[owenmarshall]

Two more sobering axes to introduce: cost and manufacturing capability.

Numbers are hard to find for obvious security reasons, but using the numbers most optimistic to the defender[0] suggests an adversary using a Fatah type hypersonic is spending 1/3rd the cost of an Arrow interceptor, and is launching missiles that are produced at a much faster rate. Interception is deeply asymmetric in favor of the attacker.

[0] https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-82314...

[jonaslanglotz]

Calling a Fattah hypersonic is a misleading claim. It is simply a ballistic missile that reaches hypersonic speeds, which is different from a true hypersonic weapon in its flight path and ability to maneuver. This distinction is important because it makes it significantly easier to shoot down than something like a hypersonic glide vehicle or hypersonic cruise missile.

But I agree with your point that it does remain difficult to intercept and poses the shot-exchange problem.

[shdudns]

But they can steer, videos show that.

This really shouldn't surprise anyone. Iran graduates as many engineers as the US (70% women), but few of them are working on front-end A/B optimization of some boutique dating site.

And, having taken grad classes with folks graduated from Iranian universities, their training is excellent. The Persian kids were always at the top of their class.

EDIT: for the record the class I merely audited was graduate level (rational) mechanics - the class par excellence if you're going to build a hypersonic.

Some observations:

Half the class was Chinese, the academically better half was Persian.

I was the only Westerner (albeit also foreigner)

The girls were wearing veils.

According to the professor, the best mecanist (?) of the 20th century, Clifford Truesdelle, was an American

The Professor was Iranian.

[nerfbatplz]

There's videos from Israel showing Iranian missiles performing AD evading maneuvers that western media was saying was impossible a few months ago.

[Gravityloss]

Depends on the school. https://www.reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDefense/comments/1at8gj4...

[hedora]

Currently, we're using $1M interceptors to take out $30K drones. This asymmetry is here to stay.

The end game probably involves < $1000 autonomous drones that target IR or RF and drop something like hand grenades. On the defense side, there would similarly-priced interceptors with bolas, backed up with sharp-shooters for important targets.

At that point, it turns into a logistics problem that's much easier for the attacker than the defender. Iran's already demonstrated that one successful drone can do $100B-1T in damages, so a hit rate of 0.1% means a 1:100K cost:damage ratio.

[owenmarshall]

This leans towards my belief that the US is fundamentally fighting last century's war against adversaries that have _massively_ evolved.

Look at the Ukranians: they are currently fielding an entire suite of counter-drone tech: fast pursuit systems to hit Russian drones on launch, cheap FPV drones for last-mile intercept, integrated radar/acoustic monitoring to target and respond to launches... and of course, the Russians are responding with IR floodlights and air to air launchers on their drones, or even just launching a bunch of cheap foam decoy Gerbera's in the middle of their Shahed's to soak up intercepts. Meanwhile, the front lines are basically static -- any infantry from either side that tries to go into the kill box gets picked off by loitering drones.

And the best the US can field today is "$1mm per Patriot" or "cover a tiny area with Land Phalanx (which also costs something like $4k/second burst)".

[jandrewrogers]

This betrays your ignorance of drone defense tech.

The US had APKWS (anti-drone guided missiles) operational in the 2010s and these have been widely deployed. They are effective and cost less than a Shahed. These are just mods of an existing dirt-cheap rocket for which the US has an effectively unlimited supply. The Europeans have similar systems under development.

The US has deployed high-power anti-drone laser systems for a few years now with several operational kills. These are still new but are expected to replace CIWS. It can kill a drone for the cost of a Starbucks coffee and has a virtually unlimited magazine.

US pioneered military drones and defenses decades before the Ukraine/Russia war. There are many operational lessons to be learned from that war but both sides are using drone defense tech that is considerably less sophisticated than what the US has available.

[dilyevsky]

Not to mention US is at the forefront of drone interceptor tech which are particularly useful against Shaheds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merops_(weapon)

[owenmarshall]

> The US had APKWS (anti-drone guided missiles) operational in the 2010s and these have been widely deployed

... on 4th/5th gen fighters that cost tens of thousands per flight hour[0] based on current evidence of deployment. We're still killing mosquitoes with hand grenades.

Iron Beam/the US systems are certainly interesting, but haven't been scaled up to meaningful deployments yet.

