Comment by malfist

9 hours ago

A lot of the Ukrainian drones are produced in small buildings like homes and buisness, not massive centralized factories.

Hard to take out your enemy's production capability if A) you can't find it and B) it's highly distributed.

They're assembled in small buildings, but at least some of the components require sophisticated factories. There are with all certainty weapons in orbit right now, locked on to these crucial factories, ready to fire if needed.

  • In orbit? Probably not. No country has operational satellites designed to attack ground targets. They would need to launch missiles or send drones.

    In a total war you absolutely do target factories and industry. But this is easier said than done; they tend to be deep inside enemy territory. And drones are made out of commonplace consumer electronics parts, which could be made in thousands of factories around the world.

    • > No country has operational satellites designed to attack ground targets.

      Why are you so sure of that? It would be very surprising if at least the United States and Russia didn't have orbital weapons. They've been in sending large stuff to space for decades.

      Of course they wouldn't have told you or anybody else who isn't supposed to know.

      > In a total war you absolutely do target factories and industry.

      And that's what you would do - or threaten to do - long before you start replacing your roads with tunnels as the author is suggesting.

      2 replies →

  • The sophisticated factories they need are basically just for chips. And the problem with chips is that civilian life is just as dependent on them as military armaments.

    The rest of the drone is all stuff that can be fabricated in small batches in a garage... of course bigs factories are more efficient at fabricating just about anything so to the extent that's possible it's done, but bombing all the big factories won't stop it.