Cost asymmetry in modern warfare

Investment Analysis Clubs Macro Economic Trends and Risks
1

It’s been said that generals are always fighting the last war. The U.S. military-industrial establishment spends billions of dollars on extremely expensive heavy armaments.

The war in Ukraine showed how light, inexpensive drones coupled with on-the-ground intelligence can destroy conventional weapons (attack aircraft) even on Russian territory.

Russia has learned this lesson and is using their own drones.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/russias-alarming-drone-incursion-into-poland-81362a60?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Russia’s Alarming Drone Incursion Into Poland

NATO stopped it but at a huge financial cost—a dangerous asymmetry that imperils much of Europe.

By Jillian Kay Melchior, The Wall Street Journal

Officials of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization congratulated themselves for stopping a Russian drone incursion into Poland last Tuesday night. NATO shot down the drones…

Over roughly seven hours, some 20 drones flew into Poland….

NATO still relies on scarce, expensive weapons to intercept plentiful, cheap ones. In starker terms: The West likely lacks a credible response to sustained large-scale drone attacks….

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte described how the alliance called on assets from Patriots to F-16s and F-35s, but the missiles they use can cost $1 million or more. At least some drones Russia flew into Poland were Gerbera decoys that cost around $10,000. The strike Shaheds cost $50,000 or more….

Ukrainian military intelligence said recently that Russia can now produce some 2,700 Shahed-type drones a month. It’s also churning out the decoy drones used to overwhelm air defenses. The payload-bearing Shaheds have a range of some 1,500 miles—enough to strike much of Europe, especially if launched from Belarus or Libya, where Russia is establishing a presence. That range is also enough to hit about 60% of Alaska, including Anchorage, Fairbanks and Juneau…. [end quote]

Cost asymmetry is an important part of the strategic aims of warfare. The Al-Quaida terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001 cost about $250,000 but led to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq which cost the U.S. over $1 trillion and accomplished nothing.

A small part of the U.S. defense establishment is working on drone warfare and an even smaller part on defense against drones, cyber attacks and other low-cost attacks.

Everyone focuses on Russia because of Putin’s naked ambition to conquer and reconstitute the Russian Empire. But the next major war will probably be China’s attempt to conquer Taiwan – a much more delicate affair because the crown jewel is TSMC. China will be more likely to use scalpels instead of bludgeons to avoid damaging TSMC.

The U.S. defense establishment had better get with the program and realize that many empires have been bankrupted by expensive wars. We need cheap defenses to counter cheap attacks.

Wendy

9 Likes
2

The UK and Ukraine are coming out with defense drones to stop the Russian attacks on the Ukrainian cities.

4 Likes
3

I thought the huge increase in sale of drones by China to Russia was a really big problem even though few here seemed interested:

4 Likes
4

Chinese drones have been running rings around US drones. US tried to ban the popular DJI drones and the business community went nuts. American capitalism hasn’t produced a product that equals DJI’s offerings.

intercst

4 Likes
5

I hear you, but the way I think is, when you are fighting a powerful enemy, you improvise, whether it is gorilla attacks or drones. You cannot match the power of the US army or for Ukraine Russian army, so you have to innovate. Innovation here is necessity.

It happens in business and in battle field. BTW, US army has one of the expensive drone program too. :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

1 Like
6

According to Zeihan Russian now just orders parts which are assembled in Russian factories located out of range of Ukrainian drones. Russia now attacks with 100s of drones.
Russians are doing most of the assembly in Russia proper, again, outside of the reach of any sort of Ukrainian strike capability.

maybe as many as two thirds of the drones that the Russians are firing at targets are actually just decoys that are very, very, very cheap. And so if Ukraine is using their limited air defense to try to clear the skies and they have to deal with literally hundreds of spoofed signals and false targets, more and more of the real things will get through.

Mass Russian infantry & tank attacks all along the Ukraine defensive line are passé. The Russians probe with very small unit to find the weakest section; then hits that section with a mass assault. Russian casualties numbers are diminished.

Sanctions seem not to affect Russia.

Russia has upped its drone game.

The Geran-3 UAV is an analogue of the Iranian-made Shahed-238 jet drone, the component base of which Defence Intelligence of Ukraine showcased in June 2024 along with the launch of the portal. Now, Ukrainian intelligence is showing information on the Russian-localised version of the Iranian-made UAV.

