The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | June 7th, 2025: Inside Ukraine’s Drone Strike On Russia & Clan Militias Target Hamas
Sat, 07 Jun 2025
In this episode of The PDB Situation Report: Ukraine strikes deep inside Russia, damaging multiple long-range bombers in a drone operation that reportedly took 18 months to plan—and may have used artificial intelligence. Weapons expert and intelligence analyst Ryan McBeth joins us to break down how Ukraine pulled it off and what it means for Russia’s air defenses. And in Gaza, a new rebellion is quietly taking shape—not just against Israel, but against Hamas. Israel is backing a clan-led militia in the south, and outside aid groups are beginning to undermine Hamas' monopoly on humanitarian relief. Joe Truzman from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies joins us to explain the growing challenge to Hamas' power. To listen to the show ad-free, become a premium member of The President’s Daily Brief by visiting PDBPremium.com.Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of The President's Daily Brief.YouTube: youtube.com/@presidentsdailybriefRyan McBeth: https://www.youtube.com/@RyanMcBethProgrammingJoe Truzman: https://x.com/JoeTruzman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What drone strike occurred deep inside Russia?
Welcome to the PDB Situation Report. I'm Mike Baker. Your eyes and ears on the world stage. Let's get briefed. New details are emerging about a drone strike deep inside Russia that damaged multiple long-range Russian bombers. Now, Ukraine says the operation took some 18 months to plan and may have utilized artificial intelligence.
Ryan Macbeth, intelligence analyst and weapons expert and all-around smart guy, gives us his insight into the attack and the fallout. Later in the show, a quiet rebellion is taking shape in Gaza. This is a very interesting situation. Israel is arming a Klan-backed militia to challenge Hamas, and a new aid group is threatening Hamas's grip on power.
Joe Drusman of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies joins us for more on that. But first, today's PDB Spotlight. Last Sunday, Ukraine pulled off a bull strike deep inside Russian territory, now damaging several long-range strategic bombers in one of the war's most complex drone and intelligence operations yet.
The attack used modified shipping containers to launch over 100 drones, possibly guided by artificial intelligence. The goal? Well, the goal was to strike at the heart of Russia's long range bomber fleet. These are planes which have been regularly used to launch missile attacks on Ukrainian cities and civilians.
It's a dramatic shift in modern warfare and a glimpse into what the future might look like on the battlefield. Joining us now is Ryan McBeth. He's an intelligence analyst, a weapons expert, an all-around smart guy, a friend of the show, by the way, and the author of a really great novel. It's called The Wind Machine. The road to hell is paved with intervention. And that's available on Amazon.
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Chapter 2: How did Ukraine plan the drone attack?
Ryan, thank you, as always, for joining us here on The Situation Report. Thank you so much for inviting me. It's always a pleasure. Okay, give me your top-line take on this Ukrainian drone assault on the Russian strategic bombers.
Chapter 3: What are the implications of the drone strike on Russian air defenses?
I've often said you need to create dilemmas, not problems for your adversary. A problem has one or more solutions. A dilemma has two or more solutions, each of which are equally bad. And in this case, by Ukraine taking out these Russian bombers, it's going to force Russia to do a couple of things. Those bombers were used to launch cruise missiles toward Ukraine.
And now Russia has fewer of those platforms to work with. So that means they have a couple of options, all of which are bad. They can move those bombers constantly to avoid an attack like this ever happening again. That's a bad option because it creates crew fatigue, it creates stress on the airframe, and you're not able to use your assets as much as you'd like to.
Chapter 4: What is the situation with Hamas and clan militias in Gaza?
Option two is to launch land-based cruise missiles or sea-based cruise missiles. Now, those are only going to come from a couple of directions. If they're from the sea, it's going to be from the Black Sea, Sea of Azov. If it's from the land, it will probably be from Russian-occupied territory. It won't come from Belarus.
So that narrows down the windows that a missile can enter, and it makes it easier for Ukraine to target and destroy those missiles. So that's a major problem for Russia moving forward.
