Audacious operations: Commemorating OVERLORD, commending SPIDER’S WEB
The Cable | No. 23.2025
Welcome to the 46th Cable, our weekly roundup of British foreign and defence policy.
On Friday 6th June, commemorations were held in Normandy for the 81st anniversary of the D-Day landings. John Healey, Secretary of State for Defence, gave a speech at Utah Beach, stating:
81 years ago today, tyranny bowed when the courage of free men forced open the gates of liberation…And through their valour we inherited a free world…the responsibility to safeguard D-Day’s legacy and freedom rests today with us.
In today’s worsening geopolitical environment, these words hit home, as the United Kingdom (UK) and its allies and partners face up to new threats and adversaries. To confront these challenges, Britain must prepare itself for conflict, both in terms of its military and its society. The Strategic Defence Review (SDR), which was published last week, highlighted this need and called for the UK to be ‘warfighting ready’. But, to do so will require more resources and greater political will. As we return to an era of conflict and great power competition, the anniversary of the beginning of the end of the Nazi regime is a fitting reminder of what’s at stake if we fail to rise to the challenge.
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His Majesty’s (HM) Government is set to back a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) push for all member nations to spend at least 3.5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on defence by 2035. An additional 1.5% will be allocated for areas such as security and defence-related infrastructure, adding up to 5% of GDP in total. This news follows days of hesitation by Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister, over when the UK would hit 3% spending in statements made since the publication of the SDR.
On 4th June, Britain announced it will invest a record £350 million in 2025 to increase the supply of drones to Ukraine from the 2024 target of 10,000 to 100,000 by the end of the year. The announcement was made by Healey at a meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group (UDCG) at NATO headquarters in Brussels.
The Ministry of Defence (MOD) has announced that Sir Richard Knighton will be the next Chief of the Defence Staff, replacing Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, who has been in the role since 2021. Sir Richard has served in the Royal Air Force (RAF) since 1989 and has been Chief of the Air Staff since 2023.
Over the weekend, David Lammy, Foreign Secretary, met with Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, to discuss enhancing economic and migration partnerships. These talks focused on strengthening business ties between the two countries, following the signing of a Free Trade Agreement in early May. The two also discussed advancing an ambitious UK-India Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. While in India, Lammy made the following statement: ‘Signing a free trade agreement is just the start of our ambitions – we’re building a modern partnership with India for a new global era.’
Jonathan Reynolds, Secretary of State for Business and Trade, gave a keynote speech at the Brussels Economic Security Forum on 5th June, before attending talks with European Union (EU) counterparts in Brussels. Reynolds used his visit to push for greater business exports to the EU, stating that Britain is ‘a country that counterparts and businesses can bank on in increasingly uncertain and volatile times.’
HM Government has unveiled plans to invest £14.2 billion to build the Sizewell C nuclear power plant and to develop small modular reactors (SMRs) – with Rolls-Royce SMR selected as the preferred bidder to build the country’s first SMRs. HM Government has stated that its nuclear policy objectives are to connect these new projects to the grid in the mid-2030s, which, when coupled with Hinkley Point C (currently under construction), means that nuclear power will provide more energy to the grid than at any time in the last 50 years. The announcement comes as part of the £113 billion of new capital investment unveiled in the Spending Review.
British solar power generated more electricity than ever before in the first five months of 2025, the result of increased capacity and the sunniest spring on record. New analysis by Carbon Brief stated that solar generation was 42% higher than over the same period last year and 160% more than in 2015. The increased generation in 2025 means that the UK has reduced its reliance on imported gas, which would have cost approximately £600 million.
How competitors frame Britain
Russia Today published an article on new polling data by the Levada Centre, a polling and sociological research organisation, which shows that the US is no longer considered ‘the most unfriendly country’ to Russia. Instead, Germany has now taken the top spot, with Britain in second place. It appears as though Russia’s historic competition with the UK, alongside HM Government’s support for Ukraine, has sharpened Russian public opinion against Britain.
TASS interviewed Vasily Piskaryov, Chair of the State Duma Commission on Investigating Foreign Interference in Russia’s Internal Affairs, who claimed that the British Council had carried out ‘intelligence activities under the guise of the development of cooperation in the sphere of culture and education.’ Another example of Russia’s paranoid purge of all foreign government agencies with a presence in the country.
Caught in the Spider’s Web: Russia’s precarious long-range strategic air force
Launched on 1st June 2025, Operation SPIDER’S WEB deserves a place in the annals of history’s most audacious special operations directed at achieving strategic objectives. Although many observers rightly emphasise the audacity and planning behind Ukraine’s attack, less attention is dedicated to the objective of destroying Russian bombers. This is an oversight. Strategic bombers are a key component of great powers’ abilities to project military power over vast distances, employing either nuclear or conventional munitions. By striking Russia’s fragile fleet of strategic bombers, Ukraine is directly undermining its ability to maintain its status as a great power, both during the current conflict and thereafter.
The virtuosity Ukraine demonstrated in planning its attack should draw attention to what they sought to destroy. Although assessments vary, 10-13 strategic bombers were destroyed, with more being damaged. By contrast, the United States (US) never lost more than eight bombers during any single day of the Vietnam War, and three was the most lost during a single day of the Korean War.
Strategic bombers are a perquisite of great powers. Capable of flying intercontinental ranges and carrying multiple cruise missiles, either nuclear or conventional, strategic bombers enable their possessor states to project power swiftly across the globe. Russia has exploited bombers’ flexibility and their intimidating aesthetics by regularly having them intrude near British and other allies’ airspace, aligning with cities to demonstrate their ability to launch nuclear strikes.
Today, only three countries – the US, Russia and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) – possess fleets of strategic bombers, with Russia’s position in this select club precarious. On paper, Russia’s strategic bomber fleet may appear healthy, with the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ Strategic Balance crediting it with possessing 198 bombers at the onset of 2025. However, Russia has failed to build a single wholly new strategic bomber since shortly after the end of the Cold War.
Building strategic bombers demands complex feats of systems engineering, but Russia allowed these industrial skills to atrophy after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and it is debatable whether it can master them once again. Continued use, with no replacements, has meant that Russia’s number of serviceable bombers has dwindled over time. Thus, while on paper Russia possessed 57 Tu-22M3 Backfire bombers in 2024, Ukrainian intelligence estimated that only 27 were operational.
Russia’s leadership recognised that a strategic aviation crisis was looming as early as 2015, with the Kremlin announcing ambitious plans to put the last Soviet-designed bomber (the Tu-160) back into production and design a new stealth bomber, the PAK-DA. Currently, these projects are stagnating: Russian industry is struggling to re-master complex skills, and thus far the only two Tu-160 bombers delivered were built using components left over from the Cold War. Ambitions for a notional stealth bomber seem stuck on the drawing board.
Ukraine’s planners – and perhaps their foreign backers – are thus targeting a segment of Russia’s military which is both vulnerable and essential to its great power status. Operation SPIDER’S WEB is not the first strike within this context. On 20th January 2025, Ukrainian drones struck the Gorbunov Kazan Aviation Plant in Tatarstan, where Russia is attempting to restart production of the Tu-160. The losses of 1st June come on top of the wear and tear which Russia’s bombers have been suffering during wartime missions, as well as the loss of additional bombers through prior Ukrainian strikes on airfields. This shows how Ukraine’s leaders appear determined to degrade, and eventually destroy, the Kremlin’s strategic bomber force unless Russia halts its illegal invasion.
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