Blog #136 Seventh Generation Warfare Arrives
Seventh Generation Warfare Arrives
"Operation Spiderweb", drones, and the Ukrainian-Russian conflict
Robert W Malone MD, MS Jun 5, 2025
On the battlefield I did not see a single Ukrainian soldier. Only drones. I saw them [Ukrainian soldiers] only when I surrendered. Only drones, and there are lots and lots of them. Guys, don’t come. It’s a drone war.
— Surrendered Russian soldier
"Modern war is a confrontation of technologies for detection, jamming, and destruction at a distance, leaving to the operator only the ability to make decisions about strikes"
Ukrainian officer Ostap Flyunt, of the 67th Mechanised Brigade
Once again, the nature of warfare is rapidly changing.
World governments recently received a registered letter regarding this change, courtesy of the Ukrainian military’s “Operation Spider Web,” which destroyed approximately one-third of Russia’s strategic aircraft (long-range bombers) using a few clusters of small military drones carrying explosives. These drones were transported deep into Mother Russia from Ukraine by unsuspecting Russian drivers while having been concealed and shipped in containers disguised as modular homes. This strike is described both as “Russia’s Pearl Harbor” and as a transformational event in the history of modern warfare.
For the record, this essay is not a celebration of Ukraine or its actions, which those not caught up in war fever point out may be destabilizing from a global balance of nuclear powers point of view. This action is not in the geopolitical best interests of the United States. Particularly if President Trump’s assertion is not merely a diplomatic denial, I specifically refer to the claim that he was not informed prior to the action.
Instead, this piece intends to introduce and familiarize the reader to the concepts, platforms, technology, and current issues at the center of this new generation of warfare technology, strategy, and tactics. Astute readers will note that the technology deployed with “Operation Spider Web”, while tactically quite clever, required remote human operation and employed expendable (single-use) drones costing about $600 each. They did not rely on the advanced AI-powered semi-autonomous capabilities currently integrated and being deployed on the front battle lines in Ukraine.
Looking beyond the headlines, what really happened on June 01, 2025 was that the world was notified that decentralized, lower-cost autonomous AI-enabled warfare machines are driving rapid obsolescence of expensive, complicated large weapons platforms such as ships, long-range bombers, and advanced fixed and rotary-winged combat aircraft. The implications are deep and broad. To provide one example, the recently announced “Golden Dome” missile shield technology may already be obsolete and inadequate to address this clear and present danger.
The rise of drone/robotic/AI warfighting machine technology portends a balkanized future in which regional military dominance will be conferred on those warlords who can rapidly manufacture, train, and deploy inexpensive, artificial intelligence-augmented weaponized drones and robots. To provide one trivial example, take a moment to consider what will happen when well-capitalized Mexican Drug Cartels acquire significant drone and robot war machinery capabilities and then take the next step to develop regional manufacturing capacity. Judging by the role of the CCP in fostering the fentanyl trade, it seems almost inevitable that the necessary technology transfer will occur. The Mexican state will then be further fractured, posing an even greater Southern border threat to the United States. Now, project that scenario across the global political map.
Ukraine’s military and defense contracting infrastructure has, out of existential necessity, become both the proving ground and the global leader in this technology. Losing a war of warfighter attrition against an opponent with vastly greater human personnel resources, Ukraine has adopted a strategy and tactical combat approach in which human warfighters are physically isolated from battlefield front lines, and rely on semi-autonomous machines to do the risky work of directly engaging the enemy. All the while, the urgency of this war is driving stepwise integration of artificial intelligence into these decentralized platforms, advancing towards a time when humans will no longer be essential for the “kill loop.” What could possibly go wrong? Ask none who have watched the “Terminator” or “Matrix” movie series.
Many are now familiar with the ideas underpinning fifth-generation “PsyWar,” in which the battleground is over control of information, minds, and beliefs. Sixth-generation warfare is characterized by non-contact warfare through the use of high-accuracy gunnery and missiles; it also involves manipulating the enemy into doing what you want without them realizing they are being manipulated. This approach can be seen as building upon fifth-generation warfare, adding precisely targeted long-range kinetic weapons.
One key challenge and feature addressed by the progression of warfare generations is the tension between maintaining communication between central command and operational field battle units and the need to empower decentralized local units to operate in and adapt to changing local battlefield conditions. AI-powered drones and robots that maintain electronic command and control connectivity are a logical next step in this progression. The risk is that AI-enabled decentralized war machines may be engineered to become fully autonomous under the pressure of opposition technology designed to disrupt communication capabilities. A central tenet among those developing this technology is that humans must remain in a central role for kill loop authorization, which requires that these devices continue to communicate with a human operator. Advances in communication jamming by opponents will drive developers towards enabling fully autonomous, highly lethal machines.
