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- Hacker News
- That's good. Time to stop this war.by mathfailure
- yeah, just pull the troops out of ukraine!by nubg
- (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)
- 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.by tim333
- 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.
by epolanski - 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.
by EA-3167 - KH101 is a cruise missile, not ballistic.by greedo
- 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.by amelius
- > 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.
by consumer451 - 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.
by tim333 - 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.
by greedo