Re: 싸구려 크루즈 미사일로 나름대로 전략 공격을 하는 우크라이나

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Air and Space Forces Magazine에 실린 글의 챗GPT 번역본입니다. 전쟁의 승리를 위해선 종심타격이 필수라고 평가하네요. 

베트남전이나 한국전쟁도, 승리가 목적이었다면 물자가 내려오는 원점을 두들겨야 하는 게 아니었나 싶습니다. 

우크라이나는 전략공격의 개념을 어떻게 새롭게 만들어가고 있는가

2026년 7월 10일

데이비드 A. 뎁툴라 미국 공군 예비역 중장

2025년 5월의 우크라이나 FP-1 드론.

러시아가 2022년 침공한 이후 외부 관측자들은 우크라이나의 전황을 익숙한 기준으로 평가해 왔다. 바로 지상에서 얼마나 많은 영토를 확보하거나 상실했는가 하는 기준이다. 이 기준으로 보면 전쟁은 종종 교착 상태에 빠져 있고, 소모전 양상을 띠며, 막대한 비용을 치르는 것으로 보인다. 그러나 우크라이나는 이제 보다 효과적인 다른 전쟁 수행 방식을 보여주고 있다. 단순히 모스크바를 응징하기 위해서가 아니라, 러시아군이 계속 전쟁을 수행할 수 있게 만드는 체계를 교란하기 위해 전쟁을 러시아 본토 깊숙이 확대하고 있는 것이다.

이러한 발상은 새로운 것이 아니다. 이는 공군력 이론의 가장 오래된 원칙 가운데 하나이다. 적의 군사력을 지탱하는 근원을 직접 공격하고, 적이 의존하는 체계를 마비시키며, 적의 전략적 계산을 바꾸도록 비용을 부과하는 것이다. 새로워진 것은 그 수단이다. 우크라이나는 개조된 장거리 일회용 무인항공기, 보다 정확하게 말하면 저비용 순항미사일을 이용해 전략공격을 수행하고 있다. 또한 특수작전, 해상 타격체계, 사이버 기반 정보수집, 적응형 표적 선정도 함께 활용하고 있다.

최근 한 분석은 키이우가 '전략적 무력화(strategic neutralization)'를 추구해야 한다고 제안했다. 즉, 성공을 지상에서의 영토 변화만으로 평가하는 방식에서 벗어나, 러시아의 침략을 작전적으로 무의미하게 만드는 것을 보다 폭넓은 목표로 삼아야 한다는 것이다. 핵심은 단순히 전선의 러시아군을 소모시키는 것이 아니라, 모스크바가 전투력을 재생성하고, 에너지를 수출하며, 무기를 생산하고, 미사일을 발사하며, 전쟁이 러시아 사회와는 동떨어진 일이라는 정치적 허상을 유지하도록 만드는 체계를 지속적으로 교란하는 데 있다.

우크라이나가 정유시설, 수출 터미널, 군수공장, 지휘·군수 거점, 방공망, 비행장, 반도체 시설, 순항미사일 생산시설을 공격하는 것은 목표가 단순한 전장 소모가 아니라 체계 자체를 교란하는 데 있을 때 가장 적합한 표적들이다.

우크라이나의 장거리 타격 작전은 고전적인 공군력 이론을 현재의 제약 조건에 맞게 성공적으로 적용하고 있다.

이러한 논리는 1920~1930년대 초기 공군 이론가들까지 거슬러 올라간다. 줄리오 두헤, 빌리 미첼, 휴 트렌차드, 그리고 미국 육군항공대 전술학교(Air Corps Tactical School)는 각각 다른 방식으로 현대 국가는 산업, 교통, 에너지, 지휘 체계가 서로 긴밀하게 연결되어 있기 때문에 취약하다고 주장했다. 육군항공대 전술학교의 '산업망(industrial web)' 개념은 제조업, 전력, 교통, 연료 및 기타 핵심 분야의 중요 거점을 공격함으로써 국가의 전쟁 수행 능력을 약화시킬 수 있다고 보았다. 내가 2001년에 발표한 걸프전 공중작전의 설계와 수행을 다룬 연구에서도 이 점을 분명히 강조했다. 육군항공대 전술학교는 전력, 교통, 철도, 연료, 식량 유통, 철강 생산 등 국가의 전쟁 수행 능력에 필수적인 국가 체계를 파괴하거나 마비시키는 것을 선호했다.

이 이론은 제2차 세계대전에서 처음으로 대규모로 시도되었지만, 당시 기술은 그 잠재력을 충분히 실현하기에는 부족했다. 전략공군은 적국 깊숙이 도달할 수 있었지만, 막대한 전력을 투입하지 않고는 정밀하게 목표를 타격할 수 없었다. 1944년 연합군이 독일 상공에서 제공권을 확보한 이후에도 정밀폭격은 단일 목표를 파괴하기 위해 수백 대의 항공기를 필요로 하는 경우가 많았다. 정밀 표적을 겨냥한 폭탄 가운데 목표점으로부터 1,000피트 이내에 떨어진 것은 약 20%에 불과했기 때문이다. 전략적 통찰은 옳았지만, 실행 능력은 아직 미흡했다.

이 상황은 1991년에 바뀌었다. 걸프전의 '사막의 폭풍(Operation Desert Storm)' 공중작전은 이라크 지도부, 지휘통제 체계, 방공망, 전력시설, 교통망, 석유시설, 무기 생산시설, 야전군을 동시에 공격해 연쇄적인 효과를 만들어냈다. 사막의 폭풍 성공은 스텔스와 정밀유도무기의 공으로 평가받는 경우가 많지만, 실제 성공의 핵심은 효과 중심 접근법에 있었다. 기획자들은 원하는 전략적·작전적 결과를 먼저 설정한 뒤, 그 결과를 만들어낼 핵심 체계와 중요 거점을 역으로 찾아냈다. 이를 통해 의사결정을 마비시키고, 방공망을 무력화하며, 야전군을 고립시키고, 기동성과 군수능력을 약화시키며, 이라크가 조직적인 군사작전을 수행하는 능력을 붕괴시키려 했다. 목표는 속도와 정밀성, 효율적인 전력 운용을 통해 체계 전체를 신속하게 마비시키는 통합 공격을 수행하는 것이었다. 이는 성공했다. 43일간의 공중작전은 이라크의 전투능력을 빠르게 약화시켰고, 이후 지상군이 투입되자 쿠웨이트에서 이라크군을 축출할 수 있었다.

