While vast majority is being shot down it’s not sustainable in the current format because air-defense rockets have to be wasted in large quantities on these cheap Iranian drones, severely depleting their existing arsenal. Hopefully US and partners doing everything at the moment to develop a cost efficient way to totally neutralize these because as I predicted when this news only started to find its legs it might be a game changer, unfortunately. Some suggestions that zenith artillery systems are needed for Ukraine to shot these downs optimally.They are relatively small (compared to airplanes) and they fly slow, low and in swarms.
At a complete guess, Ukraine is facing 3 types of problems wrt to air-defence: Firstly, simply not enough of it. Secondly, many separate systems which are not (and cannot be) integrated in ways of sharing data (S-300, Pantsir, Gepards, IRIS-T... did they get NASAMS?). Thirdly, a difficulty in finding cost effective ways of engaging these swarms effectively. Explosions are heard this morning again in Kiev and Dnipro..
For example Shahed drones cost, according to military researchers, an estimated $20k a pop. So a mini-swarm of five costs $100k. Meanwhile an AMRAAM costs a cool $1m and an IRIS-T about $500k. Do you fire them at Shaheds? Or do you save them for the Sukhois, MiGs and Cruise missiles?
And to be fair the vast majority of them are shot down, according to UA anyway....
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