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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
by TheOtherHobbes 6mo 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.
- cineticdaffodil 6mo agoI 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.
- tim333 6mo agoI basically agree and think it's a great shame that the US didn't say don't invade Ukraine or we'll have the USAF bomb the invading troops. Russia couldn't reasonably use nukes just because they were being stopped invading a country that they'd signed an agreement not to invade when Ukraine gave up its nukes. Many thousands or lives would have been saved.
- ceejayoz 6mo ago> 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.
- fsckboy 6mo agoRussian stated nuclear doctrine has been treated by the Russians as an existential threat to Russia if followed through on.
- varjag 6mo agoThen it's fine, as conventional bombing of Moscow is not an existential threat.
- kansface 6mo agoJust because he hasn’t pulled the trigger doesn’t mean there isn’t an actual red line.
- Sabinus 6mo agoThe red line is an invasion of Moscow or a strike on Russian nuclear capabilities. Everything else is just an order for preemptive suicide.
- nradov 6mo agoUkraine already executed a successful strike on Russian nuclear capabilities. In 2025 Operation “Spider’s Web” completely destroyed several irreplaceable nuclear-capable strategic bombers. https://www.csis.org/analysis/how-ukraines-spider-web-operation-redefines-asymmetric-warfare https://www.csis.org/analysis/how-ukraines-spider-web-operat... There is no "red line".
- 8note 6mo ago
- aaron695 6mo ago[dead]
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- eek2121 6mo agoTell 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.
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- catlover76 6mo ago[dead]
- einpoklum 6mo ago> 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 https://www.krone.at/4046529
- sp4cec0wb0y 6mo ago> 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.
- greedo 6mo agoSuch 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.
- nradov 6mo agoUkraine has already launched several mass strikes on Moscow. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/moscow-comes-under-one-of-ukraines-largest-drone-attacks-as-fighting-rages-in-kursk-eastern-ukraine https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/moscow-comes-under-one-of... https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/russian-war-report-drones-target-central-moscow/#drones 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?
- fc417fc802 6mo agoTBF 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.
- 8note 6mo agoyou 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
- red-iron-pine 6mo agogame theory assumes rational actors
- kjkjadksj 6mo agoIt wouldn’t be wrong. Nixon got drunk and called for a nuclear strike on North Korea. Kissinger told everyone to ignore this order and the world did not blow up that day.
- Animats 6mo agoUkraine'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-drone-commander-wants-to-bleed-russias-army-dry https://www.economist.com/europe/2026/03/22/ukraines-top-dro...
- dgroshev 6mo agoThe 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.
- hedora 6mo agoStockpiling 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.