[dlisboa]

There is an assumption here that the value in improving defenses is the same as improving offensive weapons. That is not the case in the assymetry that drones provide and Russia is the first example.

Russia has not been able to improve AA capabilities to the point where it's "safe", for any definition of the word, neither has Israel. Israel and Gulf states often tout over 90% interception rate yet it's really at the mercy of Iran to not target their most vulnerable sites. If Iran was routinely targeting desalination plants and refineries it wouldn't matter if it was 99%: one hit is all it takes. Similarly Russia cannot keep Ukraine from targeting their oil infrastructure.

Air defenses need to be 100% to prevent physical, economic and moral damage. That is an impossibility.

[lumost]

I don't see how drones don't make all conflicts into WW1. 100 Billion dollars buys about 3.3 million Shaheds assuming the manufacturing is not made more efficient. There are many questions on whether its possible to spend 100 billion dollars on Shaheds, or launch all of them. But this is more than enough to destroy any logistics and transportation infrastructure necessary for a ground invasion.

There are many many countries who can afford 100 billion dollars for stored military equipment that has a long shelf life. The US makes ~50k artillery shells a month at a cost of about 10k per shell.

[2001zhaozhao]

From my extremely uneducated point of view it seems like that is true and probably what is already happening in Ukraine. However, at some point robots might be able to take and hold ground, and maybe they can be designed to require only decentralized, automated infrastructure to operate that is hard to strike economically even with drones. At that point, may the side with the most robots win.

[khafra]

George Lucas vindicated once again.

Of course, once loitering, intelligent munitions make it too dangerous to be an economically valuable human outside of a bunker, we'll need robots running the robot factories, then we get Philip K. Dick's scenario in The Second Variety.

[andrewflnr]

I think that what makes it not WWI is that not even trenches really save you from precision munitions.

[esseph]

Trenches didn't save you from artillery then either. By far the most casualty producing weapon.

[blitzar]

> stored military equipment that has a long shelf life

Given the pace of advance and changes in strategy, high production capacity is probably more beneficial than inventory.

[LadyCailin]

Maybe, until your production facility is destroyed. Storage is an easier problem to distribute than production.

[dlisboa]

Production is not a hard problem. Iran, a heavily sanctioned country, already has drone production in other countries. That's assuming no other country would want to sell them their own drones to boost their domestic industry, like Turkiye has been doing for Ukraine.

Most of the Iranian drones are quite sophisticated for what they need to do. On a pinch they could replace many of the non-critical components for cheaper parts. They don't need composite materials if they were simply trying to outproduce. Meaning their production facilities could be much simpler than they are currently and still sustain enough output to matter.

[Cpoll]

> US makes ~50k artillery shells a month at a cost of about 10k per shell.

50000 * 10000 * 12 is 6B/year. I was surprised, but I suppose that passes the smell test for a ~1T/year defense budget.

[rdtsc]

Now imagine for the same $10k cost making a cruise missile, instead. This is close to what a Shahed is -- the estimate is $20k-$50k / unit, so close enough.

This is bonkers. Countries can now afford for the same cost * to make not a 10-20 mile range artillery shell, but a 1500 mile effective range cruise missile.

* Defense costs are "fake" to a large degree. A lot of that is really corruption with money flowing from the taxpayers to the arms manufacturers, but still if we go by the numbers...

[pyuser583]

They are fake in the sense individual items are listed as having costs that are not accurate.

But really the defense deals are very complicated, and not based around buying x number of items.

You’re making a not well-formed query. How much is a shell?

Adam Smith pointed out the first pencil costs thousands of dollars, but the second is mostly free. Same dynamic here, but multipled by a thousand.

[rdtsc]

> Adam Smith pointed out the first pencil costs thousands of dollars, but the second is mostly free. Same dynamic here, but multipled by a thousand.

The shells are already made by the 10 and 100s of thousands, Shaheds are also not a research project, so either one is in amortized serial production now.

What I meant is that a $10k shell doesn't cost that much. Russians are making the equivalent artillery shells for an _order_ of magnitude less for around $1k. A lot of defense costs are just overinflated simply because they can be. The government is spending taxpayer money, it's not really coming from the politicians' pockets. If the kickbacks are just right, they may in fact flow back into the politicians pockets.

