Comment by softwaredoug
11 hours ago
Increased defense spending actually makes the US less, not more, safe. Everyone we're going to fight is prepared for an asymmetric, cheap war. We're vulnerable in how much they can make us spend to wage that war. A million dollar patriot missile to shoot down a cheap drone, etc.
I agree to a point.
But also look at Ukraine. They are punching well above their weight with asymmetrical tactics, but Russia is not defeated.
Drones and other autonomous, cheap weaponry changes a lot. Smaller states and non-state actors can inflict much more serious and expensive damage now more than ever.
Large weapons still matter though. If we ever were to enter an existential battle you would quickly see how big, expensive systems can still be advantageous. I am sure people will take issue with this comment but look at the relative restraint of Russia in Ukraine or the US in Iran vs, say, WWII. Modern morality prevents such scale and tactics until it does not. Then suddenly what matters are big weapons and the huge supply chains powering a war machine.
Both the US and Russia are also pivoting heavily towards drones, and they've been developing them for decades. Yes we have big, expensive weapons programs but we also have a lot of stuff ready or soon to be ready which is much, much cheaper.
> I am sure people will take issue with this comment but look at the relative restraint of Russia in Ukraine [...] vs, say, WWII.
They have been bombing civilian infrastructure, abducting children, torturing and executing civilians and POWs, executing deserters or wannabe deserters the entire fucking Ukraine war. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_in_the_Russo-Ukrain...
Restraint, my unbleached asshole.
Civilian to military casualty ratio is 1:20 for Russia-Ukraine war and 2:1 for WWII. The difference is huge. Whether this is actual restraint I have no knowledge but if it quacks like a duck ...
No one is fire-bombing cities yet, despite Ukraine pulling a WWII Japan and distributing weapons production amongst residences.
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Yep, apparently Ukraine still cannot affect fuel production in Russia to any significant point. Drones with less than 100 kg of explosives do not do particularly significant damage. One really need to deliver like a ton or more of explosives and for that one needs bombers that can penetrate air defenses or very expensive stealth cruise missiles or big ballistic missiles.
Of course it has had a significant impact. The reason Russia has repeatedly turned off fuel exports every couple of months for the past couple of years despite high global prices because Ukraine keeps disabling enough of their refining capability to cause shortages.
Hah. Ukraine has cut Russian petroleum production 40%...
Ukraine dramatically reduced Russian fuel export revenue, and the sanctions did so even more.
It was really coming to the point of urgent existential threat to the Putin regime this spring, before Trump and Netanyahu bailed him out, first by doubling the global oil price and then by relaxing sanctions.
And Ukraine's drone / cruise missile portfolio includes things like the Flamingo, more than twice the payload and range of a Tomahawk.
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I’m surprised that they are not dropping thermite on oil refineries. Most things there will burn if hit enough.
You think “morality” is what’s preventing the US or Russia to drop atomic bombs on their smaller targets?
> Modern morality prevents such scale and tactics until it does not.
In the sense that the tide of geopolitics means that if someone tried that they'd mark themselves as a defector in the current scheme of morality and would stand to lose a lot when the rest of Europe inevitably treats that as an example of how they are about to be treated.
Shot exchange is indeed a problem, but it's far more complex than this makes it sound. The opportunity cost of _not_ shooting down the drone isn't the cost of the drone, it's the cost of whatever it's going to destroy if you don't shoot it down.
Sometimes it makes sense to use a million dollar missile to destroy a $5,000 drone, if that drone would otherwise destroy an even more expensive air defense radar or energy production facility. This says nothing about the cost and value of the lives that might be lost in an enemy strike.
We would not be safer if the enemy had cheap drones and we had no weapons capable of fighting back.
The main problem is that air defense interception is incredibly challenging and expensive primarily because a mid-course defensive interceptor needs considerably greater capabilities than the weapon it is intercepting, because it needs to catch up to the incoming missile or drone mid-flight.
Sure, this can lead to massive overkill problems. Yes, the US should invest more in the low end of the high/low mix. But no, this does not mean there's no place for the high end, or that they should never be used to destroy lower end targets if that's all that is available.
A more interesting challenge, if you ask me, is in the naval domain. Imagine a capital ship has two options for defending against incoming threats - either fire an expensive and limited stock interceptor missile with a 99% kill chance, or wait until the threat is inside the range of a cheap cannon or laser system with a 95% kill chance. There's a real command level tradeoff to be made here. If you shoot every drone with interceptors, you lose shot exchange badly, and you just run out of interceptors. But if you let every target through into the engagement range of your close range systems, you run the risk that one makes it through to your ship, potentially causing damage and casualties.
The future of war is going to be wild one way or the other.
>Sometimes it makes sense to use a million dollar missile to destroy a $5,000 drone, if that drone would otherwise destroy an even more expensive air defense radar or energy production facility. "
If that $5000 drone was alone then sure. However if they launch 200 drones (money equivalent of one missile) you'd be looking at totally different picture. Also they usually launch combo. Few missiles and whole bunch of drones. even worse
I disagree on air defense inherently being very costly.