“The Geran-3 UAV, series U, uses a Chinese-produced Telefly JT80 turbojet engine, allowing it to travel at speeds of 300–370 km/h; its approximate operational range is up to 1,000 km,” the statement reads.

To protect satellite navigation from electronic warfare measures, the Geran-3 uses a jamming-resistant satellite navigation system with a 12-element adaptive antenna array (CRPA) – the Kometa-M12.

Defence Intelligence of Ukraine added that of the 45 identified foreign components, roughly half are from American manufacturers, eight are Chinese, seven Swiss, three German, two British and one Japanese.

Russia’s new jet-powered attack drones are full of foreign parts and built with jamming-resistant technology to shield them from electronic warfare, the Ukrainian military said Tuesday.

The Geran-3 first appeared in Ukraine earlier this year, and the drone has since become a common element of Russian attacks. It’s a faster, more advanced iteration of the Geran-2, Russia’s domestically produced version of the Iranian Shahed-136.

Russia has been heavily sanctioned by the international community in the wake of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but while a country or company may not be involved in directly exporting its technology to Russia, it’s still possible for foreign-made parts to end up there via approaches beyond their control.

Russia is also building new launch sites for its attacks against Ukraine. It has demonstrated that it’s already capable of launching hundreds of drones in mass attacks — one bombardment earlier this month involved more than 800 drones — and Western intel assessments suggest that this figure could eventually reach 2,000 in a night.

No Virginia*, Russia ain’t about to fold its tent and stop attacking Ukraine. That is just propaganda from the Western media.

*Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus - Wikipedia

3 Likes
7

In early ICE automobile racing very often what decided who won was almost never who had the better design or strategy — it was who had had the good luck to have all the insanely complicated bits of crucial stuff (hoses and clamps, rings and cylinder heads, fuel & water & oil pumps, tranmission gears and drive linkages, tires, steering gear, suspension clearances and springs…..) keep working for the entirety of the race.

Modern war is OFTEN (not always) a lot more like that than it is about grand strategy. It is about construction of a functioning complex ecology of all manner of things that functions will enough for long enough. Analyzing that is possible, but not easy or obvious.

The crux fact of the Ukraine War is very simple — to win Russia will need to commit a massive biological and cultural genocide and Ukrainians now know that. The crucial stretch of time from the Maidan demonstrations through to the clearly photographed micro-genocide committed by a specialized trained and deployed force of Russian troops against fighting aged men in Bucha concurrent with the kidnapping of thousands of children from occupied parts of Ukraine into the population of Russia, taught the Ukrainians what is in store for them if they loose. They are intensely committed to not being enslaved, murdered, or culturally erased.

The open question is how long the destructive horror will continue.

8 Likes
8

Russian losses including the wounded that have been taken off the battle field are huge. But there is some sort of factor like 4 times over that Russia can do this because of her population size. But halve taht because Putin will get overthrown if he does not have enough military support to defend himself.

Also those new recruits are not trained. So do not think much of the cannon fodder.

The UK defense drones matter. The theory on having the parts to wage the war gets cut down badly if Western Europe supplies defense drones. No more depending for a major item on the US.

Russia will need defense drones which will use up offensive drone parts. But Russia will not defend the battle lines with defense drones? LOL Love to be in that army, sarcasm. The Russian front in size for defense drones is impossible to guard.

Ukraine can defend the cities and poke holes in the Russian lines. Russia can try to poke holes but the Ukrainian troops are better than the Russian cannon fodder. The lines are going to start to shift faster. This does not favor Russia. It becomes a kind of gorilla war. @flyerboys

2 Likes
9

But that is not what wins wars. It is a nation’s industrial plant. In WW2 Germany had superior weaponry one on one. But the Soviet Union & USA could turn out adequate weapons in superior numbers. Attrition can be a bytch.

Today, the Russian industrial industrial plant seems capable of turning out an adequate number of weapons regardless of sanctions by the West. Ukraine was first to use the drone. But Russia has adopted the weapon and can make massive numbers of them.

The Western aid has kept Ukraine in the game. But I don’t visualize how it can regain lost territory.