[Maxion]

A lot of defense spending revolves around overall manufacturing capacity. Deals contain options that won't be executed unless it's war time. These options increase the cost of the deal as the manufacturer needs to keep capacity.

[fpoling]

It is vastly more complicated to find targets at 1500 miles than at 20. So drones are effective at destroying big stationary civilian infrastructure and much less at long distance strikes at military targets. Russia's inability to destroy Ukrainian aviation is a good example.

But then with solar and batteries civilian infrastructure becomes much more resilient against drone strikes.

[lumost]

At a certain distance, I'd contend all infrastructure is big and static. Our energy comes from large facilities, without these facilities continent scale infrastructure will grind to a halt at 1500 miles. Rail, power lines, warehouses, factories and trucks are all relatively static. It's not unreasonable to expend a Shahed type drone on a simple semi-truck parked overnight from nearly a continent away. There are only 3 million semi-trucks in the entire US, and I'd be shocked if the country could run without them.

[fpoling]

Ukraine tried to come up with drones that can fly over 1000 miles. But drones the size of Shaheds just cannot fly that distance without significantly reducing the warhead. To attack things beyond that range Ukraine have used essentially Cessna. Which is much more expensive and visible on radars.

Instead Ukraine came up with an idea of mass producing extremely simple cruise missiles that could fly 2000 miles and deliver up to a ton of explosives with a cost of 100K and make 1000 of them per month. But then it seems Russia was able to discover the production sites and destroy them.

[rdtsc]

> It is vastly more complicated to find targets at 1500 miles than at 20.

It's true but they are so cheap that launching a whole bunch and/or improving them incrementally is possible. Yeah they are for stationary targets mostly, for sure. And of course their sounds and relatively low speed does make them somewhat easier to shoot down with short range AA guns and can have automated acoustic early warning system (it's like a flying lawnmower or chainsaw).

[ghywertelling]

https://youtube.com/shorts/JIXdkKBFw-4

Radars can be fooled with this simple physics hack called Lunenberg Lens

[tokai]

No the Russians inability is because they are bad at it. Extremely bad. Ukraine destroy military targets at extreme range with drone all the time

[dgoldstein0]

1500 mile range is questionable in practice I've read - drones require remote control for maximal value and that's a capability that may not extend nearly as far as the paper range of the drones

[rdtsc]

They can’t be used for moving targets but for infrastructure they can be effective. At the cost of only a few artillery shells send 10 and maybe 3 will hit.

Another advantage is because of simplicity and cost it allows quick iteration and adaptability. Use honeycomb patterns to lower radar signatures, use specialized antijamming gps/glonass antennas. Engine is too slow? Add a small turbojet. Color too light and visible at night? Paint it gray, etc. That can happen at the speed of weeks and months. Try doing that with Tomahawks, artillery pieces or HIMARS.

[esseph]

> The US makes ~50k artillery shells a month at a cost of about 10k per shell.

Closer to $3000. Pre-2022 it was around $800/shell for standard 155mm HE.

[icegreentea2]

Air defenses do not need to be 100% effective to be... effective.

Russia cannot keep Ukraine from targeting their oil infrastructure, yet here Russia is, still fighting on. Ukraine cannot prevent Russia from targeting their energy infrastructure or apartment buildings, yet here they are, still fighting on.

If we're talking about strategic/civil air defense, then you must figure out what's tolerable to your population (and how to increase and maintain that tolerance), and then figure out all the means to reduce the incoming attacks to below that tolerance. That must include the full spectrum of offensive, counter offensive, defensive, and informational options.

[energy123]

In the Ukraine-Russia war, air defense is used to deny air superiority to the enemy. Just a few days ago, Ukraine blew up Russia's helicopters in the air with drones. It's not the successful hits that matter, it's the capabilities that you deny by posing that credible threat.

[bojan]

The difference being, Ukraine has no choice but to fight on.

[yosefk]

What produces this Iranian "mercy" at a time when Iran is extensively bombed, if not a combination of defensive and offensive capabilities providing escalation dominance?

[seer]

MAD

If they strike desalination plants, Israel/us can do the same … really mass casualty event could follow.

And they might, at some point the Iranian gov might feel desperate enough to be like “fuck it, we have nothing to lose” … Dubai could end up with a lot more graves.