Old school was guns. Price per round was cheap. But the expensive missile kills the platform holding the cheap gun, you have to go with missiles. But the drone war is a different beast entirely. Drones can't shoot back. Thus the answer is guns. How well will their light drones fare against a Cessna armed with an automatic shotgun? How would the jet drones fare against a WWII warbird?
Lots of cheap, mobile guns. No meaningful self defense but doctrine is to always depart after shooting.
The naval one is much harder because you're not free to disperse your ship into many pieces. But, still, consider your cannon. Let's step down a bit, cheaper cannon with a 90% kill rate--but you put several of them.
There are videos on the internet of drones being shot down with an assault rifle out of a 50 year old training plane, 1914 style.
Also seems that having a very capable military that lets you project power around the world also invites that power to be used. See for instance the Iran war. Quite pointless by all accounts and wouldn't have happened if the US didn't have aircraft carriers to send around the world.
So perhaps thriftiness in defense spending would also invite a prioritization in actual defensive capabilities?
I think the likely result would be more war. It wouldn't be with america, but without anerica providing protection to its allies in the region, the various countries in the region would probably be emboldened to fight it out themselves (im assuming in this scenario that russia and other great powers are also incapable of force projection. Obviously russia is busy right now, but historically they were knee deep in the middle east and much of us involvement now is a legacy of the cold war)
Even in a hypothetical situation where the USA had no aircraft carriers our military probably would have conducted some raids to delay Iran building nuclear weapons. The initial strikes against nuclear facilities were done with B-2 bombers launched from Missouri.
Not to mention US air bases dotted all over the Middle East, the near East, Europe, the Indian Ocean, the Pacific Ocean the Arctic…
Iran wouldn't have started to work in nuclear weapons if Bush didn't credibly threaten to invade them.
Hell, Iran didn't actually work into building them before Trump decided to attack them.
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> Also seems that having a very capable military that lets you project power around the world also invites that power to be used.
I assure you that is a much better problem than the alternative.
Thanks for the assurance!
To be fair the US is making steps into this realm and it's definitely a known issue. Their Shahed derivative, laser weapons becoming more ubiquitous. I'm surprised how many drones countries are starting to manufacture. e.g the UK delivered 150k drones to Ukraine recently, based on the current state of the UK armed forces that kind of surprised me and definitely shows a change in ethos on how modern first world militaries will wage war in the future.
There’s credible evidence that the Shahed is itself a derivative of a late 20th century German drone designed as a loitering anti-radar munition.
Which has roots that can be traced to the V-1.
> A million dollar patriot missile to shoot down a cheap drone...
I guess it is a good thing then that this isn't something they actually do.
They use cheap weapons to shoot down cheap drones. Their primary anti-drone missile was developed in the 2010s and costs less than a Shahed.
Yet these cheap and effective weapons failed to protect high value targets, esp. radars.
That's a question of deployment, not capability. They've been used widely in the Middle East against drones since the 2010s with considerable success.
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Yes a 99% success rate versus like 600 incoming still means some of them will get through.
Which is the same reason no level of military power is going to keep the Strait of Hormuz open (or at least, no level beyond a truly absurd one and even then - see the Kerch bridge in Crimea).
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> A million dollar patriot missile to shoot down a cheap drone, etc.
Except this is more propaganda than truth. In general america does not use patriots to shoot down drones except in exceptional circumstances.
Not that the ecconomics of missile defense isnt a problem. It can be. But some of it has been highly exagerated.
The US just blew through a large percentage of its PAC-3/PAC-2 inventory fighting Iran. Other than Patriot, the US doesn't really have much GBAD anymore. A few Avenger systems, some Stinger MANPADs, etc. It's either Patriot or THAAD; and hopefully they're not dumb enough to be using THAAD against drones.
I'm sure they burned through quite a few AMRAAM and Sidewinders doing intercepts as well. Patriot is much more expensive than $1M (try $4M), Stinger is around 250K depending on who the customer is ($750K if you're non-US). AMRAAM is over $1M, Sidewinders $500K.
Even APKWS is $40k, and Shaheed prices are around $30k? So even that low cost option is losing.
There are many different flavors of APKWS, that is the most expensive type. There is real tension between reducing unit costs by maximally leveraging whatever systems they are attached to instead of putting everything in the guidance package and the overhead cost of the customization that entails.
They've been experimenting with variants for many years. There is some belief that they may be able to get unit costs down to $5k for some common variants. Everyone believes $10k is achievable.
There are so many companies working on this now (cheap anti-drone tech, cheap cruise missiles, cheap missile interceptors), what you're saying is kind of moot.
> Increased defense spending actually makes the US less, not more, safe.
It just makes us spend more money on defense, which is the entire point.
The industry obviously wants more and more profits.
They are never going to recommend getting rid of $200m F22s and replacing them with 30 $300k drones that would be more effective and cost 5% as much money.
That's 5% as much profit for them. They're not interested.
They are interested in profits, not national security.
And as you pointed out, they'd prefer a LESS secure world that inherently demands more money going to security.
You could spend more on security to actually be more secure. It's just that no one with any power is interested in that world.
They're only interested in making more money.