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Comment by onthecanposting | Hacker News Reader

Dollars aren't directly convertible to warmaking power. The factories and skilled labor that make weapons are a scarce resource that don't scale with mere market capitalization.

That the Russian Federation has a small fraction of US GDP but has launched more cruise missiles in a single conflict (~7500) than the US has ever produced (4000 tomahawks) is an important example of this.

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> That the Russian Federation has a small fraction of US GDP but has launched more cruise missiles in a single conflict (~7500) than the US has ever produced (4000 tomahawks) is an important example of this.

The US has built a lot more cruise missiles than just its Tomahawks [0], and the US has a less cruise missile dependent doctrine because it is heavily invested in acheiving air superiority and delivering smart glide bombs, and shorter-range missiles that are much cheaper.

[0] ~7500 Harpoons, some large number I can't readily pin down of SLAM (AGM-84E) and SLAM-ER (AGM-84H/K) developed from the Harpoon, ~2000 AGM-86, ~1600 AGM-129, 2000+ AGM-158, plus some more developed ans retired in the first half of the Cold War

The 7500 RU launched cruise missiles haven't achieved a tenth as much as the Tomahawks the US hit Iraq with. After that, Iraq didn't have a working integrated air defence any more.

The RU missiles have killed plenty of civilians though.

True, but it's possibly fair to argue that its easier to scale up cheap drone production, than production of interceptors.

At a certain point, US foreign policy tends to move from interceptors to flattening launch sites and key personnel.

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised.

The point is to have a deterrence gradient, so you always have (1) deescalate (lower), (2) match (proportionate), and (3) escalate (higher) responses, for any level of attack.

If there's a level at which you don't have all three options, there exist political situations that can leave you vulnerable.

E.g. if the US has no proportionate response to a Russian tactical nuclear strike on Ukrainian soil, it may hazard towards not escalating.

Similarly, why the talking points of US response strikes for the past few decades have generally been 'this was a proportionate response.'

But after the last warning to the Houthis, I expect the next ASBM or large drone that hits a civilian ship prompts a large US/UK (and maybe France and Germany) strike.

Does Germany actually have any significant strike capability in the region? The German military seems to have atrophied into more of a government jobs program than something which is actually combat effective. They've started rebuilding in response to Russian aggression but that process will take years.

With actual attacks on US warships. we’re actually past the point that usually occurs.

The point of these systems is that there's no launch site and it takes very little time to learn how to use them. The really key personnel are in Iran and very much difficult to assassinate (and easily replaced, too).

The drones are relatively light, cheap, and can be launched with nothing but springs and wood. There's no value in the launch locations and in fact you can launch them from anywhere.

Do keep in mind that Iraq had ancient SAMs (only about 75 of them) and practically zero ISR support. US coalition forces hit them hard from the get-go. Ukraine had/has several hundred modern(ish) SAMs with the ISR support of NATO. There's a reason the Russians don't fly too far into Ukraine.

The Ukrainian air defense was not even close to modern. It consisted largely of older S-300s, some Tor, Buk and Tunguska systems that were leftovers from the fall of the USSR. They had some even older systems (S-75, S-125, S-200). So this is largely 30+ years old, and not very well maintained.

Apparently the S-300s were maintained enough to spook the Russian AF. Also, there’s a variety of Western systems now.

I wouldn't be surprised if they've completely depleted their inventory of S-300 missiles (5V55KD). The Texeira leaks seemed to indicate they would run out by Summer/Fall of 2023, though with the supply of IRIS/Patriot/NASAMs etc, they might have reserved some of them.

S-300 is not really comparable in terms of capability to S-75 and S-125. There is a quantum leap between decentralized networked mobile IADS with a combination of radar types and missile types and Iraq's S-125 systems.

S-300 is still a very capable system today and 1990s' S-300 systems are only really a generation behind modern systems. They're about as recent as the systems on Ticonderogas and Arleigh Burkes that are very much still in service today.

Yeah, I wasn't really trying to compare S-300 to the older systems. Just that they were some of the systems Ukraine had or have brought back into service after the invasion.

S-300 (and S-400 which is really enhanced S-300) in their most modern configurations are incredibly lethal systems against 4th Gen aircraft that aren't accompanied by extensive SEAD/DEAD resources and jamming. But Ukraine has 1st generation S-300P, from the 80s. These might have been upgraded to S-300PT-1, giving them cold launch with the newer 5V55KD missiles.

Can’t believe the Ukrainian AF is still flying after 2 years - Wow

6 hours from Russia and they still can’t take them out

I think you might be conflating airforce with air defense. There’s not a lot of Ukrainian AF flights these days and when there is, it’s more often than not, one way (unfortunately) - and with loaned gear. It’s why they’re asking for F-16s and more AD.

It's hard to say that without having inside information. That Ukraine has managed to keep any of their aircraft flying in the face of far superior numbers is astounding. They are still managing to launch SCALP from SU-24m frequently (as frequently as the limited supply of these missiles allow). Considering they're probably outnumbered 5 to 1, that's either indicative of operational excellence on their part, or Russian inadequacy.

By their fruits you'll know them. If Russia was able to destroy the enemy like USA did with half the number of missiles - they absolutely would. But they can't (mostly because USA has system where it takes minutes from recognizing targets to destroying them, and in Russia it takes hours - so they can only hit stationary targets reliably), so they have to go into quantity instead.

Also USA use bombs much more often (because they could - because they obliterated the air defence in the first hours which Russia still can't do).

The US conducts war with a scalpel. Russia does it with a rusty hatchet. Those cruise missiles from Russia are (relatively speaking) very cheap and inaccurate.