1999년 '연합군 작전(Operation Allied Force)'은 다른 조건에서 이러한 교훈을 다시 입증했다. 정치적 제약이 있었고 병행전(parallel warfare)의 전형적인 사례는 아니었지만, 세르비아의 침략으로부터 코소보를 방어한 이 작전은 특정 체계를 정밀 타격함으로써 강압적 효과를 달성할 수 있음을 보여주었다. NATO는 이 작전을 외교가 실패한 뒤 개시된 공중작전으로 설명했으며, RAND의 『코소보를 위한 NATO 공중전』은 슬로보단 밀로셰비치에게 코소보에서의 인종청소를 중단하도록 강요하기 위한 78일간의 공중전으로 평가했다. 연합군 작전은 장거리 타격, 병행 정밀공격, 효과 중심 접근법을 결합하여 이러한 목표를 달성했다.

그러나 우크라이나는 훨씬 더 어려운 제약 속에 놓여 있다. 사막의 폭풍 당시 연합군이나 연합군 작전 당시 NATO가 확보했던 제공권을 갖고 있지 못하다. 대규모 유인기 편대를 러시아 영공 깊숙이 투입할 수도 없고, 초강대국 공군과 같은 압도적인 전력도 없다. 그럼에도 우크라이나는 현대전의 본질이 체계에 있으며, 그 체계에는 취약한 거점이 존재한다는 동일한 진실을 인식했다.

그렇기 때문에 러시아의 석유 기반시설은 중요하다. 석유는 러시아 경제의 핵심 동력이자 수입과 정치권력의 기반이며, 연료와 수송능력, 산업생산에도 필수적이다. 우크라이나는 정유시설, 석유 터미널, 송유시설, 수출 기반시설을 장거리 순항미사일로 공격함으로써 모스크바의 행동 자유를 제한하려 하고 있다. 최근 모스크바 인근과 크림반도, 크라스노다르, 심지어 튜멘까지 공격한 사례는 우크라이나가 장거리 타격의 범위와 전략적 야망을 꾸준히 확대하고 있음을 보여준다. 그 결과 처리량 감소, 수출 차질, 복구 및 보험 비용 증가, 방공망 전용, 러시아 정치·산업 체계 내부의 불확실성 확대 등 다양한 비용을 러시아에 부과하고 있다.

이 작전은 이미 전략적·경제적 효과를 나타내고 있다. 젤렌스키 우크라이나 대통령은 장거리 공격이 강화된 3월 한 달 동안 러시아가 항만과 에너지 기반시설 공격으로 23억 달러의 수입 손실을 입었다고 주장했다. 수입원과 연료, 수송, 복구 체계에 대한 지속적인 공격은 모스크바가 전쟁 자금을 조달하고 군을 보급하며 전쟁을 정치적으로 정상화하는 능력을 약화시킨다.

같은 논리는 비행장, 방공망, 군수공장, 전자산업 시설에 대한 공격에도 적용된다. 젤레노그라드의 앙스트렘 마이크로일렉트로닉스와 두브나의 MKB 라두가 같은 시설을 겨냥한 장거리 공격은 러시아 군사력의 산업·기술 기반을 겨냥한 작전의 일부이다. 이것이 바로 전형적인 전략공격이다. 적의 전쟁 수행을 가능하게 하는 체계를 식별하고, 그 체계 안의 핵심 거점을 찾아, 투입된 무기의 비용에 비해 훨씬 큰 작전적·전략적 효과를 얻기 위해 공격하는 것이다.

우크라이나가 수행한 대담한 비밀작전인 '거미줄 작전(Operation Spiderweb)'은 이러한 점을 더욱 분명하게 보여주었다. 우크라이나는 원격조종 드론으로 러시아 본토 기지에 있는 장거리 폭격기를 공격했다. 전략국제문제연구소(CSIS)는 이 작전이 러시아 장거리 폭격기 전력에 중대한 타격을 가했다고 평가했으며, 《워싱턴포스트》는 우크라이나 정보당국을 인용해 우크라이나 도시 공격에 사용된 Tu-95를 포함해 최대 12대의 폭격기가 파괴되거나 손상되었다고 보도했다. 최종 피해 평가가 달라질 수는 있지만, 작전이 전달한 메시지는 분명하다. 우크라이나는 러시아의 공군력과 미사일 전력 투사 능력 자체를 공격하고 있는 것이지, 단순히 공격을 받은 뒤 대응하고 있는 것이 아니다.

6월 '거미줄 작전' 당시 드론이 러시아 Tu-95 폭격기를 폭발시키며 무력화하는 장면을 포착한 정지 화면. 우크라이나는 폭발물을 탑재한 소형 드론을 이용한 기습 공격으로 러시아 전역의 공군기지에 있던 방호되지 않은 항공기 수십 대를 파괴했다. 우크라이나 보안국.

이것은 우크라이나 군의 한계를 고려하여 발전시킨 전략공격이다. 사막의 폭풍은 스텔스기, 순항미사일, 정밀유도무기, 공중지휘통제기, 우주기반 항법체계, 대규모 전투기 전력과 군수능력을 활용했다. 반면 우크라이나는 상용 전자장비, 개조된 기체, 분산 발사 방식, 무인 해상체계, 정보융합을 이용해 유사한 효과를 만들어내고 있다. 미국과 유럽이 제공하는 장거리 공격체계에 한계가 있기 때문에 우크라이나는 FP-1 파이어포인트, RS-1 바르스, 바르스-SM 글래디에이터와 같은 독자적인 장거리 무기를 자체 생산하여 러시아의 밀집된 방공망을 돌파하고 모스크바 인근의 군사 관련 시설을 공격하고 있다.

