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epolanski 17 days ago [-]
Both this event as well as the Iranian campaign expose the low stock piles that most NATO countries are facing.
But it's also exposing the effectiveness of asymmetric warfare. A single patriot missile, a single one, costs around $ 4 million, and its the only weapon that may intercept missiles that cost 1.5 up to 40 times less.
Even when taking the major Russian ballistic missiles like the Kh101, the Iskander and Kalibr the economics are better for the Russians between 4 and 1.5 ratio.
Moreover NATO has no weapon that can intercept the Iskanders which have had so far a 90% effectiveness. Good thing that Russia cannot mass produce them.
But here's the most interesting part: what you launch to intercept is not based on the cost of what's attacking you, but on the potential damage of not intercepting it.
If a 50k Shahed drone is on course to hit your command center or expensive aircraft you may still have to launch a Patriot to intercept it, you can't risk your high command being eliminated because the attacking weapon was cheap.
greedo 17 days ago [-]
PAC-3 MSE can take down Iskanders. Not a very favorable exchange rate when you fire 2-3 per Iskander, but still doable.
If NATO was fighting Russia, launch aircraft (and airbases) would be prime targets. Ukraine fights the way it does because of very limited funds and resources.
epolanski 16 days ago [-]
Not really, interception success rate fell from 37% to 7% as Iskanders got upgraded.
greedo 16 days ago [-]
Ukraine had to become extremely parsimonious with their Patriot use as supplied dwindled to a fraction. In many cases Ukraine simply chose not to engage unless the Kinzal/Iskanders were optimally detected and attacking a significant target.
And the upgrades really weren't much except adding decoys that had always been an option with Iskander.
Now that worldwide inventories of PAC3-MSE are almost non-existent, Russia will push its MIRBM attacks over the next year or more. Ukraine really doesn't have many options other than to continuing their drone offensive against deep targets in Russia.
tim333 16 days ago [-]
Software upgrades too - just make them fly a somewhat random path.
greedo 16 days ago [-]
Ballistic missiles have limited maneuverability, and what little they do is not very significant for a system like Patriot PAC3-MSE.
Ukraine deal with the "50k Shahed drone is on course to hit your command center" stuff by having a lot of cheaper interceptors to take them out - some drones, some cheaper SAMs, some aircraft.
It was a bit of a mistake of the US not to use that stuff for Iran which the Ukrainians would have been delighted to supply.
consumer451 17 days ago [-]
> If a 50k Shahed drone is on course to hit your command center or expensive aircraft…
I used to think like this as well, then I realized “how much do I value an apartment building full of people?” - which are often Russia’s targets.
epolanski 17 days ago [-]
Those are more likely to be misses than deliberate attacks. There's no value in striking apartment blocks void of military equipments.
You don't spend money to do so if you can hit more precious military or logistic or energy infrastructure.
consumer451 17 days ago [-]
There are way too many residential buildings hit for it to be an accident, all the time.
It’s a part of Moscow’s strategy to weaken civilian resolve. They did the same thing in Chechnya.
epolanski 16 days ago [-]
That's speculation.
Let alone the fact that you can weaken civilian resolve better by hitting logistical hubs and energy infrastructure.
consumer451 16 days ago [-]
In any case, if you are watching the invader launch Shaheds into your country, and know that many will hit buildings full of people, that has to be factored in as well. Even if it cost $1M to take down a $25k Shahed, but it saved a life/lives, I could see a decision maker still doing that. I am certainly glad that I am not in the position to make such a decision.
Of course, unless you have 40x the budget of the enemy forever, it's not sustainable. Also, how fast can you produce your $1M missile, vs. the enemy's $25k Shahed?
I have been arguing that Shahed-style (cheap/easy to build/very long-range) cruise missiles completely changed the nature of warfare, for years now. A saturation attack like that is currently possible for a non-peer to pull off, and is currently not fully defendable.
US and other military procurement folks have been asleep at the wheel on this for what, 4 years now? The proof is what Iran was able to do. How did not they see this coming? This should be a huge public scandal.
amelius 17 days ago [-]
If defensive weapons don't work because too expensive, then the only way out seems to be M.A.D. which Ukraine can only attain if they join NATO.
mrec 17 days ago [-]
Not the only way. Sending drones against Russia's oil industry and logistics centres is having a pretty spectacular effect too, and Russia's having no luck defending against those either.
amelius 17 days ago [-]
It's a numbers game and I don't know if the numbers are in favor of Ukraine anymore, given this lack of defense weapons.
selivanovp 17 days ago [-]
Numbers have never been in Ukraine's favor. With provided funds and tech by EU and US to mass produce long range weapons Ukraine managed to shorten the gap somewhat, but they're still losing, and they're a "zombie" country that is still afloat just because tens of billions are pumped into their economy and military every year.
tim333 16 days ago [-]
It depends a bit how you calculate your numbers. Ukraine vs Russia, Russia wins. Democratic world that doesn't want dictators invading it vs Russia, democracy wins.
mrec 17 days ago [-]
My point is that conventional strike can provide a meaningful deterrent, even without the NATO umbrella or a domestic nuclear capability. If Putin had known in 2022 what this utterly gratuitous war would end up costing Russia, there's no way he would have gone ahead with it.