Meanwhile, those "considerably less sophisticated" systems were fielded in exercises by the Ukranians against NATO doctrine and won handily[1].

[0] https://www.defenseone.com/defense-systems/2026/03/fighter-j...

[1] https://www.wsj.com/opinion/nato-has-seen-the-future-and-is-...

[dilyevsky]

No one is using Patriots against Shaheds.

> fast pursuit systems to hit Russian drones on launch

They haven't done much of that at all...

> cheap FPV drones for last-mile intercept

Where do you think these particular drones are made? I'll give you a hint - it's pretty sunny here.

[darepublic]

Isn't Ukraine helping now with the anti missile/drone defense?

[pc86]

What Iranian drone did a trillion dollars in damages?

I'm not saying the general thrust of your argument is wrong, quite the opposite. But that's a big number for one drone.

[dlisboa]

A trillion seems large but it's not that absurd. The drone that shut down 17% of Qatar's LNG capacity is said to have caused 20 billion USD worth of annual lost revenue. They said it'll take up to 5 years to rebuild so that could be 100 billion USD in lost revenue, plus whatever it costs to do the rebuild.

A trillion dollars worth of damage seems possible if spread over some years for some countries in the Gulf where shutting down a desalination plant would cause depopulation.

[maratc]

> that could be 100 billion USD in lost revenue

that could be 100 billion USD in deferred revenue, if we assume that LNG is not going anywhere from wherever it's sitting underground, and will be simply extracted and sold later

> plus whatever it costs to do the rebuild

That is the real cost, which I would assume is nowhere near billions

[dlisboa]

> that could be 100 billion USD in deferred revenue, if we assume that LNG is not going anywhere from wherever it's sitting underground, and will be simply extracted and sold later

That's not how revenue works at all.

[maratc]

I don't think anyone should have any concern whatsoever regarding Qatar revenues vs. Qatar budgets, as they are nowhere near bankruptcy, with this setback or without. Their position by projected GDP per capita may decrease from 6th (currently) to maybe 10th place in the world, which is still better than about 180 other countries.

[logicchains]

>The drone that shut down 17% of Qatar's LNG capacity is said to have caused 20 billion USD worth of annual lost revenue.

That was a missile not a drone.

[energy123]

The best missile defense is offsense: degrading the launchers, stockpiles and defense industrial base, with cheap stand-in munitions after SEAD, leveraging air and intelligence superiority. Expensive interceptors are only a stop-gap that buys you time for the offensive degradation. Expensive stand-off munitions, likewise, are a short-term stopgap until SEAD is complete.

[hedora]

Offense doesn't work at scale.

As the cost of drones goes to zero, the expected damage you take is roughly proportional to how much you have to lose. This means larger / richer economies cannot win these sorts of wars. To see what I mean, check out this desalination plant map:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/23/iran-threat-to...

It doesn't help if your commander in chief is incompetent and your invasion strategy involves treating desalination plants as legitimate military targets.

Of course, blowing up desalination plants in the middle east don't hurt the US all that much, but blowing up industrial supply chains does. We're something like 4 days away from a global chip manufacturing industry shut down (barring some logistic miracle, since we recently sold off our strategic helium reserves).

[throwaway2037]

First, hat tip on that Guardian article that you shared. The map of desalination plants around the Persian Gulf is excellent.

My first thought looking at it: Why does Saudi Arabia have desal plants in Riyadh? It is 100s of km away from the Persian Gulf! Maybe they want some far away from the Gulf for security reasons? Else, it looks weird. I imagine that they need to pump sea (salty) water from the Gulf to Riyadh, desal it, then pump back the waste water. Quite a journey.

[energy123]

It's heavily dependent on geography. Iran is geographically "lucky" it's positioned near the Strait of Hormuz and near the oil facilities of multiple Gulf states, allowing it to exert extreme asymmetric pressure through a small amount of drones etc. Most states can't replicate that luck. Good luck to South Africa if they ever decide to wage a similar war. Strategic depth also largely nullifies the role of one-way attack drones in combat, but it doesn't nullify the role of fighters and bombers who can exploit that range. I'm not discounting drones, they're highly important in many geographies, as Ukraine is showing, but I don't buy into this conventional wisdom online that they're the pinnacle in every situation.

[dlisboa]

Israel is similiarly lucky that it is surrounded by neighbors with US bases that can intercept missiles and drones before they get to it. All of its more competent enemies are very far away. In a different scenario there'd be no motivation for a country like Iraq or Jordan to help.

