[POST] Another milestone in the unfolding Military Singularity
Turns out a non-nuclear power can punch a nuclear power in the face -- and totally get away with it
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In Hollywood high-concept terms, it’s Ukraine’s drone revolution meets Israel’s “long con” strike against Hezbollah (i.e., the shockingly kinetic pager attack): the Zelensky government somehow smuggled drones to locations deep in the Russian Federation and then launched a coordinated attack against Russia’s strategic bomber fleet.
That is a stunner in the course of human history … at least until the next milestone blows that one out of the water.
The amazing story:
Ukrainian drone attack has destroyed billions of dollars worth of Russian aircraft stationed at bases across the country, including at locations as far away as Siberia, in what Kyiv claims is its longest-range assault of the war.
The spectacular operation, known as Spiderweb, was prepared in secret over 18 months. Ukraine’s agents moved short-range drones and explosives inside Russia before they were launched remotely for a coordinated strike on Sunday that was intended to strike at Moscow’s air superiority.
Two immediate reactions:
This is so obviously the future of war: drones costly almost nothing relative to the strategic-delivery platforms they destroyed in their proverbial beds.
Any anti-missile “dome” would have been useless in attempting to prevent this attack.
The compliment: this is most definitely up there with the Israeli pager attack.
Months/years in the making
Striking deep within enemy networks
Total stealth and surprise — a master class in deception
Catastrophic blow to enemy’s prestige & operational capacity.
In general, impressive as hell, particularly in its left-of-boom depth: the “boom” here being a strike delivered by these aircraft against Ukrainian targets. How to prevent?
Well, right at “boom,” you can harden or conceal targets (very costly and very long term and not terribly effective). Just left of “boom,” you can disrupt those planes’ targeting operations, maybe by shooting them down en route.
That’s the old stuff — just barely staying ahead of boom, strictly on the defensive.
Here’s the new stuff: attack them before they’re even off the ground. Attack them where they sleep — hours and days … maybe weeks … before any conceivable boom.
Better yet, inflict your version of boom to decimate your opponent’s capacity for boom-delivery: like wiping out almost one-third of the strategic bomber fleet in one blow.
Doubleplusgood!
That is being recognized and hailed as a Pearl Harbor-level success:
INDIA TODAY: Russia's Pearl Harbour moment: 5 takeaways from Ukraine's stunning attack
And yeah, it matters when the actors making that comparison are the Russians themselves.
The Russian media has termed these attacks ‘Pearl Harbour’, referring to the Imperial Japanese Navy’s surprise attack on the US Fleet in Hawaii in 1941. That attack brought the US into the Second World War.
The Ukrainian attacks, however, come in a war that is now in its fourth year.
That last part is the kicker.
A “9/11” is getting caught with your pants down when political targets (Twin Towers, Pentagon) are hit. A “Pearl Harbor” is getting caught with your pants down when military targets (ships, aircraft, bases) are hit.
That’s a big difference, as is pulling this off years into an ongoing war.
Again, stunning in a long war full of stunnings.
But here’s the really crucial takeaway: Not only did Ukraine pull off this attack AND pull it off against military platforms AND radically destroyed a major portion (one-third) of Russia’s strategic bomber force structure, it did so in a manner that, if the US itself were to attempt this, it would logically be — by all past strategic standards and practices — viewed as the inescapable trigger for a strategic nuclear exchange. A pre-emptive strike like this — if delivered as a nuclear power against another nuclear power — would have to be treated as the start of World War III.
Indeed, the fact that the Russian media were so quick to embrace the Pearl Harbor analogy speaks to the shock factor here. Under normal historical circumstances, this is easily an Armageddon trigger.
I mean, you walk into the Pentagon prior to this war and lay out this scenario: Ukraine, widely perceived as a proxy of the US and NATO, in a tense stand-off with Russia, secretly attacks and pre-emptively blows up one-third of Russia’s strategic bomber fleet. What happens next?
What happens next? Are you out of your fucking mind? World War III happens next, which is why we’re not going to attempt anything of the sort nor allow any proxy to attempt the same! Next briefer! And keep that nutcase out of my office!
Any yet it has happened. And there’s no World War III, nor any nukes even being threatened in reply.