Almost all of their water comes from these plants, and humans can’t survive without water for more than 3 days …

There are reserves/stores sure, but how long will they last, and which part of the population do they cover? In a week you could have thousands of civilians dead on both sides.

So MAD keeps things in check.

I think this is whaly Iran has invested so much into rockets - they are very ineffective at providing decisive military victory by themselves, but without them, Iran will be at Israel’s mercy, and they have proven to not possess that in great amounts lately

[watwut]

Israel already attacked desalination plants. Iran already responded by doing the same to the surrounding countries.

[zardo]

It's been tit-for-tat though.

[afdbcreid]

There are two reasons this logic is incorrect.

1. It's not Iran's mercy, but deterrence. If Iran was to target critical infrastructure constantly, Israel and the U.S. would bomb its much more easily. Both sides currently avoid doing that for the same reason.

2. Targeting the same places again and again will mean they cannot target other places, like cities, where even a miss has greater impact. So the economy of munitions make them prefer to not do that.

[fakedang]

Uh, Israel and USA are already bombing core infra in Iran. Iran is retaliating against Israel as your point 2 states, and against the Gulf countries on their critical monetary assets - because that's where it hurts either party. Targeting civilian infra in Israel means Israel's image of infallibility is shattered, while targeting monetary assets in Gulf countries (like gas fields, refineries, financial districts, etc) means that they're intent on applying pressure to the Gulf countries. They can't do the former to the latter because of the extremely large (90%+) expat populations, and they can't do the latter to the former because Israel's sensitive assets were presumably prepared for the long fight, so are likely to be heavily guarded.

[infinitewars]

It doesn't have to work, when the military industrial complex benefits either way.

The U.S. is on a path to spending trillions of dollars to putting missile defense (and offense) systems in space with the Golden Dome.

[breppp]

> interception rate yet it's really at the mercy of Iran to not target their most vulnerable sites

And what this site and you don't account for, is Iranian rather low missile accuracy.

If Israel was at the mercy of Iranian attacks, Iran could have simply struck Israeli airbases to the point they cannot be used, and then stop any Israeli attacks on its territory.

It's pretty obvious they don't have the capabilities of doing that

[cheney_2004]

Iran has successfully targeted countless bases around the Middle East, a lot of this news simply isn’t being covered. Most of these strikes are on static assets like radar, depots, and other structures. If you are thinking about the F35s, strikes that hit runways are repaired in a matter of hours. As for the F35s themselves, they are constantly on the move or simply kept in the air. Service and storage is done on remote bases outside of the target zone. This has been standard practice since military aircraft has been introduced.

[breppp]

That's certainly what Iranian propaganda is saying, as if everybody is censoring their great successes. Fact is there is no meaningful reduction in Israeli attacks, while Iranian launching ability had greatly suffered. So these air bases are probably not being hit. Apart from it in the era of OSINT satellite imagery, it is no issue to publicize such damage, I don't know of any such imagery

Regarding the gulf, there the Iranians are having better success as at those ranges intercepting drones is harder and due to the general military ineffectiveness of the gulf nations

[anonymous_user9]

> Apart from it in the era of OSINT satellite imagery, it is no issue to publicize such damage, I don't know of any such imagery

Not sure about other providers, but Planet Labs has applied a 14-day delay to satellite images of the middle east.

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/satellite...

[breppp]

There are chinese and russian satellite imagery, but we can also wait two weeks for western sources

[tmnvix]

I haven't seen imagery of damage to Israeli airbases, but plenty of imagery showing damage to US military bases. e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0cIOMVBSbU . Worth keeping in mind that in the case of Israel, censorship is very effective.

From the Iranian perspective, the overall strategy seems to have been:

1. Deplete intercepter stock and probe US/Israeli defences using large amounts of older less accurate missile stock and waves of drones.

2. Target radar and early warning systems.

3. After 'blinding', make further use of more vulnerable but cheaper and more accurate drones to target specific infrastructure.

Given this approach it makes total sense to see their 'rate of fire' reduced by 90%. This is not necessarily an indication of reduced ability to launch attacks - their attacks are now more effective. They have demonstrated that each time the US and Israel escalate they successfully respond almost immediately. Talk of their capabilities being wiped out is demonstrably nonsense.