They can afford to try to destroy Iran's offensive capabilities because in-between countries allow their airspace to be used.

Wars are usually between neighbors. If a neighbor has a huge stockpile of drones they can launch a first salvo that'll overwhelm whatever defensive capabilities the other country has before they even get to the point of destroying launchers/manufacturing.

Threats of massive drones strikes are the closest deterrent a country can get to nuclear weapons without developing nuclear weapons. If Iran had 5 million drones instead of 50 thousand this war wouldn't even be happening.

[throwaway2037]

    > In a different scenario there'd be no motivation for a country like Iraq or Jordan to help.

While unprovable, I think the sentiment is too strong for Jordan. They have pretty good relations with Israel, and have been using their own fighter jets to down some drones from Iran. If anything, it is good practice for their airforce.

[hedora]

Russia is already shipping containers full of Iranian drones to the Ukrainian front. It doesn't take much imagination to see how geographic location is going to matter less and less as technology improves.

[konart]

Russia haven't used iranian produces drone n two years now.

[iso1631]

It's America that's waging this war, having attacked Iran for no reason the world can see

It's somewhat similar to Russia waging a war in Ukraine, although I can see some reasons for Russia to attack Ukraine (mainly territory)

[pc86]

If "I want this land" is a legitimate reason to initiate a war then basically anything is a legitimate reason.

[iso1631]

I can see the reasons even if I don't think they're legitimate. I can see the reasons why someone steals from someone else, or rapes or kills. Those reasons aren't good enough, but most people have reasons to do something.

Why is America attacking Iran? What's the official reason? What's the actual reason? Does anybody know?

[tliltocatl]

You are confusing reason as in "why they did it" vs "why they ought to do it".

[elfly]

Ah yes, Russia, the famously territory starved country.

[iso1631]

Billionaires try very hard to increase their own wealth. Politicians try very hard to increase their own power.

[shdudns]

So what Iran did in the Gulf

Cheap drones overwhelming defenses until the billion dollar radars and airfields got hit.

Then methodically hit everything according to a plan that forces allied forces to retreat to reliable water sources.

Whatever one thinks of Iran, the way they're waging this war is a masterclass in strategy.

[littlestymaar]

And that's why nuclear deterrence is so key: the enemy can never be sure to destroy everything before being hit once.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine really reminded everyone that nuclear deterrence is a nice thing to have for you security, and I suspect the Israelo-American attack on Iran is going to be the nail in the coffin of nonproliferation.

I expect countries like Brazil, Japan, South Korea or even Taiwan or Vietnam to have the bomb within ten years at this point.

And given the current war and the dramatic consequences ahead, I now think that the world would have in fact been safer had the Mullah's regime actually got the bomb instead of playing the “under the threshold deterrence” game.

[trick-or-treat]

There's a big difference between all the countries you named and Iran, the difference is jihad. You can't just let jihadists have nukes and hope they will only use them as a deterrent.

They're not just joking around when they say things like "Death to America" or "Death to Israel". They're not being hyperbolic when they say "We love death more that you love life".

They will absolutely use that bomb as soon as they have it, and it will trigger a response from the west when it happens.

[srean]

That is an opinion of some, yes.

It's the US that dismantled their democratic parliamentary system to maintain their hold on Irani oil. It's the US that shot down their domestic passenger jet with no apologies forthcoming. it's the US that foisted Saddam Hussein against them in a war where 30K Iranians perished to chemical weapons. I can understand why anyone who went through that would not like the US and its enablers much and I am not even Iranian or Muslim.

[littlestymaar]

I'm sorry but you're drowning in propaganda.

> There's a big difference between all the countries you named and Iran, the difference is jihad. You can't just let jihadists

Radical Islamism is very diverse, the Iranian regime is indeed an Islamic theocracy, but it's not jihadists, no more than Saudi Arabia or Qatar are.

> They're not being hyperbolic when they say "We love death more that you love life".

Well, the past 2 and a half years prove that it's not just hyperbolic, but complete bluff. They wouldn't have tried to appease Israel and the US after 10/7 if that was the case. They would have attacked Israel the first with all their might, including Hezbollah, like Sinwar wished they do. Instead they cowardly watched their entire proxy network being dismantled by Israel before being struck themselves. That's definitely not the behavior of someone not afraid of death.

