521 Shahed russia used in September. Almost as many as during June, July & August combined.

With the increased number of launches our ADS success rate predictably dropped. 109 Shaheds hit their targets. Shaheds only. Not taking missiles into account.

This is unsustainable.

  • tal@kbin.social
    2·
    1 year ago

    There was going to have to be a long-term Shahed solution different from what is being done now even without any increase in frequency, because the old HAWK SAMs that the US dug up, while numerous, are not in production any more, so they will ultimately run out. They only buy time for a different solution. So there will be some plan in place that is being worked on.

    We also already knew that there was going to be an increase in Shahed frequency coming. Maybe not the specific month when it was happening, but we knew that Russia was building more production capacity, so at some point, it was going to happen.

    My guess is that one or more parties – probably one of which is the US – have been working on an air defense more-tailored to Shaheds and similar drones. If I had to guess, it might be a gun-equipped jet UAV, or at least one using very inexpensive air-to-air rockets or air-to-air missiles. The munitions there are inexpensive, and all that is necessary is that the cost of operation to bring down a Shahed be lower than the cost of the Shahed.

    My guess is that the plan for the post-HAWK phase is not to switch to trying to hit targets in Russia more-quickly than Russia hits targets in Ukraine. If it were, there wouldn’t have been any benefit in waiting. You’d have expected to have seen strikes already.

    I also would guess, though with less certainty, that the plan does not rely on creation of some form of new inexpensive SAMs. An aircraft doesn’t require putting many of the defenses in a given location; with SAMs, one has to choose where to place to spread out defenses, and the attacker can always choose to concentrate attacks on a given location. As long as potential targets are dispersed around the country, it’s hard to cover them with SAMs, especially short-range ones.

    EDIT: Ukraine announced that they were working on something like that late last year:

    https://ukranews.com/en/news/905036-ukraine-will-be-engaged-in-development-of-drones-that-could-counter-shahed

    Ukraine will develop air-to-air drones that could shoot down other drones, such as Shahed.

    This was announced by the Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov in an interview with ABC.