Ukraine’s drone strike isn’t just an attack — it’s first-person warfare

Ukraine launched a surprise attack on Russia that targeted more than 40 of the country's military aircraft on Sunday. The mission, called Operation Spiderweb, involved sending 117 drones over Russia's borders and into several of its airfields. It was the Ukrainian military's longest-ranged attack yet, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, but it also pulls back the curtain on an elaborate campaign to put raw footage of the strike in front of a global audience.

Within just hours, three videos of the strike spread from Ukraine's federal security agency to a journalist based in the country, later spilling into social media and news outlets worldwide. The videos appear to be filmed from the perspective of a drone, complete with an overlay of information about the drone's telemetry.

In one video, the drone flies over an airfield, passing clouds of dark gray smoke billowing from multiple warplanes. Another clip apparently captures the moment a plane explodes into a tower of flames. The third shows a drone descending toward an aircraft, with the video suddenly freezing and displaying the message "Warning no data" upon reaching the plane. The Ukrainian government would later repor …

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