A Ukrainian plan codenamed M&Ms envisioned launching up to 1,000 AI-assisted drones in a single night against Moscow and nearby airports to make the capital's civilian airspace unusable for extended periods. The concept was reported by The Atlantic, citing two sources with direct knowledge of the proposal.
Decision and risks
President Volodymyr Zelenszkij ultimately declined to authorize the strike. The main reason was concern over civilian harm: the intended targets were civilian airports where passengers, ground staff and commercial aircraft operate, so a drone strike risked killing civilians or hitting airliners. Some developers also expressed doubts to the reporting outlet about the reliability of autonomous systems when the AI would have to make final target-identification decisions without human confirmation.
Why target airports?
The operation was not meant to physically paralyze all of Moscow but to render its airspace unusable for civil aviation over a longer period. That disruption would have had wider economic and political effects: the remaining international flights to Moscow provide important links for Russia's business and political elite via hubs such as Istanbul or Dubai. The plan's architects intended to pressure those connections.
Scale and precedents
According to The Atlantic’s sources, by mid-spring the program had advanced enough to receive its own codename, M&Ms, referencing the large numbers of small, similar drones planned for use. One source estimated that overnights in the Moscow area might require as many as 1,000 drones to overload air defenses and repeatedly force authorities to close airspace.
There have been smaller-scale precedents: Russian civil aviation authorities reported that last summer one month saw 114 temporary airport closures across Russia, typically citing Ukrainian drone threats, and the four main Moscow airports were affected by closures at least 17 times during that period. In the first quarter of this year the Russian travel agencies association reported more than 290 similar incidents countrywide. The M&Ms idea differed in aiming for sustained incapacitation rather than intermittent hours-long disruptions.
What technology underpinned the idea?
A key element was that Ukraine was developing drones capable of executing parts of their flights without continuous human control. Mihajlo Fedorov, described in the reporting as the then defense minister, organized a dedicated team of Ukrainian programmers to develop an AI-based control system, and according to the sources they obtained funding from European partners to scale up production.
Traditional attack drones are vulnerable because they rely on a communications link between operator and vehicle; Russian electronic warfare systems can sever that link, causing drones to lose control. The Ukrainian design attempted to mitigate that weakness: a drone’s onboard computer would compare its camera images to pre-stored visual data and perform map-based image matching, allowing it to navigate autonomously over some segments without external control. That reduces the effectiveness of jamming, and if individual operators do not need to shepherd each drone continuously, the same personnel can launch many more aircraft simultaneously — the rationale behind massing large numbers of drones.
Consequences and ethical concerns
Militarily, such capabilities would present a new challenge to Russian air defenses and electronic warfare. Civilians face the inverse risk: autonomous target-identification increases the chance that no human operator is available to abort a mistaken attack, heightening the potential for accidental civilian casualties.
Reporters also say planners discussed warning airlines in advance so carriers could move aircraft out before strikes; that measure would not eliminate the underlying civilian danger.
Outcome
The Moscow-airport operation was not carried out; Zelenszkij withheld approval. A Ukrainian official speaking anonymously to The Atlantic later denied the existence of the autonomous drone-swarm plan itself while acknowledging that previous Ukrainian drone attacks have caused temporary airport closures in Russia.
The broader question now is whether Ukrainian developers have indeed acquired the technical know-how to build drones that can continue to an assigned target and identify it despite electronic jamming, and do so in devices that are manufacturable at scale. If they have, Kyiv may hold a capability that reshapes aspects of the drone war — while also increasing the risk to civilians if such systems are deployed.
