Comment by TheOtherHobbes
16 hours ago
No one was going to launch mass strikes on Moscow. Russian nuclear doctrine would have treated that as an existential threat.
The psychology of Ukraine's drone campaign as a response to Russia's original drone launches is very interesting. It's a classic boiling frog move.
Drones are seen as an improvised amateur threat. Unlike a bombing campaign, which is seen as "proper war", drones are an annoyance. They're fragile, cheap, unglamorous, unsophisticated, easy to shoot down, and wasteful, because you need tens or hundreds to make sure a few get through.
That gives drone campaigns a huge advantage. You can do a lot of damage and your enemy doesn't quite get what's happening.
Psychologically, there's a Rubicon-level difference between someone dropping bombs on Leningrad from a plane and a drone swarm attacking the same targets.
In practice the threat level is similar. Drones have absolutely become an existential threat to Russia.
But psychologically, they're not seen as such.
Ukraine's top drone commander was interviewed by The Economist.[1] He used to be a commodities trader, and he looks at warfare from that perspective. His goal is to kill Russian soldiers faster than Russia can replace them, until they run out of young men. His drone units are currently doing this, he claims. They supposedly lose one Ukrainian drone unit soldier per 400 Russians dead. Material cost per dead Russian soldier is about US$850. He looks at attrition war as an ROI problem.
His risk management strategy is to have redundant everything, so there's no single point of failure. Lots of small drones. Distributed operators. Many small factories. Varied command and control systems. He makes the point that they use lots of different kinds of drones - some fast with wings, some slow with rotors, some that run on treads on the ground. There's no "best drone". Using multiple types in a coordinated way makes it hard for the enemy to counter attacks. No one defense will stop all the drones.
Ukraine built 4,000,000 drones in 2025. This year, more. The Ukrainian military needs a new generation of drones about every three months, as the opposition changes tactics. They view most US drones as obsolete, because the product development and life cycle is far too long. (See "OODA loop" for the concept.)
This is a big problem for the US military's very slow development process. Development of the F-35 started over 30 years ago.
[1] https://www.economist.com/europe/2026/03/22/ukraines-top-dro...
The development and production lifecycle _has_ to be long for a country not fighting a current war.
Ukrainian munitions get used up almost immediately. They don't need to stockpile, they are in a steady state wartime production.
On the contrary, peace time countries have to stockpile. A manufacturing line cannot be ramped up from zero to wartime, we need low volume manufacturing to retain the expertise and the supply lines. But that, in turn, means that we have to either trash the entire manufacturing output every few months (which would be insane), or stockpile. The latter option also requires building more capable systems so that the stockpiles are still relevant in a few years.
Stockpiling doesn’t really do much vs. investing in manufacturing.
Contrast the US in the civil war or wwii to the current situation. In both those wars, civilian factories were rapidly converted for the war and manufacturing capabilities were ramped fast.
In Iran, we’ve burned through years or decades of manufacturing capacity and probably used up most of our top tier stockpile.
That only exhausted/destroyed about 33% of Iran’s cruise missile stockpiles. It’s unclear what it did to their drone manufacturing capabilities. It guaranteed they’ll pursue nuclear capabilities moving forward.
At the same time, US investment in manufacturing is tanking due to warmongering and isolationist economic policies.
Iran stalemated us in a month or two, and all the trends I see (education, manufacturing, high tech innovation) point to US capabilities eroding rapidly in the short to medium term.
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christ, sounds like mcnamara. the americans killed north vietnamese faster than they killed americans, so how come they lost?
The difference is, as the other comment points out, the Americans could have (and eventually did) leave South Vietnam any time they wanted with no negative consequences. It was a pure war of choice.
Everyone on the Ukranian side knows that their options are: victory, death, a deeply miserable time in a POW camp, or abandoning their life and becoming a refugee. Regardless of what your rank or social status is.
Because the North Vietnamese were not bombing and destroying American home soil schools, apartment blocks, utilities, etc. on a daily basis.
Lacking any real home soil peer citizen engagement the US saw the Vietnam War as a costly pointless loss of money, resources, and life on the far side of the planet.
The Ukrainians are somewhat more engaged.
Ukraine has already launched several mass strikes on Moscow.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/moscow-comes-under-one-of...
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/russia...
Even if Russia sees a particular tactic or weapons system as an existential threat it's questionable whether they have the capability to escalate further. I mean they can threaten nuclear strikes on Ukrainian population centers but would anyone believe that the threats are credible?
