alt Hacker News> will still be able to intercept drones cheaply
But likely not at the scale required to make a real dent. This is the problem with the "this new weapon will win the Russia-Ukraine war" mantra we've heard so often (Javelin, HIMARS, F-16, etc). Lots of very capable weapons have entered the fight, but at limited scale compared to Russia's enormous manpower and manufacturing advantage.
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tim333 • today at 8:13 PM
Ukraine have been intercepting ~90% of Russian drones which is a real dent.
They made about 100,000 interceptor drones in the last year.
Scale is the point. These things are a lot cheaper to build than the drones Russia is using to attack Ukraine. And Russia doesn't actually have a manufacturing advantage because the Western Europeans are helping Ukraine. Ukraine is making weapons in places Russia can't bomb like Poland, Finland, and Estonia with EU money using an EU workforce.
Last year Ukraine churned out more than three million drones, and is on track to triple that this year. The model upon which this particular drone is based costs about $3k, so they can make as many as they need.
Nobody is saying this will win the war. What I said is it will allow the Ukrainians to intercept Russian drones cheaply. This is already forcing the Russians to spend more on each drone to make them harder to intercept, which is a victory in itself. If you have to put $100k into your drones to make them effective, you're not manufacturing drones anymore. You're making comparatively expensive cruise missiles, and you can't launch them in the hundreds every day without going broke.