If you can't defend yourself, then it is increasingly difficult to attack.
rstuart4133 16 days ago [-]
I have no idea what a drone factory is, but my mental image is a building with drone parts on one side, people assembling with glue, screwdrivers and soldering irons in the middle, and finished drones in boxes at the far end. It that building is destroyed by a missile you've lost a few drones and a building. No people were hurt, so just move to a new building.
The images out of Russia are a little different. Billions of dollars of plant and equipment blown up, hundreds of ships disabled, entire Wildberry warehouses covering acres going up in smoke. It doesn't seem to be in the same ballpark as a few days outage while you move stock and employees to a new location.
Maybe I'm missing something.
mrec 16 days ago [-]
You seem to be only applying this observation to one side, though. Russian arms manufacturing has come under attack too.
16 days ago [-]
tim333 16 days ago [-]
You don't have to go to MAD, just retaliate on a similar level. Ukraine should have ballistics that can hit Moscow soon. There's also hitting the launchers and missile factories though I'm not sure Ukr has the ability to do so.
greedo 16 days ago [-]
KH101 is a cruise missile, not ballistic.
EA-3167 17 days ago [-]
All of this is predicated on the reality that 70%+ of Americans don't want to be in this war, none of our allies want any part of it either, and the person who started it is a coward who expected to get an easy win. Now we're stuck with said coward unwilling to take the loss and make a deal, but also unwilling to escalate and takes greater risks to use weapons like JDAM's that are in sufficient stock to level whole countries from the air.
What we're seeing here isn't some great asymmetry, it's disgusting failures of leadership both when starting a war nobody wanted, and failing to end it before wasting billions in exquisite kit that was designed to open up near-peers to SEAD/DEAD.
jemmyw 17 days ago [-]
I didn't really understand your comment. More than 50% of Americans poll as supporting Ukraine, with something like an even split between too much, too little, and enough, meaning sentiment is generally weighted that the US should be involved or do more. Polling in Europe is more supportive.
But you used the word 'want'. I don't imagine anyone wants to be involved. Everyone who is wants the other side to stop fighting.
garciansmith 17 days ago [-]
EA-3167 is referring to Iran, not Ukraine.
EA-3167 17 days ago [-]
Thank you, that’s correct.
epolanski 17 days ago [-]
Not sure what does it have to do with Patriot stock piling or the effectiveness of asymmetric warfare.
burnt-resistor 17 days ago [-]
(Fedorov isn't coming back as defense chief.)
ABMs are very slow to build, expensive, and doubtfully effective red herrings. PAC-3 manufacturing: regardless of having perfect, prioritized intellectual property sharing arrangements, it would still involve competing with limited quantities from monopoly critical suppliers and delay from deep levels of supply chain parts and assemblies vendors.
It would be better to catch SSM launchers on roads, rails, and inland waterways and dismantle the supply chain that produces/imports them and their parts with long range kinetic sanctions. (Kill the archer and arrow maker, not the arrows.)
Incidentally, someone in Russia may have believed they had a surplus of S-400's because it was using them as SSMs in nightly strikes on civilians rather than as SAMs and ABMs even though its last reported manufacturing capacity was only 40 units/month.
SAM - Surface-to-Air Missile
SSM - Surface-to-Surface Missile
ABM - Anti-Ballistic Missile (Anti-SSM)
tim333 16 days ago [-]
I'm not totally convinced it's all over for Fedorov. Zelensky may not be keen but the people, parliament and funders have a say too.
burnt-resistor 8 days ago [-]
Fedorov only wants to be the big chief and is unreasonably unable to accept any other title. This sort of ego and intransigence doesn't convey wisdom, modesty, flexibly, or intelligence; it conveys entitlement and stupidity. Thus, Zelensky made a wise choice regardless that people demand their young, brash celebrity who fought the old but brave, Soviet-trained general. "It takes two to tango" and both possible sources of personality conflict were removed equally, eventually, under public pressure as a concession. Defensive war strategy and HR decisions cannot be made by direct democracy or public opinion.
