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I don't understand your point. Sure, Ukraine can cut a few corners that western militaries are unwilling to cut. They still can't produce a domestic ballistic m

I don't understand your point. Sure, Ukraine can cut a few corners that western militaries are unwilling to cut. They still can't produce a domestic ballistic missile at scale, because it's genuinely hard, and simple terror weapons like Qassams are useless for militaries. "100 rockets for $10k" is off by orders of magnitude.

edmundsauto 7mo ago
I think the point is to look at the US requirements compared to the cost and explore ways that a country could gain strategic advantages by building objectively worse products. (But cheaper/faster, gaining an asymmetric advantage in the offense/defense scaling) I used to think the US dollars were well spent, because we felt it was morally important to deliver precision strikes which had higher cost requirements. Recent evidence demonstrates that is insufficient when the wetware making the targeting decisions is faulty.
vidarh 7mo ago
100 harmful rockets for $10k is off by orders of magnitude, but that was entirely not the point. The point is that if you're in a asymmetric position where you can't do much damage directly, then whatever you can do to make the other side waste expensive resources while putting them on constant alert is a win. You don't need a warhead, or a viable rocket, to do that. You need something that looks enough like a viable rocket to force a response, because the other side knows that x% are real. If that thing is cheap enough for you to fire large numbers of them, you multiply the problem for your opponent. Cheap enough, and you have the potential to overwhelm the capacity of their countermeasures entirely, at which point you increase the chance that some of their real rockets will make it through.
- dgroshev 7mo ago
  To "look enough" like a missile that can hit something a hundred kilometres away with enough precision to not be ignored you need a missile that can fly a hundred kilometres. This is not cheap. Instead of repeating myself, I'll just link a reply, if you don't mind: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47389309 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47389309
  - vidarh 7mo ago
    > a missile that can hit something a hundred kilometres away At no point did I mention "a hundred kilometres away"
pavlus 7mo ago
> They still can't produce a domestic ballistic missile at scale, because it's genuinely hard Also, because it costs a lot and there are only two benefits of ballistic over cruise (if you exclude delivering nuclear payloads, which Ukraine doesn't have): it's very fast and hard to intercept. Both are needed sometimes, but often not a requirement. Ukraine is comparatively small, so air defenses can be packed close, Russia is big and harder to cover with air defense systems, so drones and cruise missiles are a better investment for Ukraine, since they can overpower the AD locally and are much-much easier and cheaper to produce, meanwhile ballistic is a better investment for Russia, since anti-ballistic systems are even harder to build and cost a lot.

edmundsauto 7mo ago

I think the point is to look at the US requirements compared to the cost and explore ways that a country could gain strategic advantages by building objectively worse products. (But cheaper/faster, gaining an asymmetric advantage in the offense/defense scaling) I used to think the US dollars were well spent, because we felt it was morally important to deliver precision strikes which had higher cost requirements. Recent evidence demonstrates that is insufficient when the wetware making the targeting decisions is faulty.

vidarh 7mo ago

100 harmful rockets for $10k is off by orders of magnitude, but that was entirely not the point. The point is that if you're in a asymmetric position where you can't do much damage directly, then whatever you can do to make the other side waste expensive resources while putting them on constant alert is a win. You don't need a warhead, or a viable rocket, to do that. You need something that looks enough like a viable rocket to force a response, because the other side knows that x% are real. If that thing is cheap enough for you to fire large numbers of them, you multiply the problem for your opponent. Cheap enough, and you have the potential to overwhelm the capacity of their countermeasures entirely, at which point you increase the chance that some of their real rockets will make it through.

dgroshev 7mo ago
To "look enough" like a missile that can hit something a hundred kilometres away with enough precision to not be ignored you need a missile that can fly a hundred kilometres. This is not cheap. Instead of repeating myself, I'll just link a reply, if you don't mind: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47389309 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47389309
- vidarh 7mo ago
  > a missile that can hit something a hundred kilometres away At no point did I mention "a hundred kilometres away"

pavlus 7mo ago

> They still can't produce a domestic ballistic missile at scale, because it's genuinely hard Also, because it costs a lot and there are only two benefits of ballistic over cruise (if you exclude delivering nuclear payloads, which Ukraine doesn't have): it's very fast and hard to intercept. Both are needed sometimes, but often not a requirement. Ukraine is comparatively small, so air defenses can be packed close, Russia is big and harder to cover with air defense systems, so drones and cruise missiles are a better investment for Ukraine, since they can overpower the AD locally and are much-much easier and cheaper to produce, meanwhile ballistic is a better investment for Russia, since anti-ballistic systems are even harder to build and cost a lot.