Nicknamed the “Spiderweb” operation, the bold attack of Ukraine drones on Sunday in four Russian air bases, one of them inside Siberia, has focused on the use of unmanned aerial vehicles in the modern war.
While the accounts differ in the scope of the damage caused by the drones, which according to the reports were introduced to smuggled to the perimeter of the bases on the back of the trucks, the Ukraine security service, the SBU, put the estimated cost in the Kremlin at $ 7 billion. Russia has said little about the attacks, although the country’s Ministry of Defense recognized in a statement that some planes caught fire.
The attacks have highlighted the growing importance of drones for both Russia and Ukraine in the war, which entered its fourth year in February. And experts told NBC News that both parties are becoming more and more cheap and commercially available in the first person or Quadcopter drones that can often be bought in online retailers and easily become mortal weapons, simple technology that is having a great impact on the battlefield in Ukraine and further.
Its use will “become very, very common,” said Robert Lee, the main member of Tanno Lanje of the Foreign Policy Research Institute based in Philadelphia, to NBC News in an interview.
The drones were used when the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was overthrown in December, he said. “They are here and because they are omnipresent, because they are quite useful and demonstrate it every day in Ukraine,” he said.
“There is no doubt that they will be used by all kinds of groups, whether criminal groups or terrorist groups, and represent a fairly significant threat,” he said, he added: “I think we are a bit behind the power curve in this and really preparing them to counteract them.”
Aimed at civilians
While riding his bicycle to a cosmetology appointment in Antonivka, a rural community in the southern region of Kherson in Ukraine, Anastasia Pavlenko, 23, said he noticed that a drone “hunted it.”
“I took off, I followed and I Zigzagueé on the bicycle,” said the mother of two two on the September attack, added that a second drone suddenly appeared with “a shell attached to him.”
Despite his best attempts to escape, he said that the second drone dropped the shell “right in my head” and bounced on his thigh and exploded in the asphalt to his side.
“The blood came from my neck, and there were fragments under my ribs,” said Pavlenko, added that he somehow managed to continue cycling and covering under a bridge where he shouted for help until he began to lose knowledge.
“I just had a small bag, shorts, a long and loose hair and hair, so it was clear that it was a girl,” he said, added that he did not wear military colors or wear weapons when he was beaten.
The doctors could not remove the fragments of shrapnel from their neck, ribs or legs, he said, and added that he had not been able to work back in his cafeteria Because she “cannot handle physical stress.”