Ted Postol makes much the same points. He also claims to be surprised by the accuracy of recent missiles launched by Iran and assumes that his earlier analysis underestimated this because it was done based on the older stock Iran was using.

It seems pretty clear to me that Israel and the US are on the back foot here. Defences are inadequate. Economic pressure is building. Iran still has plenty of options to increase pressure (e.g. Houthi involvement, further infrastructure targeting, additional constrictions on the strait of Hormuz). By comparison US ability to increase pressure now seems limited to threatening major war crimes (wiping out Iran's power grid and putting the country into blackout). Not to say many of Iran's actions haven't also been war crimes.

How much more damage can Iran accept? Nobody is about to be voted out of power there so I would think quite a bit (as unpleasant as that is for the millions of innocent people caught up in this madness). I think the truth of all of this is that the US and Israel have no way to wipe out Iran's missile and drone capabilities. Postol even suggests nukes wouldn't even accomplish that. So now what? Taco or push further for Iranian political unrest or division.

My feeling is that this is going to get a lot worse for everyone involved.

[stickfigure]

I suspect you're giving the Iranian response too much foresight and credit here. With the decapitation strike, it's unlikely that a coherent plan of "launch all the cheap stuff first" remained intact. The upside of decentralized control is that it's hard to shut down; the downside is that it's hard to do exactly this kind of coordination.

My guess (which seems to be borne out by the numbers, at least as gets reported) is that the bulk of the IRGC's missile capability has been launched already. Certainly not all, but it will continue to diminish over time rather than increase. Still, that doesn't mean the remaining stock isn't incredibly dangerous.

> My feeling is that this is going to get a lot worse for everyone involved.

There I agree.

[andrewflnr]

If Iran was having great success with their attacks, they wouldn't therefore tail off the intensity if they could help it. They would just start scoring more hits with the same, presumably maximum, rate of fire.

I think the obvious answer is the correct one here, that Iran's launch capacity has been degraded. That's not to say it will ever go to zero, so a lot of your other points still have some merit.

[watwut]

> f Iran was having great success with their attacks, they wouldn't therefore tail off the intensity if they could help it.

They would for pragmatical reasons - they do not want to spend more ammunition then necessary. They very clearly do eye for eye thing - when something is attacked inside their territory, they attack similar thing outside.

They are not running the "operation epic fury to prove we are manly men" thing. They are running the "operation regime survives in a long term" thing.

[fc417fc802]

That assumes they want to escalate. So far at least their official statements have been clear about tit-for-tat.

It could also backfire spectacularly. If a bunch of civilians suddenly get killed or other war crimes committed unilaterally by them (such as targeting energy infrastructure) their adversaries could gain political support for the current effort. Whereas gradually forcing all interceptors to be expended is a massively expensive slow bleed and gives the opponent little to nothing to spin in their favor.

[bigfatkitten]

One of the things Iran figured out fairly quickly about Israel is that reducing their rate of fire is more effective for wearing down the population, and eroding political support for the war.

The longer Iran can keep the air raid sirens blaring in Israel, the better.

[breppp]

> comparison US ability to increase pressure now seems limited to threatening major war crimes (wiping out Iran's power grid and putting the country into blackout). Not to say many of Iran's actions haven't also been war crimes.

US can destroy the entire Iranian economy that rests on oil. The only thing that stopping them right now seems like a fantasy by Trump that post-war Iran will become a Venezuela. Iran could then damage the Gulf oil facilities but does not have the same capabilities to completely destroy the facilities, due to problems getting the ammunitions to the targets

> I think the truth of all of this is that the US and Israel have no way to wipe out Iran's missile and drone capabilities

Everyday Israel is bombing the entire supply chain for drones and ballistic missiles in Iran. That means the companies making the explosives, optics, fins, stabilizers, engines, etc. The amount of destruction will greatly set back the Iranian ability to replenish their stockpiles and should also affect the war in Ukraine.

Iranian ballistic missile capability, at least the long range one is limited by its amount of launchers, and these are also hunted rather effectively.

I wouldn't underestimate complete air superiority, as the ability of the US and Israel to cause damage to Iran is far greater than otherwise, and Iran entire economy is concentrated on a very small number of targets

[esseph]

> Iranian ballistic missile capability, at least the long range one is limited by its amount of launchers, and these are also hunted rather effectively.