TBF a proxy of one of the nuclear superpowers (ie Ukraine using US arms) is quite different from a run of the mill non-nuclear country retaliating against an invasion using conventional arms manufactured at home. The former invites MAD while the latter is predictable and boring. Seeing as they are the substantially larger aggressor presumably they can pull out of this war of attrition whenever they feel like it.
you can look into game theory and crisis bargaining to see when and when not nukes make sense.
theyre very expensive to use, so the benefits of war have to be extraordinary to match
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> Russian nuclear doctrine would have treated that as an existential threat.
They claimed that with basically every little sprinkle of new aid for like two years, until everyone realized it was a bluff.
Putin is many things, but actively suicidal looks like a no.
Just because he hasn’t pulled the trigger doesn’t mean there isn’t an actual red line.
The red line is an invasion of Moscow or a strike on Russian nuclear capabilities.
Everything else is just an order for preemptive suicide.
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"So what is the last resort? Piccadilly?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgkUVIj3KWY
Russian stated nuclear doctrine has been treated by the Russians as an existential threat to Russia if followed through on.
Then it's fine, as conventional bombing of Moscow is not an existential threat.
I suspect Israel and Russia are looking at each other with "You first!" so that they can start nuking and blame the other for starting it.
Israel is not under existential threat even if there are occasional rockets hitting Ashkelon or downtown Tel Aviv
The rest of the Arab world is mostly placated by alliances w/ the US and thus Israel, but if Israel drops an nuke all bets are off.
The Saudis will probably have a bomb before too long following a nuclear deal: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-removing-guardrails-prop...
I dont buy that anymore. We had that "escalation" yell at every stage, every new tech. Tanks, jets, everytime ukraine got help, the "moscow puppets" yelled about nuclear war and escalation. I m of the opinion we could have stopped 4 years of butchery if we had supported Ukraine decisevly from the start. The words of the peaceniks just dont hold value anymore. They lack predictive power so significantly those utterances seem delusional at time. Quite frankly if sb marches into a peaceful neighbor country, they dont get to call for the referee the moment they kick the shit out of them.
Tell that to the folks on the front lines, along with folks on both sides, military or not, who have had to deal with it.
Russia would never nuke Ukraine to begin with. They know that by doing so, most of the world would unite against them, and many, including Putin, would be on the chopping block.
> Russia would never nuke Ukraine to begin with
Mostly because that's useless. Ukrainian weapon production and economy is located in Europe. Ukraine is basicaly western PMC now.
If nuclear war starts, nukes would be falling on European cities and facilities, not Ukrainian.
Everyone keeps forgetting about the French independent at sea nuclear deterrent.
I wonder when Poland will decide it's time for them to have The Bomb?
> most of the world would unite against them
Seriously doubt any country on Earth is going to attack Russia and risk global thermonuclear annihilation over anything other than a direct attack on their own lands.
I think if Russia drops a nuke on Ukraine then even China will desert them.
India for sure will stop trading with Russia, lest it be seen to condone such insanity (India has a nuclear armed rival next door-India will not want Pakistan get any ideas).
I think this is the only reason Russia did not nuke Ukraine.
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Russian self-image is protector of the family of Slavic people and nations. Resorting openly to destruction of a Slavic people would be an incoherent tactic.
That self-perception lowered the gate for interference in Ukrainian affairs in the first place, but also set a ceiling on escalation.
" many, including Putin, would be on the chopping block."
I think that's the above comment's point. Attack moscow -> existential threat -> they're already on the chopping block -> nukes.
> Russia would never nuke Ukraine to begin with.
Russia is not fighting Ukraine, it is fighting NATO in Ukraine. And, IIANM, it has the capability of hitting non-Ukranie NATO targets in various places around the world - with cruise missiles and such. The assumption that "oh, Russia will never do this" is actually quite reckless and dangerous; and I don't just mean dangerous to whoever would get attacked, but dangerous for people all over the world, as we may find ourselves in a nuclear exchange with multiple blasts in multiple locations with radioactive matter spread far and wide.
Regarding the drones - definitely agree with you that drones have completely reshaped the experience on the front lines of this war. I understand that in a recent exercise with NATO forces, a Ukranian unit of drone operators essentially "took out" a couple of battalions:
https://www.krone.at/4046529
> Russia is not fighting Ukraine, it is fighting NATO in Ukraine.
If that is the case they are doing a poor job at doing so, without even fighting the full might of NATO.
however, nato is fighting the full might of china, russia, iran, and north korea. the whole set. and china is fighting for both ukraine and russia at the same time. why arent you worried about nato randomly attacling china so china stops supplying russia with drone materials? or north korea so they stop providing shells and soldiers?
russia isnt going to attack nato because it knows it isnt currently fighting nato, and bringing nato into the war will be worse for russia than keeping nato as an arms supplier only.
Such nonsense. The EU may be supplying Ukraine with some munitions etc, but if NATO was actively involved, the war would have been over in a year; either conventionally or via nuclear weapons.
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