> They will absolutely use that bomb as soon as they have it,

They wouldn't have accepted JCPOA if they wanted the bomb to use it. And they would have resumed their nuclear weapon program when Trump unilaterally left it, which they haven't.

Iran, like North Korea, is simply a corrupt authoritarian regime who wants to consolidate their power. Their bellicose rhetoric against the US or Israel is just that: rhetoric.

[maratc]

That's a false comparison. You want to compare between the actual options you have, which are either (a) firing an interceptor (or several); or (b) repairing the damage caused by a non-intercepted missile.

[owenmarshall]

Your first option comes with the major caveat that each interceptor you fire comes from a limited stockpile whose replacement rate[0] today isn't sufficient for even going 1:1, let alone accepting that multiple interceptors are required.

I'd say the real options in the near term when faced with an inbound missile is a) deciding to deplete your stockpile of interceptors with an incredibly limited replenishment rate; or b) risking a hit to a lower-value target.

Could the US go to a war economy footing and scale production? _Maybe_? I'm not entirely convinced the US can stomach the costs.

[0]: again, numbers are hard to find, but https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/news/features/2026/Lock... gives a flavor of just what defenders are up against.

[maratc]

In theory; in practice however, there's been rocket fire from Gaza towards Israel where the offence was literally a metallic tube with a bit of TNT at a cost of about $800 per rocket [0] while the defence was $100,000+ per interceptor [1]. This has been going on for years, and as far as I'm aware there was no depletion observed.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qassam_rocket [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Dome

[pc86]

I don't know the economic numbers off the top of my head but I have to imagine it's hard to find Israelis who think they're spending too much money on rocket interceptors.

[15155]

If Mexico as a nation state intentionally launched a single offensive rocket from Juarez to El Paso, we would just invade.

Interceptors are an unnecessary expense in the ways that they have been used in the past 15 years.

[wat10000]

It’s far more complicated than that. The choice is often between firing an interceptor against this missile aimed at this target, or firing that interceptor against the next missile aimed at a target you can’t yet know. Because unless your production capacity far outstrips theirs, you’re going to run out first.

[maratc]

Not if you (a) destroy their production capacity while they don't destroy yours; (b) you destroy their stockpiles while they don't destroy yours; and (c) you've found a bottleneck on their side (launchers) and destroy it while they fail to inflict the same damage on you.

[wat10000]

That's true, but feels very much like "draw the rest of the owl." And even if you can do it, you'd have to do it against any country that starts to build this capacity that you think might somebody potentially use it against you, even if they aren't currently, unless you're confident that you can destroy their launchers and stockpiles so quickly that they can't be used in any significant number. (And if the USA couldn't manage to do that to Iran....)

[pc86]

Yes, it's complicated. There's almost 1,000 generals and officers spread across the US military. They (and the tens of thousands of people directly supporting them) spend a lot of time on these things.

Sometimes "draw the rest of the owl" makes sense when you've got 20,000 people actively drawing owls all day every day.

[wat10000]

I'm generally sympathetic to the argument that there are a lot of experts doing expert things who know better about these things than some idiot sitting at his computer i.e. me.

But in this particular case, we're in the middle of a war where the owl didn't get drawn and the enemy has successfully launched thousands of drones and missiles at our forces and our allies, causing enough damage to severely disrupt the world economy.

[bluGill]

There are too many potential attackers though, and not everyone is sane. So you don't really get a choice about it. The cost of the interceptors needs to be considered in relation to the cost of what it protects. If the interceptor means an attacker doesn't kill my kids then it was worth the cost. If the interceptor keeps a multi-million dollar building around then interceptor at a million dollars is still cheap, even if the missile it takes out was only $100.

Yes you should use diplomacy to ensure war doesn't happen in the first place. However if it does: they will send cheap drones and missiles at you in large quantifies.

[ceejayoz]

> If the interceptor keeps a multi-million dollar building around then interceptor at a million dollars is still cheap, even if the missile it takes out was only $100.

Not if it means you can't intercept the next one hitting much a more valuable/critical building.

[bluGill]

That is a trade off that hopefully you never need to consider, but it is a valid concern that does come up in the real world.

[hedora]

It's not a hypothetical:

Trump started blaming Biden for the US's interceptor shortage two days into the war. Third-party military analysts say there's a high probability Iran's drone stockpile will outlast the US's first-tier interceptor stockpile.