10

If uTube is to be believed, Ukraine has shifted focus from defense to attacking Russia’s economic infrastructure, oil refineries, wartime supply factories, and transportation as well as making the war noticeable to Russian civilians, shutting down airports and creating fuel shortages. If true, the Russian population could turn against Putin to end the war.

The problem today is that it’s very hard to tell fake from real news. When I hear someone reporting as if sitting next to a pilot in a jet, i switch it off. How much of the reporting is AI made up stories?

The Captain

4 Likes
11

And you don’t think Russia is doing the same to Ukraine?

12

Tell that to the North Vietnamese. Tell it to the Afghans.

It certainly can be an important component, but it is not a requirement.

13

It’s not what I think, it’s what I hear reported. The same reporters I mentioned above say that Russia is intent on indiscriminate killing of civilians. This is the equivalent of accusing Israel of genocide.

The fog of war is thicker than ever. What I do know is on which side I am on these two wars. It has little to do with how the wars are conduced and much to do with history. Some people don’t understand, “Never Again.” Survival comes first. Without survival nothing matters.

The Captain

3 Likes
14

Both wars were unpopular in the US.
And both opponents realized that they just had to hang in there.
Modern USA no longer has the stomach for a large number of casualties. US interventions are now fought largely with the enlisted ranks filled with the children of the working class*. Elites & professional class are mostly unaffected.

North Vietnam did have Soviet Union & Chicom economies behind it. Also a hundred of thousand Chinese laborers in North Vietnam.

By the 25th of May 1965, Premier Zhou Enlai under direct order from Mao chaired a meeting to discuss sending over 100,000 Chinese engineering troops to Vietnam to aid in infrastructure construction. By early June 1965 seven divisions of Chinese labor troops, (close to 80,000 men) had been dispatched to Vietnam.

The US could never invade North Vietnam. We learn that lesson from the Korean War.

*this development could well have political consequences.

15

A drone attack on Kyiv and appearance of a cluster of drones over Polish territory in September 2025 has highlighted the threat posed by the rapid advancement of autonomous and uncrewed aerial vehicles.

The weapons that bring drones down are often many times more expensive.

How does one stop a thousand drone attack? Maybe you don’t. How long before a tactical nuke warhead attachment becomes possible?

16

You don’t stop a 1000 drone attack, and you don’t need nukes on them. Send 1000 drones against a US carrier and you can do some really significant damage, and unless we find a “mass killer” like an EMP generator that can be directional, we’re in deep doo doo. (Any generic EMP pulse generated from on high is going to affect the technology on the carrier too, I would think.)

I don’t care how rapid your firepower is or how precise your targeting, if you get 1000 targets all at once, you’re not going to be able to stop them.

1 Like
17

Probably not. Military assets like naval vessels are hardened. EMP will wipe out a lot of things (like airliners, cruise ships, etc). Naval vessels are designed -last I knew- to survive that and keep fighting.

However, you are correct that 1000 drones would be very difficult to counter. Ukraine used a lot less than that to seriously damage the Black Sea Fleet. Ukraine has no navy to speak of. But their aerial and seaborn drones have disabled/sunk many vessels (including the flagship) of the Black Sea Fleet. They also used drones to knock out the Crimea bridge (I think more than once).

From what I can tell, NATO is paying attention. We’re learning from the current conflict. I expect counter-drone systems to be coming out in the future, especially to protect assets like naval vessels.

1 Like
18

This poses an interesting test, both of the smartness of our “War Department” and of whether they are actually learning to adjust as rapidly as we need them to adjust.

What is happening in the construction schedule, quantity, and radical redesign of these guys:

Their official publicity is still orgasming over their electromagnetic aircraft launch system….and the current Sec of Defense could not tell you the basics of electromagnetic force to save his life.

How fast can our military industrial behemoth turn? NOT FAST enough so long as constitutionally protected corporate free speech (e.g. $$$) is legal and protected and necessary to the preservation of all that is obsolete and profitable.

1 Like
19

We know the answer. Ignore the question and avoid reality.

20

That is a problem.

However, I was reading about a simple system that could protect a larger asset like this. For something like a carrier, it would be a minor add-on. For smaller ships, it may require some refit. It’s essentially a high-powered microwave emitter. Fries electronics. They believe such systems could take down multiple drones per shot.

A nice little add-on, some extra profit…this could happen, even under present incompetent leadership.

1 Like