우크라이나는 사막의 폭풍을 그대로 재현하는 것이 아니라, 그 공중작전의 논리를 새로운 환경에 맞게 적용하고 있다. 양측 모두 제공권을 확보하지 못했고, 우크라이나는 충분한 무기도 없으며, 전략적 종심을 가진 핵보유국과 싸우고 있다. 따라서 우크라이나의 작전은 더 간헐적이고, 더 즉흥적이며, 더 많은 제약을 받는다. 그러나 그 본질은 분명하다. 군사·산업·에너지·심리 체계에 대한 병행 압박, 특정 거점을 공격할 수 있는 정밀성, 그리고 침략 비용을 계속 높여 적의 행동을 변화시키려는 승리 이론이 그것이다.

따라서 이 작전은 단순히 즉각적인 영토 확보 여부만으로 평가해서는 안 된다. 전략공격은 단 한 번의 타격으로 목표를 달성하는 경우가 거의 없다. 효과는 축적된다. 적은 방공망을 전선이 아니라 본토 방어로 돌려야 하고, 항공기와 생산시설을 분산해야 하며, 보험·수송·복구·보안 비용이 증가한다. 정유시설 처리량이 감소하고 군수지원은 복잡해지며, 지휘관과 산업 관리자, 정치 지도자, 국민 모두에게 정치적 부담과 불확실성을 안겨준다.

이것이 바로 효과 중심 작전의 영역이다. 전략은 목표를 달성하기 위해 수단을 조율하는 것이며, 표적 선정은 단순히 목록에 있는 표적을 모두 파괴하는 것이 아니라, 표적 체계에 어떤 효과를 만들 것인가에 초점을 맞춰야 한다. 이 문장은 우크라이나가 채택하고 있는 접근법을 잘 설명한다. 키이우는 초기 공군력 이론에서 흔히 연상되는 것처럼 러시아를 무차별 폭격해 굴복시키려는 것이 아니다. 러시아가 전쟁을 값싸고 자신감 있게, 그리고 무기한 지속할 수 있는 능력을 빼앗으려는 것이다.

여기서 도덕적·법적 구분은 매우 중요하다. 전략공격은 무차별 공격을 의미하지 않는다. 오히려 제2차 세계대전에서 사막의 폭풍까지 공군력이 발전한 과정은 광범위한 파괴에서 군사 및 전쟁 지원 체계에 대한 정밀 공격으로 발전한 역사였다. 이러한 차이는 오늘날 우크라이나와 러시아의 장거리 공격을 비교하면 분명하게 드러난다. 러시아는 반복적으로 민간지역과 아파트, 병원, 학교, 전력망 등 비군사 목표를 공격해 왔다. 이는 의도적인 테러이거나, 부실한 정보와 표적 선정, 또는 민간인 피해를 무시하는 태도를 보여준다. 우크라이나의 정당성은 정반대의 길을 계속 걷는 데 달려 있다. 즉, 군사 목표와 전쟁 지원 기반시설에 집중하고, 정확하고 시의적절한 정보를 활용하며, 민간인 피해를 최소화하도록 엄격한 표적 계획을 적용하는 것이다.

러시아는 우크라이나보다 훨씬 강력한 장거리 타격능력을 보유하고 있지만, 이를 결정적인 전략적 우위로 전환할 수 있는 지휘력과 훈련, 관점, 교리가 부족하다. 반면 우크라이나는 수단은 적지만 그것을 효과적으로 활용하는 방법을 배우고 있다. 이것이 양측의 근본적인 차이이다. 한쪽은 타격을 사회를 응징하고 강압하는 수단으로 사용하는 반면, 다른 한쪽은 침략을 지속시키는 체계를 표적으로 삼아 교란하는 수단으로 점점 더 활용하고 있다.

여기에는 미국과 동맹국들이 배워야 할 중요한 교훈이 있다. 우크라이나의 사례는 장거리 타격이 사치가 아니라 전략적 필수 요소임을 보여준다. 전선만 방어할 수 있는 국가는 끝없이 공격을 받아들일 수밖에 없다. 반대로 적의 무기고와 정유시설, 지휘 거점, 항만, 비행장, 생산기지를 공격할 수 있는 국가는 전쟁의 논리 자체를 바꿀 수 있다. 따라서 우크라이나의 장거리 공격능력을 지속적으로 지원하는 것은 전쟁을 확대하는 행위가 아니라, 적절한 법적·전략적 통제 아래 러시아의 전쟁 지속 능력을 공격함으로써 전쟁을 단축시키는 수단으로 이해해야 한다.

서방은 장거리 타격을 승리를 위한 전략에 통합해야 할 필수 요소가 아니라 제한적으로 제공해야 하는 보상처럼 다루어 왔다. 이러한 신중함에는 대가가 따랐다. 우크라이나가 러시아의 전쟁 지원 체계를 위협할 수 있는 수단을 제공하는 일이 늦어질수록 모스크바는 적응하고 복구하며 분산하고 공격을 계속할 시간을 벌게 된다. 최근 우크라이나와 유럽에서 장거리 미사일과 방공체계 생산을 확대하려는 움직임은 환영할 만하지만, 전략적 논리는 더욱 분명해야 한다. 우크라이나는 러시아의 침략을 지속시키는 체계에 반복적으로 비용을 부과할 수 있는 능력이 필요하다. 목표는 상징적인 보복이나 무차별 응징이 아니라, 러시아가 계속 싸울 수 있도록 만드는 군사·산업·군수·에너지·지휘 체계를 체계적으로 교란하는 것이어야 한다.

1930년대 전간기 공군 이론가들은 현대 산업국가의 취약성을 효과적으로 활용할 수 있는 수단이 없던 시절부터 이미 이해하고 있었다. 제2차 세계대전은 그들의 이론이 가진 가능성과 한계를 동시에 보여주었다. 사막의 폭풍은 정밀성, 스텔스, 정보, 작전 설계가 결합되었을 때 어떤 결과가 나타나는지를 입증했다. 연합군 작전은 극심한 제약 속에서도 공군력이 정치적 강압 효과를 낼 수 있음을 보여주었다. 이제 우크라이나는 다음 장을 쓰고 있다. 제공권 없이도, 즉흥적이지만 정교한 장거리 체계를 이용해 더 강한 침략자에게 체계적인 비용을 부과하는 전략공격을 수행하고 있는 것이다.

