RUSI article on Attritional vs Manoeuvre Warfare

[GDS_Starfury]

It's unclear if NATO has the ability to sweep the skies of cheap and plentiful Russian drones which seem to have been revealed as among the primary enemies of maneuver warfare.

this ability was pretty much proven last night over Syria and Iraq.

[bobarossa]

How long until we run out of the expensive missiles, etc that we are using to kill those drones?  I would say it would be long before we could spin up replacement quantities given that the Ukraine was has gone on over 2 years and what have we got for artillery shell replacement?

[FarAway Sooner]

It's unclear if NATO has the ability to sweep the skies of cheap and plentiful Russian drones which seem to have been revealed as among the primary enemies of maneuver warfare.

this ability was pretty much proven last night over Syria and Iraq.

It's not about performance.  It's about stamina.

More specifically, I was referring to the $1,000 artillery recce drones that have been the primary agent in thwarting massed attacks to date in Ukraine.  I'm not as worried about whether we can shoot down something like the Shaheed; I just question whether we'll run out of Patriot missiles before Iran runs out of Shaheeds.

Do we have enough fancy weapon systems to shoot down those thousands and thousands of cheap-ass drones that both sides are now using to great effect?  Or, that failing, do we have the ability to use more really cheap weapons to shoot down their even cheaper weapons.

[GDS_Starfury]

my understanding is that most of the drones and cruise missiles were shot down with Sidewinder type missiles which are relatively cheap and plentiful.

[matt3916]

@ $400,000 per unit for the Aim-9 actually is "relatively cheap." 

But it's still a lot more than the drones it's going after.

Edit -- Shahed-136 drone @ $50,000.

Remember the McNamara equations.  "We're trading multi-million dollar airplanes for ten thousand dollar trucks."

[GDS_Starfury]

maybe, maybe not