The Spider's Web

Leon Neal//Getty Images

Popular Mechanics nailed it in terms of powerful cheap tech and what it can do to legacy systems.
In reading the PM post, the connect to The Center of Gravity/Rev II rings true
if the US stupidly attacks Iran yet again. 

To wit

The Bones could have been caught in the Spider’s Web.

That might read like a sentence from a Stephen King novel on the surface,
but if you parse through the military parlance, what it says is far more haunting.

The “Bones” in question are the U.S. Air Force’s Rockwell B-1 Lancers, a supersonic bomber that airmen affectionately call a “Bone” (as in “B One”). In early October, the USAF had to quickly evacuate a contingent of 12 B-1s from an English airbase when the Pentagon suspected they were vulnerable to an attack modeled on Ukraine’s Operation Spider’s Web.

The Air Force moved so fast that there wasn’t even time to pull together a refueling plan, according to a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace commentary by Steven Feldstein. The aircraft represent “one-quarter of Washington's B-1 arsenal”— an estimated $3.8 billion in hardware. The concern was that these supersonic bombers were acutely vulnerable to a threat parked just outside the fence: unmarked vans.

 A 28th Bomb Wing B-1B on the ramp in the early morning at Ellsworth Air Force Base, South Dakota

But it wasn't.

But the strategy behind the attack wasn’t the IRGC’s. In fact, similar strikes have been successfully carried out by a number of U.S. allies in their own ongoing conflicts, a reminder both that war always evolves, and that the weapons wielded by your friend will inevitably find their way into the hands of your enemies too.

In June 2025, Ukraine launched Operation Spider’s Web, a drone attack the New York Times described as
“a signature event on par with sinking the Russian flagship Moskva early in the war.” Instead of vans, Ukraine used “custom-made wooden modular cabins,” per a West Point report, concealing 150 drones and 300 explosive payloads in their roofs.

A Rockwell B-1A in 1984

Serious airplane, serious vulnerability.