기술만으로 전쟁에서 승리한 적은 없다. 기술의 의미를 결정하는 것은 전략이다. 우크라이나의 진정한 성과는 더 긴 사거리를 가진 무기를 개발한 것이 아니라, 그것을 일관된 전략 논리에 따라 사용하고 있다는 점이다. 즉, 러시아의 침략을 지속시키는 체계를 공격하고, 모스크바의 선택을 어렵게 만들며, 러시아의 전투력 생성 능력을 약화시키고, 장차 이루어질 협상에서 우크라이나의 입지를 강화하는 것이다.

미국과 동맹국들이 이 전쟁을 더 빨리 끝내기를 원한다면, 이러한 전략을 제약할 것이 아니라 확대하도록 우크라이나를 도와야 한다. 러시아의 전쟁 수행 체계를 위협할 수 있는 장거리 공격수단을 제공하는 것은 러시아가 협상보다 침략을 계속하는 비용이 더 크다고 느끼게 함으로써 전쟁 종결을 앞당길 수 있다.

또 하나 중요한 점이 있다. 우크라이나는 장거리 타격과 방공, 무인체계, 전자전, 표적 선정, 정보융합, 회복력, 분산, 기만, 그리고 지속적인 공격을 받으면서 더 강한 적과 싸우는 작전술에 관한 실제 교훈을 피를 흘리며 배우고 있다. 미국과 동맹국들이 조금만 더 투자하고, 미국 군사 참관단을 우크라이나에 파견하는 정도만으로도, 미래에 훨씬 더 큰 대가를 치르며 다시 배워야 할 교훈을 미리 얻을 수 있을 것이다. 따라서 우크라이나를 지원하는 것은 단순히 이 전쟁을 더 빨리, 더 유리하게 끝내기 위한 것이 아니다. 다음 전쟁이 우리에게 같은 교훈을 강요하기 전에, 지금 그 교훈을 흡수하는 일이기도 하다.

무기는 변했다. 그러나 이론은 살아남았다. 우크라이나는 건전한 전략 논리에 따라 운용되는 즉흥적인 수단조차도 과거에는 초강대국 공군만이 낼 수 있었던 효과를 만들어낼 수 있음을 증명하고 있다.

따라서 미국과 동맹국 지도자들은 우크라이나가 전략공격 목표를 달성하도록 지원하는 것이 전쟁을 가장 빨리 끝내고, 전장에서의 우위를 결정적인 협상력으로 전환하며, 다른 어떤 선택보다 빠르게 전쟁을 종결하고, 우크라이나가 어렵게 배우고 있는 교훈을 미래의 분쟁에서 미국과 동맹국 군대가 다시 피로 치르지 않도록 하는 가장 효과적인 길일 수 있음을 인식해야 한다.

미국 공군 예비역 데이비드 A. 뎁툴라 중장은 미첼 항공우주연구소(Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies) 학장이다. 그는 오랜 군 경력 동안 여러 차례의 주요 연합 공중작전을 계획하고 수행했으며, 두 차례 합동임무부대(Joint Task Force) 사령관을 역임했다. 

Analysis: How Ukraine Is Reimagining Strategic Attack

Ukraine’s FP-1 drone in May 2025. Photo by oboronka.mezha.ua

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Analysis: How Ukraine Is Reimagining Strategic Attack

July 10, 2026 | By Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.)

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Since Russia’s 2022 invasion, outside observers have measured Ukraine’s prospects by a familiar yardstick: miles of territory gained or lost on the ground. By that standard, the war often appears static, attritional, and brutally expensive. But Ukraine is now demonstrating an alternative—and more effective—means to fight, taking the war deep into Russian territory not simply to punish Moscow, but to disrupt the systems that enable its military to continue fighting. 

This is not a new idea. It is one of the oldest tenets of airpower: Attack the sources of an enemy’s military power directly, paralyze the systems on which the enemy depends, and impose costs that change the adversary’s strategic calculus. What is new is the means. Ukraine is executing strategic attacks with improvised, long-range, one-way uncrewed aircraft—more accurately described as low-cost cruise missiles. It is also employing special operations, maritime strike systems, cyber-enabled intelligence, and adaptive targeting. 

One recent analysis suggests Kyiv pursue strategic neutralization: to shift away from measuring success solely by territorial movement on the ground and toward a broader objective of making Russia’s aggression operationally futile. The concept is not simply to attrit Russian forces at the front, but to persistently disrupt the systems that allow Moscow to regenerate combat power, export energy, produce weapons, launch missiles, and sustain the political fiction that the war can remain distant from Russian society.  

Ukraine’s attacks on oil refineries, export terminals, military factories, command-and-logistics nodes, air defenses, airfields, semiconductor facilities, and cruise missile production centers are precisely the kinds of targets that make sense when the objective is not battlefield attrition alone, but systemic disruption.

Ukraine’s long-range strike campaign successfully adapts classic airpower theory to its own present-day constraints.

That logic reaches back to the early Airmen of the 1920s and 1930s. Giulio Douhet, Billy Mitchell, Hugh Trenchard, and the Air Corps Tactical School all argued in different ways that modern states had become vulnerable because they depended on interlocking industrial, transportation, energy, and command systems. The Air Corps Tactical School’s industrial web concept held that a nation’s war-making potential could be attacked through critical nodes in manufacturing, power, transportation, fuel, and other essential sectors. In my 2001 monograph on how the Desert Storm air campaign was designed and executed, this point is highlighted explicitly: the Air Corps Tactical School favored the destruction or paralysis of national organic systems such as electric power, transportation, railroads, fuel, food distribution, steel manufacturing, and related industries vital to a state’s war-making capacity. 

The theory was first attempted on a large scale in World War II, but technology was not yet sufficient to fully exploit its potential. Strategic airpower could reach deep into enemy territory, but it could not reliably hit precise aimpoints without enormous mass. Even after Allied forces gained air superiority over Germany in 1944, precision bombing often required hundreds of aircraft to destroy a single target because only about 20 percent of bombs aimed at precision targets landed within 1,000 feet of the aimpoint. The strategic insight was real; the execution was only rudimentary. 

