section_path: Preparation
section_name: Preparation
paragraph_text: Preparation
  
  Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that it took 18 months and 9 days from the start of planning to execution of the operation. American and Ukrainian sources say that the United States was not informed in advance about the attacks. According to Ukrainian sources, the plan for the "extremely complex" operation was implemented by the SBU head Vasyl Malyuk and his staff, and progress was personally supervised by Zelenskyy.
  
  The drones were simple Ukrainian-made Osa ("Wasp") quadcopters, each with a payload of just over 7 pounds (3.2 kg). In Russia approximately 36 were transferred into compartments below the roofs of each of several wooden containers built to resemble regular mobile wooden cabins, which are routinely transported on flatbed trucks with the roofs uncovered. The Wall Street Journal later reported that more than 100 quadcopters had been smuggled in parts into and assembled in Russia.
  
  The SBU published photos showing the drones being hidden under the cabin roofs inside a warehouse, later known to have been in Chelyabinsk, about 150 km north of the Russia–Kazakhstan border. The wooden sheds were loaded onto trucks, and unsuspecting Russian drivers were hired to drive each truck across Russia towards its target destination. Once the trucks were nearing their targets each driver received a phone call telling them where to stop. As soon as the truck stopped (or just before) the roof was raised by remote control and the drones took off. The drones from one of the trucks were attacked by shocked onlookers with stones and small arms fire, the only direct action taken against them.
  
  Reuters has found the location where one truck stopped along the P-255 highway 7 km from the Belaya airbase. Citing the Baza news service, Reuters reported that Russian authorities suspect a 37-year-old Ukrainian national who had moved to Chelyabinsk and opened a freight business there in October 2024, and in December acquired several trucks, from which the drones were eventually launched.
  
  The drones were guided to their targets remotely, using the open source software ArduPilot, which supports navigation via dead reckoning. Zelenskyy said that each drone had its own pilot to launch and command it remotely. One analyst explained that the drones were operated via dead reckoning without the need for satellite navigation, making them impervious to jamming of such navigation signals. The analyst suggested that the drones were using SIM cards for digital communication and position information over local mobile telephone networks, allowing control by a pilot far away and supporting high-resolution video.
  
  However, to counteract the time delay inevitable in communication over long distances, and cope with temporary loss of the control signal, the devices supported artificial intelligence (AI) to be used in these cases, using the latest version of technology known for many years.
  
  The AI had to be trained in preparation for the operation to teach it to correctly identify its target aircraft and to guide the drone to its vulnerable spots. The Tu-22M3s in the Poltava Museum of Long-Range and Strategic Aviation were used for target recognition training. Ukrainian sources said that the agents who prepared the operation on Russian territory were evacuated before the attacks began.