Ukraine’s drone strikes offer four big lessons for US nuclear strategists

In the days since Ukraine’s brazen special forces attack inside Russia, analysts have breathlessly argued that the operation, captured in spectacular detail in videos, significantly changed the character of military conflict—or even “ rewrote the rules of war .”

Maybe so. There were plenty of novel elements to Ukraine’s “Operation Spiderweb,” which destroyed a dozen or more large Russian military aircraft—including bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons—across the length and breadth of Russia, using drones launched from containers positioned near Russian airfields.

But in my field of nuclear deterrence, the attack was enlightening in another way: It reinforced principles that have been hiding in plain sight for years. For US nuclear strategists, the attack yielded at least four