That changed in 1991. The Desert Storm air campaign attacked Iraqi leadership, command-and-control, air defenses, electricity, transportation, oil, weapons production, and fielded forces in parallel to produce cascading effects. Much of Desert Storm’s success is rightly attributed to stealth and precision, but what made the operation so successful was its effects-based approach to planning and execution. Starting with the desired strategic and operational outcomes, planners worked backward to identify the key systems and critical nodes whose disruption would produce those desired effects—paralyzing decision-making, blinding air defenses, isolating fielded forces, degrading mobility and logistics, and collapsing Iraq’s ability to conduct coherent military operations. The objective was to orchestrate integrated attacks that would impose rapid, system-wide paralysis with speed, precision, and economy of force. It worked. The 43-day air campaign rapidly degraded Iraq’s fighting capacity, paving the way for the removal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait once land forces were employed. 

Operation Allied Force in 1999 reinforced these lessons under different conditions. Though politically constrained and not a pure example of parallel warfare, the defense of Kosovo from Serbian aggression demonstrated how precision attacks against selected systems could achieve coercive effects. NATO’s own history describes Allied Force as an air campaign launched after diplomacy failed; RAND’s assessment, NATO’s Air War for Kosovo, characterized it as a 78-day air war designed to compel Slobodan Milosevic to end ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. Allied Force combined global attack, parallel precision engagements and elements of an effects-based approach to achieve those objectives. 

Ukraine now finds itself under far harsher constraints. It lacks the air superiority achieved by the coalition in Desert Storm and by NATO in Allied Force. It cannot send large packages of manned aircraft deep into Russian airspace. It lacks the mass of a superpower air force. Yet it has recognized the same enduring truth: modern war depends on systems, and systems contain vulnerable nodes. 

That is why Russian oil infrastructure matters. Oil is Russia’s economic engine, vital for revenue and political power, as well as for fuel, transportation capacity, industrial output. Ukrainian long-range cruise missile strikes against refineries, oil terminals, pumping stations, and export infrastructure are designed to reduce Moscow’s freedom of action. Recent attacks against facilities near Moscow, Crimea, Krasnodar, and even Tyumen demonstrate how Ukraine is steadily expanding both the reach and strategic ambition of its long-range campaign. In doing so, it is imposing costs: lower throughput, disrupted exports, higher repair and insurance burdens, diverted air defenses, and growing uncertainty inside Russia’s political and industrial system. 

This campaign has already shown strategic-economic effects, with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy asserting that in March alone, Russia suffered $2.3 billion in lost revenue as a result of intensified long-range attacks against Russian port and energy infrastructure. Sustained attacks on revenue, fuel, transport, and repair networks reduce Moscow’s ability to finance, supply, and politically normalize the war. 

The same logic applies to strikes on airfields, air defense systems, military production facilities, and electronics plants. Long-range strikes against facilities such as Angstrem Microelectronics in Zelenograd and MKB Raduga in Dubna are part of a campaign to reach the industrial and technological foundations of Russian military power. That is classic strategic attack: identify the systems that enable the enemy’s war effort, find the critical nodes within those systems, and attack to produce operational and strategic effects disproportionate to the costs of the weapons used in the attack. 

Operation Spiderweb, Ukraine’s daring, covert operation to strike Russian long-range combat aircraft deep inside Russia on Russian bases with remotely operated drones, sharpened the point. The Center for Strategic International Studies described the operation delivered a major blow to Moscow’s long-range bomber fleet; the Washington Post reported Ukrainian intelligence claims that up to 12 bombers, including Tu-95 aircraft used to strike Ukrainian cities, were damaged or destroyed. Even if final battle damage assessments vary, the operational message is unmistakable: Ukraine is attacking Russia’s ability to project air and missile power, not merely reacting to it at the point of impact.

A freeze-frame captures a drone exploding, disabling a Russian Tu-95 bomber during Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb, a covert drone attack in June. Ukraine’s surprise attack unleashed small drones armed with explosives to destroy dozens of unprotected Russian aircraft at air bases across the country. Ukrainian Security Service

This is strategic attack adapted to account for the limitations of Ukraine’s military. Desert Storm used stealth aircraft, cruise missiles, precision-guided munitions, airborne command and control, space-enabled navigation, and massive conventional combat aircraft and logistics capabilities. Ukraine is leveraging commercially influenced electronics, adapted airframes, distributed launch methods, maritime uncrewed systems, and intelligence fusion to the same kind of effects. Due to limits on what U.S. and European deep attack systems the West will provide, Ukraine is domestically producing its own unique long-range capabilities, such as the FP-1 Firepoint, RS-1 Bars, and Bars-SM Gladiator, to penetrate dense Russian air defenses and strike military related facilities in the Moscow region. 

Ukraine is not replicating Desert Storm but rather translating the logic of that air campaign into a new context: a war in which neither side has air supremacy, and in which Ukraine lacks sufficient weapons and faces a nuclear-armed adversary with strategic depth. Its campaign is therefore more episodic, more improvised, and more constrained. But its essence is recognizable: parallel pressure against military, industrial, energy, and psychological systems; precision sufficient to attack specific nodes; and a theory of victory that seeks to change enemy behavior by making the cost of aggression increasingly costly. 

That is also why the campaign should not be judged solely by whether it produces immediate territorial gains. Strategic attack only rarely achieve their objectives with a single blow. It accumulates effects. It forces the adversary to divert air defenses from the front to the homeland. It compels dispersal of aircraft and production. It raises insurance, transport, repair, and security costs. It reduces refinery throughput. It complicates military logistics. It imposes political costs, creating uncertainty in the minds of commanders, industrial managers, political elites, and citizens. 

This is precisely the realm of effects-based operations. Strategy must be understood as the orchestration of means to accomplish ends and to optimize actualization of that goal target selection must focus not on the absolute destruction of a list of targets, but on the effects desired upon target systems. That sentence captures Ukraine’s emerging approach. Kyiv is not trying to bomb Russia into submission in the crude sense sometimes associated with early airpower theory. It is trying to deny Russia the ability to wage war cheaply, confidently, and indefinitely. 

