logoalt Hacker News

pjc50today at 4:00 PM2 repliesview on HN

> price floor is not dictated by the electronics (which did get cheaper), it's dictated by the rest of the system: propulsion, warheads, arming and safety, QA, traceability, climate and shelf life stability.

I wonder how much of that Ukraine is bothering with. Or Iran. Certainly Hezbollah are building down to a budget.


Replies

hermitcrabtoday at 4:35 PM

I wonder how many Hezbollah rocket operators get blown up by their own rockets? A not insignificant number, I suspect.

show 2 replies
dgroshevtoday at 4:41 PM

Ukraine does bother with all of that when they can afford it. I'd even say that FPV drones are the main exception, and only because Ukraine was so pressed for immediate results and had stockpiles to repurpose. There are only so many old RPG warheads you can reuse with a detonator made of live wires, and maiming your own launch crews because someone made a tiny wrong movement arming their thirtieth drone of the day under artillery fire gets old fast.

Hezbollah is a terrorist organisation, they don't need their contraptions to work reliably. GMLRS serves an entirely different purpose to rockets made of repurposed telephone poles, and is much more useful for a military force.

Also, don't forget the distances. Ukraine is fighting a war in their own country, with direct ground lines of communication to the frontline. On the other hand, you can fit three Ukraines just between Guam and Taiwan.

show 2 replies