The general expectation among experts is that Russia is more likely to escalate conventional bombardments against Ukrainian cities rather than resort to nukes. While the attack exposed serous vulnerabilities in Russia’s nuclear-capable bomber fleet and — in strategic terms — the strike contravened Russia’s protective, get-out-of-jail MAD construct as a nuclear superpower, Kyiv did not target Russia’s core nuclear arsenal. Plus, the operation was aimed at bombers used primarily for launching non-nuclear missiles.
I know, ain’t fine print wonderful?
My point is this: many Rubicons were crossed with this attack, the most important one being the notion that a non-nuclear state would never attack a nuclear superpower in this patently strategic manner.
Except Ukraine did, just like Al-Qaeda did — and the latter was already hiding in caves off-grid. That’s not the case with Ukraine. They gloating right next door to Russia.
Indeed, Ukraine is signaling: This is already how far I can go today and, trust me, I’m working on even more inconceivable strikes for use in the near future.
After all, if this was months in the planning, ask yourself, Moscow, what else has been teed up?
Could Russia reply with a demonstrative nuke?
Sure.
Will it?
Extremely doubtful, because, what would it get Russia? Nothing it really wants.
Instead, what Ukraine is signaling to Russia is that, despite your superpower and nuclear status, we can stalemate the battlefield and wage war on you — so far left of boom it’ll make your heads spin — hurting you in ways you never imagined a non-nuclear, non-superpower would ever dare against its clear military superior.
Supreme asymmetry. The many, the cheap, the disposable, the smugglable, and the unmanned with the caveat that no Ukrainian soldiers were harmed in the making of this filmed strike.
My drones attacking your bombers sitting on the tarmac: totally machine on machine.
Ukraine’s stunning message can be summed up thusly: I am extending the no-man’s land of our shared battlefield deep into your territory, Russia! Build all the bombers you want, because I am manufacturing millions of drones this year, and the next, and the next, and so on and so forth. You attacked a non-nuclear, non-great power with the vast and superior bulk of your conventional military force and we have forced a complete stalemate in a stunningly asymmetric manner, meaning, at the rate you’re “winning,” this war won’t end on a recognized human timescale — much less a plausible political timescale, meaning all you’ve done here is to create a mutually-assured-destruction dynamic within the sub-strategic/non-nuclear realm of conventional warfare.
FORBES: At The Current Rate, It Would Take Russia Centuries And Tens Of Millions Of Casualties To Capture Ukraine; But that doesn’t mean Russian leaders aren’t committed to the war effort
Sure, just like America was committed to the defense of South Vietnam …
To pull off a Pearl Harbor-like shock-and-awe like this … years into a bloody WWI-like standoff … in what is logically categorized as almost an entirely psyops strike … aimed at the Russian people … absolutely amazing.
And yes, there were bonus points!
The strategic missile-carrying bombers in question, the Tu-95, Tu-22, and Tu-160 are … no longer in production. Repairing them will be difficult, replacing them impossible.
Out with the old war (and force structure) and in with the new.
But — again — the target audience here was so much bigger than the Russian military.
Per Zelensky:
What's most interesting - and this can now be stated publicly - is that the "office" of our operation on Russian territory was located directly next to FSB headquarters in one of their regions.
Message delivered, message received: Your people will never be safe so long as this war continues.
The larger signal for the rest of us: modern, drone-delivered warfare has so revolutionized the conventional battlespace as to render such warfare virtually pointless in terms of recognized “gains” — much less “victory.”
A MAD reality at the level of conventional warfare — mark my words.
I recently saw video on huge Chinese Roll-On Roll-Off ships being built and launched near the Taiwan Straits that were assumed to be for the invasion of Taiwan. Like the Ukrainians drone experts assisting the Syrian Rebels against Russian supported Assad forces. I imagine a cadre of Ukrainian water borne drone experts heading to Taiwan to do to those ships what they did to the Russia's Black Sea Fleet. Sinking those ships (now or when they're loaded and inbound) would be a coup surpassing what we just saw.
A "big war" version of this raid from the Cold War years would be for each or either side's missile submarines to slip into a position from which their missiles would hit the other side's nuclear bomber bases first to eliminate them from the contest. Compare the resources required between that model and what the Ukrainians have done - and the consequences to every side of the conflict.