The moral and legal distinction is essential: Strategic attack does not mean indiscriminate attack. In fact, the maturation of airpower from World War II to Desert Storm was, in large part, the story of moving from area destruction toward more precise attacks on military and war-sustaining systems. That distinction is visible today in the contrast between Ukrainian and Russian long-range strike. Russian attacks have repeatedly targeted civilian areas, apartment blocks, hospitals, schools, civil power grids, and other nonmilitary sites. These attacks suggest either deliberate terrorism, poor intelligence, weak target development, or a disregard for civilian harm. Ukraine’s legitimacy depends on continuing to do the opposite: focusing on military objectives and war-supporting infrastructure, using accurate, precise, and timely intelligence, and applying disciplined target planning to minimize civilian harm.  

Russia possesses proportionately greater long-range strike capacity, but it lacks the leadership, training, perspective and doctrine required to translate that capacity into decisive strategic advantage. Ukraine has fewer means, but it is learning how to make them count. That is the fundamental difference between the two sides: one uses strike largely as punishment and coercion against society; the other is increasingly applying strike as a targeted means of disrupting the systems that sustain aggression. 

There is an important lesson for the United States and its allies here. Ukraine’s campaign demonstrates that long-range strike is not a luxury, but a strategic necessity. A state that can only defend at the front is condemned to absorb punishment indefinitely. A state that can reach the enemy’s arsenals, refineries, command nodes, ports, airfields, and production base can change the war’s logic. That is why sustained support for Ukraine’s long-range attack capacity should not be viewed as escalatory. Properly bounded, legally employed, and strategically directed, it is a means of shortening the war by attacking Russia’s capacity to continue it. 

The West has too often treated long-range strike as a reward to be rationed rather than as a requirement to be integrated into a coherent theory of victory. That caution has carried costs. Every delay in providing Ukraine the means to hold Russia’s war-sustaining systems at risk gives Moscow the gift of time to adapt, repair, disperse, and continue its assault. Recent steps to expand Ukraine-based and European production of long-range missiles and air-defense systems are welcome, but the strategic logic should be clearer: Ukraine needs the ability to impose recurring costs on the systems that sustain Russia’s aggression. The objective should not be symbolic retaliation or indiscriminate punishment. It should be the systematic disruption of the military, industrial, logistical, energy, and command systems that allow Russia to keep fighting. 

The Airmen of the interwar years of the 1930s understood the vulnerabilities of modern industrial states before they had the tools to exploit them effectively. World War II proved both the ambition and the limits of their theories. The Desert Storm air campaign showed what happened when precision, stealth, information, and operational design finally converged. Allied Force showed that airpower could contribute to coercive political outcomes under severe constraints. Ukraine is now writing the next chapter: strategic attack conducted by a nation without air superiority, using improvised but sophisticated long-range systems to impose systemic costs on a larger aggressor. 

Technology alone has never won wars, but strategy determines whether technology matters. Ukraine’s achievement is not simply that it has built longer-range weapons. It is that it is using them in accordance with a coherent strategic logic: attack the systems that sustain Russian aggression, complicate Moscow’s choices, reduce Russia’s ability to generate combat power, and improve Ukraine’s position for an eventual settlement. 

If the United States and its allies want this war to end sooner, they should help Ukraine expand that logic—not constrain it. Providing Ukraine the long-range attack means to hold Russia’s war machine at risk could accelerate the conclusion of the war by making continued aggression more costly than negotiation.  

But there is another imperative as well. Ukraine is paying in blood for real-world lessons about long-range strike, air defense, uncrewed systems, electronic warfare, targeting, intelligence fusion, resilience, dispersal, deception, and the operational art of fighting a larger adversary under persistent attack. Even a modest increase in U.S. and allied investment—including the placement of U.S. military observers in Ukraine—would yield lessons that could prevent American and allied forces from having to relearn them later at far greater cost. Supporting Ukraine is therefore not only about bringing this war to a faster and more favorable conclusion. It is also about absorbing the lessons of this war before the next one imposes those lessons on us. 

The weapons have changed. The theory has endured. Ukraine is proving that even improvised means, when guided by sound strategic logic, can produce effects once reserved for great-power air forces. 

U.S. and allied leaders must therefore recognize that helping Ukraine achieve its strategic attack objectives may be the fastest path to ending the war, turning battlespace strength into decisive leverage, bringing closure sooner than any other available course, and ensuring that the hard lessons Ukraine is learning are not paid for again by American and allied forces in a future conflict. 

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.), is the Dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. He has been involved in planning and executing multiple major coalition air campaigns and was a Joint Task Force commander twice during his long military career.

Ukraine’s FP-1 drone in May 2025. Photo by oboronka.mezha.ua

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Analysis: How Ukraine Is Reimagining Strategic Attack

July 10, 2026 | By Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.)

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Since Russia’s 2022 invasion, outside observers have measured Ukraine’s prospects by a familiar yardstick: miles of territory gained or lost on the ground. By that standard, the war often appears static, attritional, and brutally expensive. But Ukraine is now demonstrating an alternative—and more effective—means to fight, taking the war deep into Russian territory not simply to punish Moscow, but to disrupt the systems that enable its military to continue fighting. 

This is not a new idea. It is one of the oldest tenets of airpower: Attack the sources of an enemy’s military power directly, paralyze the systems on which the enemy depends, and impose costs that change the adversary’s strategic calculus. What is new is the means. Ukraine is executing strategic attacks with improvised, long-range, one-way uncrewed aircraft—more accurately described as low-cost cruise missiles. It is also employing special operations, maritime strike systems, cyber-enabled intelligence, and adaptive targeting. 

One recent analysis suggests Kyiv pursue strategic neutralization: to shift away from measuring success solely by territorial movement on the ground and toward a broader objective of making Russia’s aggression operationally futile. The concept is not simply to attrit Russian forces at the front, but to persistently disrupt the systems that allow Moscow to regenerate combat power, export energy, produce weapons, launch missiles, and sustain the political fiction that the war can remain distant from Russian society.  

Ukraine’s attacks on oil refineries, export terminals, military factories, command-and-logistics nodes, air defenses, airfields, semiconductor facilities, and cruise missile production centers are precisely the kinds of targets that make sense when the objective is not battlefield attrition alone, but systemic disruption.

Ukraine’s long-range strike campaign successfully adapts classic airpower theory to its own present-day constraints.