Now, let's talk about the damage done, right? There have been conflicting reports. Obviously, Ukrainian military is saying one thing, the Russians are saying something else. US and allied estimates seem to be somewhere in the middle. What's your insight into what the actual damage has been?
We know that between 10 and 13 strategic bombers were destroyed. Now, damage could be even greater. Damage always is. But the real issue is now you have fewer strategic bombers that can execute their mission. At any given time, between one-third to maybe 50% of any air asset is available. Now, that's because these aircraft need to be maintained. They need to have their oil changed.
They need to have their services done, performed on those aircraft. Now, you can... rush all your maintainers in and surge those aircraft, but you can only do that for a certain amount of time. You have a finite number of maintainers and the airframes still need certain kinds of service life maintenance for a number of hours flown.
So, this means Russia has to work their bombers harder and that brings down their sortie rate. So, even if... Ukraine claimed 40 bombers were hit. Even if 40 bombers weren't hit, it's going to cause more stress on the airframes. It's going to cause more maintenance headaches. And remember, these bombers aren't manufactured anymore.
So you're grabbing parts from other bombers or you have to special order these parts. This makes it even more difficult to keep them in the air.
Okay, so let's start from the beginning. Before this attack... What sort of numbers were we talking about? How many of these? I mean, we're talking about TU-95s, TU-22s. What was that inventory like for the Russian military?
Air is roughly, I believe, about 40, 42 of each type. It could be up into the 50s. Again, that depends on how many were flying and how many are considered wind chimes, right? These are vehicles that have been parked and pulled for parts, right? So, you could say roughly probably about 40 of 45 of each type currently flying.
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Chapter 5: What role does artificial intelligence play in modern warfare?
Chapter 6: How is the inventory of Russian strategic bombers affected?
I mean, do they have any replacement at this point?
They don't have a replacement. Now, what Russia is very good at is ground search radar, and there's a very simple reason for that. Back in the 1950s, 1960s, Russia just couldn't produce the microchips that America could produce. They weren't very good at miniaturization. In fact, their whole idea was to copy American innovations. So usually Russian chip innovations were about 10 years behind.
And so what Russia decided to do was... invest a lot of their computer processing power into radar stations and surface-to-air missile installations because it didn't really matter whether you had miniaturization when you were in a van on the ground.
That meant that search radars for aircraft were a lot less advanced, and typically they used guidance from ground control, so ground control would tell these search radars, or the ground control would tell these fighter aircraft where to go. So Russia might be able to compensate by utilizing their ground radar a little more extensively than they do now.
They also are very good at surface-to-air missile coverage. They still have the S-400, the S-300. There's an extensive network close to the border of Russia with these systems. So Russia might be able to take that advantage.
over or russia might be able to use those radars to kind of fill in those gaps but just remember if an aircraft is down roughly one third to one half of its life and now there's five or six and fifties left that means that russia can only fly maybe two at a time if they're lucky on a good day and that could cause a gap in coverage
All right. Look, what I'd like to do is talk about the operational aspects of this attack, right? We can look at the mechanics of how it was carried out and what it may mean. And also, there have been some reports about the use of artificial intelligence as part of this. But before we do that, Ryan... What we need to do is have you stay right where you are. Don't go anywhere.
Because as you know, we have some terrific sponsors. We need to take a quick break and then we'll be right back with more from Ryan McBath here on The Situation Report. Welcome back to the PDB Situation Report. Joining me once again is Ryan McBeth. Now, you can check him out at Substack. I hear that's quite the thing, at ryanmcbeth.substack.com. He's also got a great YouTube channel.
I recommend you check that out after you finish watching the Situation Report, of course. You can find him on YouTube at Ryan McBeth Program. Ryan, thanks very much for sticking around. Let's talk about the actual carrying out of this rather incredible strike by the Ukrainian forces, by the SPU. The SPU seems to have taken, obviously, the lead on this.
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Chapter 7: What are the ethical concerns of using AI in military operations?
