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0 pointsAnimats2mo ago0 comments

Ukraine'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-dro...

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8 comments · 2 top-level

dgroshev2mo ago· 3 in thread

The 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.

hedora2mo ago

Stockpiling 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.

dgroshev2mo ago

Being able to stockpile is not the goal, it's a pre-requisite. Having a serious manufacturing capability helps to scale, but you can't convert an iphone assembly line to ballistic missile interceptors, and especially when you don't produce the interceptors at some low rate. There is a lot of technology and know-how that goes into those capabilities, and both get lost if they aren't exercised.

But that means either trashing the output in a few months (emulating Ukraine), or being able to stockpile.

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151552mo ago

> 33% of Iran’s cruise missile stockpiles

Which cruise missiles are you referring to?

modzu2mo ago· 3 in thread

christ, sounds like mcnamara. the americans killed north vietnamese faster than they killed americans, so how come they lost?

defrost2mo ago

Because the North Vietnamese were not bombing and destroying American home soil schools, apartment blocks, utilities, etc. on a daily basis.

Lacking any real home soil peer citizen engagement the US saw the Vietnam War as a costly pointless loss of money, resources, and life on the far side of the planet.

The Ukrainians are somewhat more engaged.

pjc502mo ago

The difference is, as the other comment points out, the Americans could have (and eventually did) leave South Vietnam any time they wanted with no negative consequences. It was a pure war of choice.

Everyone on the Ukranian side knows that their options are: victory, death, a deeply miserable time in a POW camp, or abandoning their life and becoming a refugee. Regardless of what your rank or social status is.

tim3332mo ago

Different situation. The Americans were killing Vietnamese in Vietnam. There was a near unlimited number of those, including innocent ones.. The Ukrainians are killing Russian soldiers in Ukraine. There's a limited number and if they don't like it they could go back to Russia.

It's rough on the killed soldiers but that's really Putin's fault - I think he was basically the only one who wanted the war. Most Russians looked horrified.

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