions and able to implement innovations quickly and effectively. This includes efforts to create AI-enabled drones capable of functioning without an operator, making it far more difficult for Russia to jam.
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As it expands, Ukraine’s drone bombing campaign is exposing the weaknesses of Russia’s air defenses. Defending a territory as vast as Russia against air strikes would be problematic even in peacetime. With much of Russia’s existing air defense systems currently deployed along the front lines in Ukraine, there are now far fewer systems available to protect industrial and military targets inside Russia.
During the initial stages of the war, this shortage of air defense coverage was not a major issue. However, Ukraine’s broadening bombing offensive is now forcing Russia to make tough decisions regarding the distribution of its limited air defenses.
In addition to strategically important sites such as airbases, the Kremlin must also defend prestige targets from possible attack. In July, CNN reported that air defenses had been significantly strengthened around Russian President Vladimir Putin’s summer residence. Protecting Putin’s palace from attack is necessary to avoid embarrassment, but it means leaving other potential targets exposed.
Ukraine’s drone program is the biggest success story to emerge from the country’s vibrant defense tech sector, and is helping Ukraine to even out the odds against its far larger and wealthier adversary. The country’s partners clearly recognize the importance of drones for the Ukrainian military, and have formed a drone coalition to increase the supply of drones from abroad. This combination of international support and Ukrainian ingenuity spells trouble for Russia. It will likely lead to increasingly powerful and plentiful long-range strikes in the months ahead.
Marcel Plichta is a PhD candidate at the University of St Andrews and former analyst at the US Department of Defense. He has written on the use of drones in the Russian invasion of Ukraine for the Atlantic Council, the Telegraph, and the Spectator.
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The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.
The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.
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Image: Ukrainian servicemen learn to operate a first-person view (FPV) drone during a training at the Boryviter Military School, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, at an undisclosed location, Ukraine. June 25, 2024. (REUTERS/Viacheslav Ratynskyi)