Either Zelenskyy is the wartime boss and has the authority to make decisions after some input or not, but he needs to make the final say and not be second-guessed constantly. Rule by committee at the very top doesn't scale, and it doesn't scale in wartime especially. People are free to have and express opinions though, even if they maybe projecting anger from other matters towards something trivial (bikeshedding).
But it's also exposing the effectiveness of asymmetric warfare. A single patriot missile, a single one, costs around $ 4 million, and its the only weapon that may intercept missiles that cost 1.5 up to 40 times less.
Even when taking the major Russian ballistic missiles like the Kh101, the Iskander and Kalibr the economics are better for the Russians between 4 and 1.5 ratio.
Moreover NATO has no weapon that can intercept the Iskanders which have had so far a 90% effectiveness. Good thing that Russia cannot mass produce them.
But here's the most interesting part: what you launch to intercept is not based on the cost of what's attacking you, but on the potential damage of not intercepting it.
If a 50k Shahed drone is on course to hit your command center or expensive aircraft you may still have to launch a Patriot to intercept it, you can't risk your high command being eliminated because the attacking weapon was cheap.
If NATO was fighting Russia, launch aircraft (and airbases) would be prime targets. Ukraine fights the way it does because of very limited funds and resources.
And the upgrades really weren't much except adding decoys that had always been an option with Iskander.
Now that worldwide inventories of PAC3-MSE are almost non-existent, Russia will push its MIRBM attacks over the next year or more. Ukraine really doesn't have many options other than to continuing their drone offensive against deep targets in Russia.
>Russia’s Iskander-M ‘Game-Changer’ Dodges Patriot in Final Seconds, Rewriting Ukraine’s Missile-Defence War https://defencesecurityasia.com/en/russia-iskander-m-termina...
It was a bit of a mistake of the US not to use that stuff for Iran which the Ukrainians would have been delighted to supply.
I used to think like this as well, then I realized “how much do I value an apartment building full of people?” - which are often Russia’s targets.
You don't spend money to do so if you can hit more precious military or logistic or energy infrastructure.
It’s a part of Moscow’s strategy to weaken civilian resolve. They did the same thing in Chechnya.
Let alone the fact that you can weaken civilian resolve better by hitting logistical hubs and energy infrastructure.
Of course, unless you have 40x the budget of the enemy forever, it's not sustainable. Also, how fast can you produce your $1M missile, vs. the enemy's $25k Shahed?
I have been arguing that Shahed-style (cheap/easy to build/very long-range) cruise missiles completely changed the nature of warfare, for years now. A saturation attack like that is currently possible for a non-peer to pull off, and is currently not fully defendable.
US and other military procurement folks have been asleep at the wheel on this for what, 4 years now? The proof is what Iran was able to do. How did not they see this coming? This should be a huge public scandal.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/30/us-firm-drone-...
If you can't defend yourself, then it is increasingly difficult to attack.
The images out of Russia are a little different. Billions of dollars of plant and equipment blown up, hundreds of ships disabled, entire Wildberry warehouses covering acres going up in smoke. It doesn't seem to be in the same ballpark as a few days outage while you move stock and employees to a new location.
Maybe I'm missing something.
What we're seeing here isn't some great asymmetry, it's disgusting failures of leadership both when starting a war nobody wanted, and failing to end it before wasting billions in exquisite kit that was designed to open up near-peers to SEAD/DEAD.
But you used the word 'want'. I don't imagine anyone wants to be involved. Everyone who is wants the other side to stop fighting.
ABMs are very slow to build, expensive, and doubtfully effective red herrings. PAC-3 manufacturing: regardless of having perfect, prioritized intellectual property sharing arrangements, it would still involve competing with limited quantities from monopoly critical suppliers and delay from deep levels of supply chain parts and assemblies vendors.
It would be better to catch SSM launchers on roads, rails, and inland waterways and dismantle the supply chain that produces/imports them and their parts with long range kinetic sanctions. (Kill the archer and arrow maker, not the arrows.)
Incidentally, someone in Russia may have believed they had a surplus of S-400's because it was using them as SSMs in nightly strikes on civilians rather than as SAMs and ABMs even though its last reported manufacturing capacity was only 40 units/month.
SAM - Surface-to-Air Missile
SSM - Surface-to-Surface Missile
ABM - Anti-Ballistic Missile (Anti-SSM)
Either Zelenskyy is the wartime boss and has the authority to make decisions after some input or not, but he needs to make the final say and not be second-guessed constantly. Rule by committee at the very top doesn't scale, and it doesn't scale in wartime especially. People are free to have and express opinions though, even if they maybe projecting anger from other matters towards something trivial (bikeshedding).