The first-order math checks out: At the beginning of the war, we (and allies) were using 800 x $1M patriot missiles per day. The global production capacity for patriots is 600 per year, so there's no way we've have been able to maintain that cadence now that we're in week 4 of the war (the patriot program has not existed for enough decades). Now we see things like successful strikes on Israel's nuclear complex.

If the math isn't good enough, note that Trump backed down over the weekend, after Iran reiterated that they'd target civilian infrastructure if the US did so first. If we still had adequate interceptor capabilities, calling his bluff would not have worked.

[wat10000]

Unfortunately, necessity doesn’t imply possibility. It could simultaneously be true that you must build interceptors to protect yourself, and that you can’t build enough.

It only makes sense to consider the cost of what’s protected if it’s actually protected. If your million-dollar interceptor protects a multi-million-dollar building from a $100 missile, and then that building is hit by a second $100 missile, was it worth it?

That’s the math that has prevented missile defenses from being deployed on a large scale despite being technologically possible for well over half a century now, and despite the fact that a single interceptor might be saving an entire city from a nuclear warhead.

An interceptor costs at least as much as what it intercepts. Take into account miss rates and the cost of defense is a multiple of the cost of offense. Add in the fact that the attacker can concentrate an attack but the defender has to defend everywhere, and multiple warheads on a single missile, and the cost of defense multiplies further.

If defense costs 10x more than offense (a conservative estimate, I’d say) then that means you need to dedicate 10x of your economic capacity to it than your attacker does. If your attacker dedicates more than 10% of what you can put into defense, you lose. Defense can work, but it needs to be against a far weaker enemy. Thats why the most prominent example is Israel defending against neighboring non-state actors. Israel is wealthy enough, and the groups shooting at them are poor enough, that the math works out in the defender’s favor. Iran is a rather different story. And of course defending the US against the likes of Russia and China is a fever dream.

[pc86]

> If your million-dollar interceptor protects a multi-million-dollar building from a $100 missile, and then that building is hit by a second $100 missile, was it worth it?

I mean the assumption is that if the first missile hit the building, the second missile would have been fired at something else, right? Still seems worth it at face value especially if there's enough time between the two missiles that there aren't people in the building anymore.

[wat10000]

My assumption would be that the attacker builds missiles based on the defenses they want to defeat. If you have no defenses, maybe the defender builds 1,000 missiles. If you have 1,000 interceptors with 100% accuracy, then maybe the defender builds 2,000 missiles.

This is why the superpowers mostly scrapped their ICBM defenses in the 70s. The technology worked fine. It's totally doable with 1970s technology if you're willing to put nuclear warheads on the interceptors. But for every ICBM interceptor you built, the other side could build another ICBM for the same cost or less. And you need more than one interceptor per ICBM since they can fail and the each interceptor only covers a small area. Add in multiple warheads on a single missile and decoys and suddenly you might need 10x or more. So the USA gave up on the idea of covering the entire country with interceptors, deployed a few interceptors to protect some missile silos, then shut it down after less than a year. The USSR built out a system to protect Moscow and only Moscow, which is still operational today. However, the British were able to maintain the ability to defeat that system and destroy Moscow with a single submarine, all on their own, never mind what the USA would throw at it.

If you have a certain amount of stuff you can build and you're deciding what to do with that capacity, it's not at all clear that missile interceptors are a good use of that capacity even if you're protecting objects that cost orders of magnitude more than the interceptors cost. It works if you're defending against a far less capable adversary (Israel's Iron Dome against Hamas, USA's GBI system against North Korea) but not with an enemy that's even vaguely close to being a peer.

[bluGill]

That worked in 1970 because there were exactly two players who had incentive to not spend all the money so they agreed to reduce the total ICBMs instead. In the current world there are too many actors - it won't work, they can make thousands of missles. Ukraine has already proven you don't get to control when you are attacked. Thus the only option today is cost reduce defense and produce enough to intercept several thousand per day.

[wat10000]

It doesn't matter if it's the only option if it's not possible to do it.

Maybe it is possible. It does seem like it may be possible to defend against cheap drones with cheaper systems. Use lasers or good old-fashioned projectile guns instead of interceptor missiles.

For defending against proper missiles, I don't see how it's possible with any near-future tech. Guns and lasers don't work. You have to use a missile and it's going to have a cost similar to the cost of what you're shooting down. Peer enemies will be able to out-build you and many missiles will get through your defenses.

