USA seeks to emulate a daring Ukrainian drone incursion into shipping containers

The Ukrainian Armed Forces have been demonstrating a high level of ingenuity in their fight against the Russian invaders since 2022.

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One of Ukraine's boldest operations against the invaders was Operation Pavutyna (Spider Web) by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), in which this intelligence service managed to attack Russian air bases at a great distance (the furthest being located 4,900 km from Ukraine) hitting 41 Russian aircraft using swarms of drones hidden in containers.

Those containers were brought into Russian territory using civilian trucks, as if they were any other kind of merchandise. On June 1, 2025, STRATCOM published these three photos of the logistical process of the operation, which was planned over a year and a half.

The trucks were driven to the vicinity of the attacked bases, to a distance where Russian air defenses were unable to counter the threat. Once there, the tops of the containers opened, and swarms of drones took off in search of their targets.

Once the drones had taken off and the attack was over, the trucks self-destructed, so as not to leave any remains for the Russians that would allow them to learn more about the details of this operation.

🚛💥This is how the attack on the Russian military airfield in Belaya, Irkutsk region, 4400 km from the front, took place.

One after another, FPV drones flew out from a cargo truck parked not far from the airbase. After the end of the mission, as reported by local Russian… https://t.co/JcHfeRHOOC pic.twitter.com/YY0GquV6pr

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) June 1, 2025

Yesterday, The War Zone (TWZ), a US website specializing in defense issues, published an article indicating that the United States is interested in being able to carry out operations of this type. TWZ notes that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has requested proposals for drones "with a high degree of autonomous operation, as well as remotely-operated containerized systems to launch, recover, and otherwise support them. What DARPA is really interested in is a pairing that can be employed as part of a largely self-sustaining “autonomous constellation” capable of supporting networked swarms consisting of as many as 500 drones at once."

TWZ points out that such a drone constellation "could be readily deployed in contested areas, or even potentially positioned deep behind enemy lines," and cites the example of Operation Pavutyna, carried out by Ukraine against Russian air bases last year. In May 2024, prior to the aforementioned Ukrainian attack, Northrop Grumman had already released this video of its Modular Payload System, which consists of a container that allows for the launch of various payloads, including unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and missiles.

In September 2022, the Ukrainian channel Ukrainian Military YouTube published these images of Iranian Shahed 136 attack drones being launched from containers. It's worth noting that this drone model is being widely used by Russia to indiscriminately attack civilian targets in Ukraine:

Ukraine's option in Operation Pavutyna was more discreet, as it involved small drones mounted on top of modified containers. Their location would be even more difficult than the Northrop Grumman and Shahed 136 launchers. According to TWZ, the DARPA program would include drones ranging from less than 25 kg to 600 kg, "highly deployable, versatile-SWaP Group 1-3 platforms, operating in autonomous constellations that are stored within, deployed from, recovered in, and managed by a fully autonomous container, to support a variety of payloads and missions in GPS-denied environments."