So it's interesting, Hamas is, you know, Hamas is aware, right, about this organization and they're trying to counter it. But yeah, effectively right now, this organization, this militia is in Southern Gaza. Will it spread? It's possible, right? But they're going to need new recruits, right? So there's a lot to see, a lot we have to wait here and see what's going to happen.
Again, this is all pretty new.
in Gaza, how important are the clans or the families in terms of operating independently from Hamas or controlling their own community no matter how big or small that community may be?
Right. It's tough. I mean, listen, this is something I've said for a while and have assessed for a while now that Hamas is in pretty much every facet of life in the Gaza Strip, all right?
uh whether it's uh in uh working with working in uh having men in working with ngos right charities uh or uh media and plans for example there are large clans in the gaza strip many of them uh who have members of uh whose members are uh or members of hamas uh so
I think it is possible now that a clan can independently act without Hamas's interference only because Hamas is so weak right now because of the war. Now, if you were to ask me this question before October 7th, 2023, I'd tell you no way. But I think things are changing. However, I think Hamas still wields a lot of influence, right?
And this actually, speaking of clans, the member, at least the clan that Shabab belongs to reportedly pretty much disowned him. because of this news that came about in recent days and today. So yeah, I think it's possible, right? But again, Hamas still wields some influence in the Gaza Strip.
Now, who's calling the shots for Hamas at this point? Because, you know, they've officially announced that, yes, Mohamed Sinwa was terminated. Who do you, from your understanding, who's calling the shots there?
Right. That's a million-dollar question, right? Who's left? I mean, let's be honest here. Most of Hamas's hierarchy has been eliminated. The top either political guys or top military guys, they're gone. But there's a couple of them still, you know, some stragglers, right? But I think if I were to put... Money on it, it would be this Gaza Brigade commander, Izzedine al-Khabad.
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Chapter 8: How does Ryan McBeth's book relate to current events?
And I'll tell you, I think negotiators are hitting the same roadblock over and over again over the past month, over the past, well, more than a year and a half now. And that is this, that Hamas wants to stay in power. They say, yes, Israel, we'll give you the hostages that we took. But you guys got to get out and we're staying in power.
And Israel says, you know what, we'll give you thousands of Palestinian prisoners for the hostages that took captive on October 7th, but you're not staying in Gaza, right? And I think you're not going to at least govern in Gaza anymore. And that's the problem, I think, that we keep running into. That's why this ceasefire, it gets close, right?
These negotiations get close to a deal, but then nothing happened. I think that's where we're at and have always been at for some time now. So, this is why we're starting to see this new militia emerge, I think, to try to put more pressure on Hamas. Additional IDF maneuvers in the Gaza Strip in recent days, more pressure on Hamas. to eventually let go. I think this is what Israel is trying to do.
Will it work? I don't know. But what I'm afraid of, what I'm concerned is that Hamas will continue going despite the collateral damage or the damage that has been caused in Gaza, unfortunately. I'm not sure they'll give up or surrender. I don't know. I think that's where we're at right now, especially with the ceasefire. It's just the same problem. One side doesn't want to give up.
It's, you know, it's terms and the same goes for the other. So one of them is going to blink. I just don't know who.
The last question, Joe, and of course, it requires a lot of speculation. From your perspective, any chance at all that the Palestinian people, the Gaza residents themselves rise up against Hamas and say enough's enough?
I think that's what Hamas fears the most. I think that's what Israel wants more than anything. We've seen a little bit of it with protests, especially in the Northern Gaza Strip over the last months. You see these protests, they start for a few days, they start rolling, the more people start coming out, but then they stop all of a sudden. Why do they stop? I'll tell you why they stop.
It's because there are members of Hamas that intimidate these protesters. They go to their homes. Sometimes they beat the protest. Sometimes they kill some of the protesters. They've done that. So, as long as Hamas has the ability to intimidate protesters, to essentially or effectively quash these protests, I don't see the Palestinian people rising up.
However, again, as we talked about earlier, this emerging militia may compel other Palestinians to do something similar, all right? And that would be a big problem for Hamas. Right now, today, I don't think the civilians could rise up against Hamas, but maybe in a month or two, I think it's possible.
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