When Homer recounted the fall of Troy, he gave the world more than just a myth, he gave us the blueprint for military deception. The infamous wooden horse, offered as a peace token but hiding Greek warriors within, is a legend etched into Western consciousness as the ultimate symbol of guile trumping might.
Fast forward a few thousand years to June 2025, when Ukrainian forces executed Operation Spiderweb, a drone strike that many military analysts now hail as a turning point in modern warfare. Using artificial intelligence, commercial parts, and a tactic so old it predates gunpowder, Ukraine pulled off a feat that feels less like science fiction and more like a myth updated for the digital age.
In both stories, the ancient and ultramodern, a wooden structure concealed a deadly surprise. The Greeks used a handcrafted wooden horse. Ukraine used prefabricated mobile buildings disguised as civilian sheds, delivered by unsuspecting Russian truck drivers. In both cases, the enemy welcomed danger into their most secure spaces, failing to recognize the threat until it was too late.
Trojan Horse 1.0: The Original Hack
The fall of Troy is the ultimate lesson in psychological warfare. For ten years, the Greeks had laid siege to the city. When brute force failed, they tried something clever: they pretended to abandon the fight and left behind a towering wooden horse. The Trojans interpreted it as a peace offering and dragged it inside their fortified city.
That night, as the city slept, Greek soldiers emerged from the hollow horse, opened the gates, and allowed their comrades, who had returned under cover of darkness, to storm the city. Troy fell not through brute strength, but through a breach in perception.
This strategy was brilliant in its simplicity. It used the enemy’s assumptions, the desire for peace, the pride of victory, the belief in their own invincibility, against them. The Greeks didn’t just win a battle; they rewrote the rules of engagement.
Trojan Horse 2.0: Prefabs and Payloads
In Operation Spiderweb, the battlefield was not a walled city, but Russia’s vast and well defended airspace. Ukraine faced a similar problem: how to strike a heavily fortified target without air superiority. The solution? Infiltration disguised as normality.
Ukraine deployed small, wooden prefabricated structures that looked like nothing more than roadside sheds or mobile homes. Inside were long range drones equipped with AI driven navigation systems. These mobile units were covertly transported, reportedly by civilian Russian drivers to areas within striking distance of key Russian military airfields.
Once in position, the roofs of these “cabins” opened remotely, releasing the drones. Even when signal links were jammed, the drones operated autonomously, identifying and striking targets such as Russia’s strategic bombers and surveillance aircraft. By the time Russia understood what had happened, the damage was done: dozens of high, value aircraft destroyed or severely damaged, all with no boots on the ground.
This wasn’t just a clever trick, it was proof of concept. It demonstrated how AI and asymmetric tactics could inflict massive losses without conventional confrontation. It was war fought with brains over brawn. Just like Troy.
Form and Function
Both the wooden horse and the prefabricated drone launcher relied on the same triad: deception, disguise, and delayed danger.
Deception: The Greeks pretended to surrender. Ukraine posed as civilians using civilian roads and delivery methods.
Disguise: The Greeks used a sacred, looking horse. Ukraine used seemingly benign wooden structures that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a Russian dacha lawn.
Delayed Danger: In both cases, the weapon wasn’t the object itself, it was what came out of it after the enemy relaxed their guard.
What’s most striking isn’t how different these two operations are, but how similar. Despite millennia of technological advancement, the principles of strategic deception haven’t changed. The tools have evolved, yes, but the mindset is ancient.
Real Innovation Is Irony
We often hear about how modern warfare is being transformed by artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, and precision targeting. That’s all true. But the success of Operation Spiderweb suggests something more unsettling: that the most advanced form of warfare may still be the oldest trick in the book.
Military analysts point to Spiderweb as a breakthrough, proof that AI-driven, decentralized drone strikes can rival traditional air power. But for all the tech hype, the operation’s genius lies not just in its algorithms, but in its irony: it brought down some of Russia’s most powerful weapons with tools hidden in plain sight, using infrastructure the enemy itself helped to move.
Ukraine didn’t just strike at aircraft; they struck at assumptions.
Plus Ça Change...
It’s tempting to think of the Trojan Horse as ancient history and Spiderweb as cutting-edge warfare. But look closer, and you see the same old patterns: overconfidence, psychological manipulation, the weaponization of misperception.
The Greeks had Odysseus. Ukraine had open-source autopilot software and a war tested strategic imagination. Both understood a fundamental truth: when you can’t win by strength alone, win by making your enemy feel safe, until it's too late.
In that sense, Operation Spiderweb isn’t just a turning point in modern warfare. It’s a reminder of an eternal constant: plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Heather Cox Richardson publishes on Substack. https://substack.com/@heathercoxrichardson
The video clip is from Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/@heathercoxrichardson
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