Shooting some down is better than shooting none down, but your enemy won't ignore your defensive systems. Shooting down 1,000 and having 1,000 get through is not better than shooting down 0 and having 1,000 get through. If building defenses just provokes the other side to build more offense, it's not worth it. If they're going to build the same amount of offense either way, then it might make sense to build up defenses.

Here's something to consider. The US has interceptors capable of shooting down ICBMs and with enough range to protect the whole continental US. There are currently 44 such interceptors. They cost about $75 million each. Standard procedure is to shoot four interceptors at an incoming missile to increase the likelihood of a kill, so that's about $300 million per incoming missile you want to counter. That's very much worth the cost if it prevents a nuclear warhead from reaching its target.

Russia and China together have maybe 700 ICBMs if we take a high estimate. For $210 billion, we could have enough interceptors to shoot down almost all of them. Round it up to $300 billion to account for all the infrastructure they'd need. That's a bargain compared to saving hundreds of American cities. So the question is: should we do it? So far, the American government has said "no." I agree with them, despite it being a bargain. Do you?

[david_pearce]

>However, the British were able to maintain the ability to defeat that system and destroy Moscow with a single submarine, all on their own

What are you referring to here?

[wat10000]

The missiles on the UK's nuclear missile submarines were fitted with decoys. One of the three warheads carried by each missile was replaced with a dispenser that would deploy 27 decoys. A single submarine carried 16 missiles, so it could launch 32 warheads and 400+ decoys at Moscow. The Moscow defenses had 100 interceptors, so it was pretty much guaranteed that at least one warhead would make it through.

More recently, they upgraded to newer missiles which could carry 8 warheads each, allowing them to overwhelm Moscow's defenses without decoys.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevaline

[jvanderbot]

Ah yes, but then you also have to add GDP + targetting/defense radii.

Great Britian alone has 10x the GDP of Iran. So an interceptor costing 10:1 is (at first approx) breakeven just for GB, who would have to intercept much less than the total manufacturing capability of Iran anyway.

Then you have every rich nation surrounding Iran as well. Let alone the USA who cannot be reached but throws their weight behind interceptions.

And finally "total manufacturing capability" is set to decline in any prolonged engagement with an Iran-like nation, but GB, western EU, USA, et al, are likely to only increase production if an engagement played out.

The math looks catastrophic on paper at 10:1, but I sincerely doubt that's the right analysis. An interceptor is worth what you're protecting, not what the attacking asset costs, so long as you can keep producing them.

[orwin]

> total manufacturing capability" is set to decline in any prolonged engagement with an Iran-like nation

That was what Russia thought about Ukraine. Effectively, they needed East European tanks and munitions for the first two years, but munitions production ramped up, and now they produce more per year that what they received over two years. A resource-rich country like the Iran that is effectively fight a death war (that's the controlling party belief) can keep up a very long time. The fact that the US tried to get the Kurds and the Baloch/Sistanni involved show that they are well aware that the way out is through a permanent civil war and the country fracturation. And imho, while Kurds accepting to be betrayed by the US for the third time in less than two decade won't have any real long term impact, an independent Baluchistan can easily destabilise Pakistan. Also, that would be a third country in the area in which the Hanafi jurisprudence is pushing hard towards Deobandi/Salafi, and personally I'd rather have any Shi'a school than that.

[DoctorOetker]

> And imho, while Kurds accepting to be betrayed by the US for the third time in less than two decade won't have any real long term impact, an independent Baluchistan can easily destabilise Pakistan.

Not to confuse my prediction from prescription, but what prevents all the neighboring (direct or indirect over a sea) nation states from deciding to divide Iran like Germany was during the cold war? Thats not an independent Balochistan, at some point they will want reparations for all the damage, terrorism and intimidation they have incurred from Iran...

At some point the people in Iran will have to be forced to teach their innocent children the equivalent of the Nuremberg trials: there is no excuse in order to stop thinking, just following orders is not a valid legal defense.

Every population has the moral responsibility to keep the local aspiring autocrats in check, because if they don't and external power deconstructs the regime, the onus will be on the population!

[orwin]

Saddam was paid (in chemical weapons, but not only) by the US to invade Iran, it didn't work well for them at the time, despite the MEK helping them with hidden routes and a lot of local support they don't have anymore. The current Iraki leadership isn't stable enough to do the same anyway.