That logic reaches back to the early Airmen of the 1920s and 1930s. Giulio Douhet, Billy Mitchell, Hugh Trenchard, and the Air Corps Tactical School all argued in different ways that modern states had become vulnerable because they depended on interlocking industrial, transportation, energy, and command systems. The Air Corps Tactical School’s industrial web concept held that a nation’s war-making potential could be attacked through critical nodes in manufacturing, power, transportation, fuel, and other essential sectors. In my 2001 monograph on how the Desert Storm air campaign was designed and executed, this point is highlighted explicitly: the Air Corps Tactical School favored the destruction or paralysis of national organic systems such as electric power, transportation, railroads, fuel, food distribution, steel manufacturing, and related industries vital to a state’s war-making capacity. 

The theory was first attempted on a large scale in World War II, but technology was not yet sufficient to fully exploit its potential. Strategic airpower could reach deep into enemy territory, but it could not reliably hit precise aimpoints without enormous mass. Even after Allied forces gained air superiority over Germany in 1944, precision bombing often required hundreds of aircraft to destroy a single target because only about 20 percent of bombs aimed at precision targets landed within 1,000 feet of the aimpoint. The strategic insight was real; the execution was only rudimentary. 

That changed in 1991. The Desert Storm air campaign attacked Iraqi leadership, command-and-control, air defenses, electricity, transportation, oil, weapons production, and fielded forces in parallel to produce cascading effects. Much of Desert Storm’s success is rightly attributed to stealth and precision, but what made the operation so successful was its effects-based approach to planning and execution. Starting with the desired strategic and operational outcomes, planners worked backward to identify the key systems and critical nodes whose disruption would produce those desired effects—paralyzing decision-making, blinding air defenses, isolating fielded forces, degrading mobility and logistics, and collapsing Iraq’s ability to conduct coherent military operations. The objective was to orchestrate integrated attacks that would impose rapid, system-wide paralysis with speed, precision, and economy of force. It worked. The 43-day air campaign rapidly degraded Iraq’s fighting capacity, paving the way for the removal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait once land forces were employed. 

Operation Allied Force in 1999 reinforced these lessons under different conditions. Though politically constrained and not a pure example of parallel warfare, the defense of Kosovo from Serbian aggression demonstrated how precision attacks against selected systems could achieve coercive effects. NATO’s own history describes Allied Force as an air campaign launched after diplomacy failed; RAND’s assessment, NATO’s Air War for Kosovo, characterized it as a 78-day air war designed to compel Slobodan Milosevic to end ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. Allied Force combined global attack, parallel precision engagements and elements of an effects-based approach to achieve those objectives. 

Ukraine now finds itself under far harsher constraints. It lacks the air superiority achieved by the coalition in Desert Storm and by NATO in Allied Force. It cannot send large packages of manned aircraft deep into Russian airspace. It lacks the mass of a superpower air force. Yet it has recognized the same enduring truth: modern war depends on systems, and systems contain vulnerable nodes. 

That is why Russian oil infrastructure matters. Oil is Russia’s economic engine, vital for revenue and political power, as well as for fuel, transportation capacity, industrial output. Ukrainian long-range cruise missile strikes against refineries, oil terminals, pumping stations, and export infrastructure are designed to reduce Moscow’s freedom of action. Recent attacks against facilities near Moscow, Crimea, Krasnodar, and even Tyumen demonstrate how Ukraine is steadily expanding both the reach and strategic ambition of its long-range campaign. In doing so, it is imposing costs: lower throughput, disrupted exports, higher repair and insurance burdens, diverted air defenses, and growing uncertainty inside Russia’s political and industrial system. 

This campaign has already shown strategic-economic effects, with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy asserting that in March alone, Russia suffered $2.3 billion in lost revenue as a result of intensified long-range attacks against Russian port and energy infrastructure. Sustained attacks on revenue, fuel, transport, and repair networks reduce Moscow’s ability to finance, supply, and politically normalize the war. 

The same logic applies to strikes on airfields, air defense systems, military production facilities, and electronics plants. Long-range strikes against facilities such as Angstrem Microelectronics in Zelenograd and MKB Raduga in Dubna are part of a campaign to reach the industrial and technological foundations of Russian military power. That is classic strategic attack: identify the systems that enable the enemy’s war effort, find the critical nodes within those systems, and attack to produce operational and strategic effects disproportionate to the costs of the weapons used in the attack. 

Operation Spiderweb, Ukraine’s daring, covert operation to strike Russian long-range combat aircraft deep inside Russia on Russian bases with remotely operated drones, sharpened the point. The Center for Strategic International Studies described the operation delivered a major blow to Moscow’s long-range bomber fleet; the Washington Post reported Ukrainian intelligence claims that up to 12 bombers, including Tu-95 aircraft used to strike Ukrainian cities, were damaged or destroyed. Even if final battle damage assessments vary, the operational message is unmistakable: Ukraine is attacking Russia’s ability to project air and missile power, not merely reacting to it at the point of impact.

A freeze-frame captures a drone exploding, disabling a Russian Tu-95 bomber during Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb, a covert drone attack in June. Ukraine’s surprise attack unleashed small drones armed with explosives to destroy dozens of unprotected Russian aircraft at air bases across the country. Ukrainian Security Service

This is strategic attack adapted to account for the limitations of Ukraine’s military. Desert Storm used stealth aircraft, cruise missiles, precision-guided munitions, airborne command and control, space-enabled navigation, and massive conventional combat aircraft and logistics capabilities. Ukraine is leveraging commercially influenced electronics, adapted airframes, distributed launch methods, maritime uncrewed systems, and intelligence fusion to the same kind of effects. Due to limits on what U.S. and European deep attack systems the West will provide, Ukraine is domestically producing its own unique long-range capabilities, such as the FP-1 Firepoint, RS-1 Bars, and Bars-SM Gladiator, to penetrate dense Russian air defenses and strike military related facilities in the Moscow region. 

Ukraine is not replicating Desert Storm but rather translating the logic of that air campaign into a new context: a war in which neither side has air supremacy, and in which Ukraine lacks sufficient weapons and faces a nuclear-armed adversary with strategic depth. Its campaign is therefore more episodic, more improvised, and more constrained. But its essence is recognizable: parallel pressure against military, industrial, energy, and psychological systems; precision sufficient to attack specific nodes; and a theory of victory that seeks to change enemy behavior by making the cost of aggression increasingly costly. 