The island tunnels holding many of these are problematic, which is why we are deploying troops to go tunnel hunting on the islands in the Straight.

[dlisboa]

You're making the same argument I am. If Iran had a small increase in accuracy they could hit targets that'd disable a lot of Israel military and civilian infrastructure. A lot of stuff is getting through. To counter that Israel has to achieve a perfect interception record. The balance is throughly on the side of offensive drone/missile warfare.

[breppp]

I don't think we are arguing the same thing. I am arguing that even without any air defense, Iran would have difficulty hitting its targets in Israel with ballistic missiles due to low accuracy. When adding interception rates they have a real problem in attacking strategic facilities, air bases is a good example, which would be much more important than desalination plants.

You can then see that they shifted to completely attacking large cities, usually with cluster bomblets. The reason is when you are bombing a large area, aim is less of an issue, similar to WW2 carpet bombing

Your post alludes to drones, these do not reach Israel (from Iran) at all and are all intercepted

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Shahed drones have a maximum range of 25000 km [bbc_1]. The distance from e.g. Isfahan to Tel-Aviv is ~1592 km [google]. Shaheds can reach Israrel from Iran.

As to them all being intercepted, in the 12-day war that seemed to be the plan, i.e. force Israel to waste interceptors on cheap drones [bbc_2]. That seems to have changed in the current conflict.

_______________

[bbc_1] With a maximum range of 2,500km it could fly from Tehran to Athens.

[bbc_2] When Iran attacked Israel with hundreds of drones in 2024, the UK was reported to have used RAF fighter jets to shoot some down with missiles that are estimated to cost around £200,000 each.

Both exceprts from:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-b3a272f0-3e10-4f95-...

[google] https://www.google.co.uk/maps/dir/Isfahan,+Isfahan+Province,...

[breppp]

> As to them all being intercepted, in the 12-day war that seemed to be the plan

That's doubtful, these are different interceptors than the ballistic missile interceptors (AA missiles). That doesn't make sense as a strategy if they cannot hit any targets

[gnabgib]

You need an edit on your first range (typo). 25Mm is amazing, nowhere is too far away (except the moon).

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Well spotted, my bad, too late now.

[WalterBright]

During WW2, the British used Spitfires to shoot down V1s. The V1s, pushed by a simple pulse jet, I presume are much faster than the drones. So some WW2 aircraft could be re-armed and used to shoot them down cheaply.

The British also employed a belt of radar-guided flak guns to shoot them down.

I don't hear any comparisons with the V1s, so my idea must be stupid, but I'm not seeing the flaw in it.

[myrmidon]

I think a big difference is that asymmetry has grown a lot: The modern drone is much cheaper than any manned aircraft (while V1/V2 needed comparable or greater industrial input compared to fighter planes).

If you want to scramble manned fighters (even WW2-style ones!) every time cheap drones are launched then the pure material cost per intercept might be acceptable (no guarantee here: you need more fuel and your ammunition is potentially more expensive than the drones payload, too), but the pilot wage/training costs alone ruins your entire balance as soon as there is any risk of losing the interceptors (either from human error/crashes or the drone operator being sneaky).

Big problem with stationary AA is probably coverage (need too many sites) and flak artillery is not gonna work out like in the past because the drones can fly much lower and ruin your range that way.

[jounker]

A v1 was 30 feet long with a 20 foot wing span, and had no evasive capabilities.

[corimaith]

That's only if you continue to assume vulnerable and unfortified critical infrastructure. Did you know the majority of damage from a nuke is more from the aftermath of the blast in fires and crumbling infrastructure than the blast itself. And that can be adequately prepared for one if one needs to.

[rcxdude]

This is part of the logic behind strategic bombing, and there's a lot of writing on how it doesn't win wars and can sometimes be counterproductive: firstly it's harder to hit and damage infrastructure than you might think (especially once your target stars fortifying at all), secondly it can be easier and faster to repair critical infrastructure than you might think, thirdly it can easily get way more expensive than you might think, and lastly it doesn't demotivate people like you might think, in fact it tends to will people to fight harder, just because spite is such a motivating force.