We have now entered the next, “seventh-generation” of warfare, in which robotics, drone technology, high-resolution imaging and image processing, wireless communications, precise geospatial tracking, and artificial intelligence are combined to enable profoundly disruptive, decentralized war machines capable of battlefield coordination, cooperation, and swarming like bees. Driven by the pragmatic realities of the Russian-Ukrainian war, these systems are being designed with low-cost, interoperable components and computer chip brains that can be rapidly updated, allowing them to adapt to evolving opponent tactics and strategies readily.
What will the eighth-generation of warfare bring? I speculate that we will be able to recognize that the boundary to eighth-generation will have been crossed when the dreams of those promoting biologically and mechanically augmented super soldiers (ergo, transhumans) are integrated into the mix together with more mature seventh-generation warfare technology and devices. This will enable Manned-Unmanned Teaming (MUM-T) via technologies like Neurolink, which will enable direct human wet brain and nervous system connectivity to electronic data and communication.
The following is an excerpt from an essay titled “Battlefield Drones and the Accelerating Autonomous Arms Race in Ukraine” published by the Modern War Institute at West Point.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the war there has been impacted by attritable, cheap drones and rapidly growing roster of unmanned and robotic systems. Collectively, these technologies are redefining how military forces can wage modern warfare. With both sides in this war rushing to secure a technological advantage, the Ukrainian battlefield is transforming into a clash between conventional forces backed by a growing number of autonomous and remote-controlled systems. Both Ukraine and Russia have steadily poured more and more resources into developing this technology in a bid to stay a step ahead of the adversary.
Ukraine’s battlefield experience reflects a shift toward unmanned systems that augment or attempt to replace human operators in the most dangerous missions, and against an enemy willing to send more and more manpower into large-scale frontal assaults. After so many autonomous and robotic systems were fielded over the past three years by Kyiv’s forces, Ukrainian officials started to describe their country as a “war lab for the future”—highlighting for allies and partners that, because these technologies will have a significant impact on warfare going forward, the ongoing combat in Ukraine offers the best environment for continuous testing, evaluation, and refinement of such systems. Many companies across Europe and the United States have tested their drones and other systems in Ukraine. At this point in the conflict, these companies are striving to gain “battle-tested in Ukraine” credentials for their products.
Operation Spiderweb
For those who have not been following the giddy coverage of corporate media, here is an AI summary of this brief military campaign:
Operation Spider's Web was a covert drone attack carried out by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) on 1 June 2025, during the Russo-Ukrainian War. The operation targeted five Russian air bases—Belaya, Dyagilevo, Ivanovo Severny, Olenya, and Ukrainka—using drones concealed in and launched from trucks on Russian territory.
According to Ukrainian officials, the operation involved 117 drones that damaged over 40 aircraft, including Tu-160, Tu-95, and Tu-22M strategic bombers and an A-50 airborne early warning and control aircraft. The drones were simple quadcopters with heavy payloads, and they were operated through the Russian mobile telephone network using the open-source software ArduPilot. The operation spanned five oblasts across five time zones, with the strike on Belaya Air Base in Eastern Siberia being particularly noteworthy, as it was 4,300 km (2,700 mi) from Ukraine.
The operation was orchestrated by SBU chief Vasyl Maliuk and was personally supervised by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who stated that it took 18 months and 9 days from the start of planning to execution. The drones were smuggled into Russia and hidden in wooden containers resembling mobile cabins, which were then driven to locations near the airbases. The roofs of these containers were opened remotely, and the drones were flown to their targets.
Russia confirmed the attacks but claimed that they had been repelled in three of the regions, while damage was confirmed at the Olenya and Belaya air bases. The Russian Ministry of Defence referred to the operation as a "terrorist attack". Despite this, the operation was widely regarded as a significant strategic blow to Russia, demonstrating the effectiveness of low-cost, unconventional warfare tactics.
Zelenskyy emphasized that the operation was a response to Russia's refusal to accept Ukraine's calls for a ceasefire. The success of the operation has raised concerns among military experts and intelligence officials worldwide, highlighting the potential for non-state actors to challenge superpowers with innovative and cost-effective methods.
The military implications for the United States or any other country that permits hostile or competing foreign powers to acquire land near domestic military bases or other critical infrastructure are self-evident.