alt Hacker NewsA $100k interceptor to save a $10 million critical facility against a $10k Shahed is a bargain. You saved $9.9 million dollars.
Interceptor economics makes more sense when you reason about the bigger picture. The point is to buy you time to remove the supply chain and the stocks so that you're not trading 1:1 forever. It's a stop-gap, or at least it's supposed to be.
However that only works in a war where you have air and informational superiority. In a peer-like conflict with information asymmetries and air parity (no way to remove the opponent's industrial base), such as Ukraine-Russia, the intercept economics are less appealing.
Replies
> A $100k interceptor to save a $10 million critical facility against a $10k Shahed is a bargain. You saved $9.9 million dollars.
Sure until they send 200 Shaheds at a night. Another another 200 next night and so on.
A $100k interceptor to save a $10 million critical facility against a $10k Shahed is a bargain. You saved $9.9 million dollars.
Your enemy probably isn't sending one drone.
With interceptors that cost the defender $100k/unit and shaheds that cost the attacker $10k/unit, over time the attacker can bankrupt the defender if the target is something the defender cannot afford to lose. Sometimes it takes several interceptors to eliminate the threat. Therefore part of the focus in the design of interceptors is to keep their unit cost low. The unit cost of the first versions of shaheds may have been $10k; more recent models that fly higher, are equipped with a jet engine, more sophisticated electronics, cameras etc. are significantly more expensive. To the point it's not clear to me, of Ukraine or Russia, who pays the higher price during a mass attack at the moment.