That is also why the campaign should not be judged solely by whether it produces immediate territorial gains. Strategic attack only rarely achieve their objectives with a single blow. It accumulates effects. It forces the adversary to divert air defenses from the front to the homeland. It compels dispersal of aircraft and production. It raises insurance, transport, repair, and security costs. It reduces refinery throughput. It complicates military logistics. It imposes political costs, creating uncertainty in the minds of commanders, industrial managers, political elites, and citizens. 

This is precisely the realm of effects-based operations. Strategy must be understood as the orchestration of means to accomplish ends and to optimize actualization of that goal target selection must focus not on the absolute destruction of a list of targets, but on the effects desired upon target systems. That sentence captures Ukraine’s emerging approach. Kyiv is not trying to bomb Russia into submission in the crude sense sometimes associated with early airpower theory. It is trying to deny Russia the ability to wage war cheaply, confidently, and indefinitely. 

The moral and legal distinction is essential: Strategic attack does not mean indiscriminate attack. In fact, the maturation of airpower from World War II to Desert Storm was, in large part, the story of moving from area destruction toward more precise attacks on military and war-sustaining systems. That distinction is visible today in the contrast between Ukrainian and Russian long-range strike. Russian attacks have repeatedly targeted civilian areas, apartment blocks, hospitals, schools, civil power grids, and other nonmilitary sites. These attacks suggest either deliberate terrorism, poor intelligence, weak target development, or a disregard for civilian harm. Ukraine’s legitimacy depends on continuing to do the opposite: focusing on military objectives and war-supporting infrastructure, using accurate, precise, and timely intelligence, and applying disciplined target planning to minimize civilian harm.  

Russia possesses proportionately greater long-range strike capacity, but it lacks the leadership, training, perspective and doctrine required to translate that capacity into decisive strategic advantage. Ukraine has fewer means, but it is learning how to make them count. That is the fundamental difference between the two sides: one uses strike largely as punishment and coercion against society; the other is increasingly applying strike as a targeted means of disrupting the systems that sustain aggression. 

There is an important lesson for the United States and its allies here. Ukraine’s campaign demonstrates that long-range strike is not a luxury, but a strategic necessity. A state that can only defend at the front is condemned to absorb punishment indefinitely. A state that can reach the enemy’s arsenals, refineries, command nodes, ports, airfields, and production base can change the war’s logic. That is why sustained support for Ukraine’s long-range attack capacity should not be viewed as escalatory. Properly bounded, legally employed, and strategically directed, it is a means of shortening the war by attacking Russia’s capacity to continue it. 

The West has too often treated long-range strike as a reward to be rationed rather than as a requirement to be integrated into a coherent theory of victory. That caution has carried costs. Every delay in providing Ukraine the means to hold Russia’s war-sustaining systems at risk gives Moscow the gift of time to adapt, repair, disperse, and continue its assault. Recent steps to expand Ukraine-based and European production of long-range missiles and air-defense systems are welcome, but the strategic logic should be clearer: Ukraine needs the ability to impose recurring costs on the systems that sustain Russia’s aggression. The objective should not be symbolic retaliation or indiscriminate punishment. It should be the systematic disruption of the military, industrial, logistical, energy, and command systems that allow Russia to keep fighting. 

The Airmen of the interwar years of the 1930s understood the vulnerabilities of modern industrial states before they had the tools to exploit them effectively. World War II proved both the ambition and the limits of their theories. The Desert Storm air campaign showed what happened when precision, stealth, information, and operational design finally converged. Allied Force showed that airpower could contribute to coercive political outcomes under severe constraints. Ukraine is now writing the next chapter: strategic attack conducted by a nation without air superiority, using improvised but sophisticated long-range systems to impose systemic costs on a larger aggressor. 

Technology alone has never won wars, but strategy determines whether technology matters. Ukraine’s achievement is not simply that it has built longer-range weapons. It is that it is using them in accordance with a coherent strategic logic: attack the systems that sustain Russian aggression, complicate Moscow’s choices, reduce Russia’s ability to generate combat power, and improve Ukraine’s position for an eventual settlement. 

If the United States and its allies want this war to end sooner, they should help Ukraine expand that logic—not constrain it. Providing Ukraine the long-range attack means to hold Russia’s war machine at risk could accelerate the conclusion of the war by making continued aggression more costly than negotiation.  

But there is another imperative as well. Ukraine is paying in blood for real-world lessons about long-range strike, air defense, uncrewed systems, electronic warfare, targeting, intelligence fusion, resilience, dispersal, deception, and the operational art of fighting a larger adversary under persistent attack. Even a modest increase in U.S. and allied investment—including the placement of U.S. military observers in Ukraine—would yield lessons that could prevent American and allied forces from having to relearn them later at far greater cost. Supporting Ukraine is therefore not only about bringing this war to a faster and more favorable conclusion. It is also about absorbing the lessons of this war before the next one imposes those lessons on us. 

The weapons have changed. The theory has endured. Ukraine is proving that even improvised means, when guided by sound strategic logic, can produce effects once reserved for great-power air forces. 

U.S. and allied leaders must therefore recognize that helping Ukraine achieve its strategic attack objectives may be the fastest path to ending the war, turning battlespace strength into decisive leverage, bringing closure sooner than any other available course, and ensuring that the hard lessons Ukraine is learning are not paid for again by American and allied forces in a future conflict. 

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.), is the Dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. He has been involved in planning and executing multiple major coalition air campaigns and was a Joint Task Force commander twice during his long military career.

[백선호]

" 한쪽은 타격을 사회를 응징하고 강압하는 수단으로 사용하는 반면, 다른 한쪽은 침략을 지속시키는 체계를 표적으로 삼아 교란하는 수단으로 점점 더 활용하고 있다. "

[위종민]

러시아의 정유시설에 비할만한 우크라이나의 전략목표는 어디였을까요? 헤르손의 곡물 터미널 아니었을까 싶긴 한데..

[백선호]

우크라이나면 곡물이니 오데사 항구의 곡물 터미널도 중요한 전략 표적이 될 것 같습니다.