Not long ago, President Donald Trump, joined by VP JD Vance, bullied Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelenskyy during a White House sit-down in which the latter was being bullied into caving on Russian demands. "You don't have the cards," roared Trump while a Trump-allied reporter made fun of Zelenskyy's military attire.
It turns out that Trump was wrong. Zelenskyy does have the cards and has been playing them with great effectiveness. His drones have wreaked havoc on maritime shipping in the Caspian Sea and at Russian Wildberries outlets, which is their Amazon equivalent. This hurts both Russia's military and its economy.
That's only part of the story. In addition to ramping up its offensive use of drones, Ukraine has been manufacturing cheap and very effective drone interceptors at costs of between $2,000-10,000 per unit, depending on whether the drone being intercepted is powered by a jet engine.
Gulf states are quickly turning to Ukraine to acquire both interceptors and drone defense technology. This makes sense. Drones can be intercepted by SAMs or our own drones, but at a much higher cost than the drones themselves. I would hope that we are seeking some help from Ukraine as well.
I know that one or two Navy warships are equipped with lasers than could take down a drone at a cost of about a nickel. But we've been far too slow in adjusting to a changing battlefield landscape.
While it is true that Ukraine has been able to do damage to Russia's infrastructure, they are being beaten badly on the ground. Ukraine will not prevail over Russia. Russia will soon be ready to end this with Ukraine being landlocked and only a shadow of what they could have been.
ReplyDeleteYour assertion is false. The Ukrainians have not been "beaten badly" on the ground. Russian advances have largely been halted, which is why it needs an infusion of N Korean fodder. Russia is no longer capable of mounting attacks with massive waves, and has to rely on infiltration to move forward. It has gained ground on some fronts, but has lost ground on others. Ukraine and Russia both have drone kill zones that make it impossible to move quickly. Ukraine is also using robotics to move supplies, evacuate the wounded and even for combat. It has been highly innovative and most of its success is homegrown, not a product of the US. So you are pretty much wrong on every point and need to educate yourself on what is happening there.
Delete"Help" is a bit naive. Ukraine is a wholly owned subsidiary of the United States. We've given them $195 billion. It's a satellite of our Pentagon for development and use of weapons for which we paid - a lot.
ReplyDeleteThis is an unfixable problem, the roots of which go back 60-70 years when companies started sending manufacturing overseas in waves. Unions became greedy and political and management and the executives became just outright stupid. Given how long it takes to build a navy ship or a fighter jet, this tells me a lot of the smaller components needed are not made domestically anymore either. The U.S. cannot make small, cheap, effective weapons. People today are greedy and stupid, yes, but not near as greedy and stupid as those who started that mass exodus of manufacturing decades ago.
ReplyDeleteBernie, it should be obvious to most people that Ukraine is not developing these things "organically" nor are they "homegrown". They are fully integrated into the Western military industrial complex at this point. It's the playground of military contractors and weapons development. Drone warfare is extremely dehumanizing and is going to rank up there with the development of the machine gun and high explosives in terms of increase in human suffering.
ReplyDeleteTrade off a few million Eastern European lives so you can teat out your drone tech and weaponized robotics. Now use it to attack the Middle East for the half dozenth time in the past couple decades. Disgusting. When this hegemony finally breaks we are going to reap the whirlwind.