Afghanistan and Pakistan are in a small war that will have some impact on Baluchistan, but official Pakistani ground troops are a no-no, because it will leave ground for the Taliban. Also India invested a lot in Baluchistan biggest port, and Pakistan threatening their investments will probably have them react (India love nothing more than helping Pakistan adversaries). Koweït is too small, Irak Kurds need to secure their autonomous region, and US promised are worth basically nothing. Azerbaijan used Iranian drones and artillery against Armenia like 2 years ago (maybe 3), and Iran apologised publicly after sending a missile to them.

All of this to say: only the US have the manpower and will for a ground invasion.

[maxglute]

Probably scale, a few million jews, arabs - qataris and emirates and saudi royalty is unlikely enough to deconstruct Iran, unlike Germany vs multiple comparably or larger sized regional peers.

Iran is 100m large country + 100s millions more shia core / axis of resistance supressed by small regional satraps empowered by outside forces. There are simply 10x more Muslims in region suppressed for decades under same framework where arc of history would would look kindly on Iran+co for destroying US influence and the greater Israeli project and look poorly upon satraps and compradors for failing their spiritual and moral duty of reclaiming the levant. The Nuremburg trials will be reserved for those who failed Islam for secular glitz and kindly on those who protected the faith. Iran simply has the size and spiritual/historic/civilization mandate to win the regional narrative and "moral" war versus gulf monarchs that choose to coexist with Israel. Gulf monarchs who are btw also definitionally autocrats whose contract to bribe populous with petro state proceeds goes away if this war drags on, of all autocrats they are the most likely to fall and least likely to normalize against autocrat regime change. This not to say Iran is "correct/moral" just they have scale and discourse legitimacy Germany didn't.

[Thaxll]

This is wrong, for example Iran have thousands of Shahed drones, they cost almost nothing to build, to intercept just one the ratio is way way higher that 1:10. A single patriot missile is in the multi millions $ range.

[jandrewrogers]

They aren't using Patriots on Shahed drones. There are much cheaper purpose-built systems for that. While not practical everywhere, helicopter gun systems have proven effective in both the Middle East and Ukraine.

APKWS is quite popular and those cost less than the drones. A single fighter jet can carry 40. The Europeans are developing equivalent systems.

While not widely deployed yet, the US has operational laser-based anti-drone systems that have been shooting down Shahed class drone for a couple years now.

Ballistic missiles are more costly to deal with but ballistic missiles also cost much more.

[jvanderbot]

No, what I said is not wrong just because there exists other things to intercept, that just changes the ratio.

You still have to consider whether it's worth it to spend a patriot missile to intercept a drone, vs letting the drone hit, say, a billion dollar radar installation or a dozen troops.

On the manufacturing side, nobody said that all drones are intercepted with patriots. You have to look at the avg cost to intercept vs the average cost to attack, and if the ratio of those avg costs (across all attack/interceptions) is, say 100:1, and the combined GDP of the defending nations vs Iran is 1000:1, then what is the problem?

There are lower cost ways to intercept already on the market and being rolled out. See for example: https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2025/09/11/uk-to-p...

This whole "cost analysis of patriot vs drone" examines the worst case scenario at a fixed point in time and ignores layered defenses, the effect of combined GDP, learning, diminishing capabilities of attackers, and improvements by defenders.

[lejalv]

But your analysis should also include what fraction of GDP diverted to arms (or what increase in gas price) is acceptable on either side.

[wat10000]

For one thing, the entire world economy is not even close to 1000x Iran’s.

[hedora]

$1M / $30 (patriot cost / drone cost) is only 33x. The US economy is about 31x larger than Iran's. So, to first order approximation, we could build enough patriots to sustainably stop their drones.

However, we haven't converted our economy to just producing Patriots. We can only produce 600 / year. Drone production rates are orders of magnitude higher than that.

As for second order effects, the interception probabilities are less than one, so in this world where we're producing a million patriots per year, tens of thousands of drones (at minimum) are hitting their targets. On top of that, the offensive drones are more easily transported + retargeted, so the patriots would need to be stationed pretty much everywhere, and their adversary chooses where the attacks actually happen.

The only winning move is not to play.

[keybored]

Sobering how asymmetric Iran’s attacks on Israel are after Israel attacked Iran.