In all recent US wars civilian casualties vastly outnumber military ones. In the Ukrainian war civilian casualties constitute less than 10% of overall casualties. Outstanding precision for a rusty hatchet.

Most recent US wars have spent most of their time in an asymmetric counterinsurgency phase, the Russo-Ukrainian war is (in style of warfare) basically a symmetric force-on-force international war.

These have very different dynamics, inherently.

We also don't know the full extent of civilian casualties.

This reads like propaganda. The US military does a fine job of destroying entire countries

It's actually worse. I read this as Russia accidentally hits civilians because they have no choice where as we do it with intention.

Russia hitting civilians isn’t really accidental. They’re quite happy to terrorize the population, and are quite comfortable deliberately committing atrocities (see Bucha, et al). Flattening whole cities is longstanding practice of theirs, too; it’s largely how they won Chechnya 2.

At best, their weapons aren’t terribly precise and they don’t particularly care about that.

Using cruise missiles to terrorise civilian population will be incredibly stupid move. Hits into houses are usually accidental. If you want to terrorise civilian population, it's so much cost effective to use cheaper unguided rockets from MLRS systems or artillery shells. You have this news in your echo chamber, haven't you?

It's not that more precise weapons are being used to target civilians, it's just that if they miss the target, the Russians aren't really heartbroken about it. There's plenty of examples of "precision" weapons hitting apartment buildings, train stations, hospitals, schools, etc. I don't think those are targeted specifically, just that any carelessness isn't considered a bug.

But the "echo chamber" framing you use for what's at best a nitpick/misinterpretation of what I said, that says so much more about you and your own biases than anything about me.

> if they miss the target, the Russians aren't really heartbroken about it.

Something like 90% of deaths by US military are civilians, and huge chunk of that is women and children. This isn't a uniquely Russian thing.

> but whatabout

Setting aside the numbers you've opted to pull out of your ass, there's absolutely no comparison between how the US wages war vs the Russians. Your attempt at drawing an equivalence is ignorant, at best. Just stop.

It isn't whataboutism to point out the propaganda-like language being used when the higher level comment this descends from is about propaganda-sounding language. There is so much endless Russian boogyman shit flying around and while yes, the Russian invasion is horrific and awful, and it's massively frustrating for people to be so overwhelmingly critical of it being Russian specific while completely ignorant of the US having done things that look almost identical for 30+ years.

Claiming these bad things as Russian specific is flat out wrong, harmful to the discourse, and massively lacking awareness.

You also make a claim with zero support. Here's mine:

The 90% number is a pretty accurate number for modern wars in general: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/30823/qc7809568enc.pdf (ctrl F 90%)

For Iraq specifically, the number calculated by one group is 77% civilians: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio#Iraq_W...

Google for yourself, there's tons of information to corroborate this. Other US wars have much worse figures.

Your tone is frustrating especially given the appearance of hypocrisy when calling someone ignorant when there's easily verifiable evidence if you put in any effort to look. I don't see the need to be nasty to me like that especially when your bold black and white claim is so very clearly wrong.

whatabout, but in more words

"the Russians aren't really heartbroken about it" - I don't understand this. How you can make such assumptions about hearts? Definitely there is a grief from common Russian people and denial of willingness from Russian propaganda. I don't know if Putin personally "heartbroken" and neither do you.

Artillery and MLRS is being used for that purpose in places where Ukrainian cities are within range. But that does not apply to most of the country.

Given that Russia has openly talked about targeting civilian infrastructure to "freeze them out" (and then tried to pull that off last winter), I think you should be rather careful with your assertions about others' echo chambers...

Yes, Russia army attacked electric infrastructure, that's common knowledge. No, there is no use of precision weapons to willingly attack apartment houses, that's definitely a lie.

There is a lot of cases of Ukrainian army to use indiscriminate and "dumb" weapons to attack civilian districts of Donetsk (and now, Belgorod) just to terrorize population.

The use is terrorism, of course. Breaking the will of the population is very much a war strategy, and it has been tried before (notably in WW2). If you believe that it is effective, there's no reason why precision weapons can't be used for that purpose if that's the only thing you have that can reach and hit.

And, sure, the Ukrainian attack on Belgorod is similarly problematic. But if you're willing to go there, how many attacks have Russia carried in the same time period?

I advise you to educate yourself. The US killed 300 thousand civilians in the second Iraq war using their 'precision' strikes. That compares to 10 thousand civilians who died so far in the Ukrainian war. Both of these numbers are provided by the US gov itself.

> Both of these numbers are provided by the US gov itself.

URL? that's got to be super interesting data.

Wikileaks. Obviously US gov wouldn't say something like that publicly so you need to look into the leaked classified material.

Mosul, Fallujah, etc were quite bloody. You can't actually take cities cleanly, you can only win the propaganda war in your own sphere of influence.

Russian cruise missiles (true ones, not Shahed drones) are not cheap. Kalibrs cost around $6 million USD, KH-101s around $13 million. And both are quite accurate. The issue the Russians are facing isn't inaccurate cruise missiles, but a lack of accurate targeting data (combined with wanting to use them in terror attacks as opposed to degrading Ukraine's military capabilities.)

>Russia has launched more cruise missiles in a single conflict (~7500)

What is the source for that number? The only long-range weapons Russia has launched thousands of are the Iranian-made long-range suicide drones.

> The only long-range weapons Russia has launched thousands of are the Iranian-made long-range suicide drones.

They've also used lots of (mostly, IIRC, air launched) ballistic missiles and (conventional) cruise missiles. The reason there have been deep strikes by Ukraine on Russian bomber bases are because those bombers were used to fire long range missiles into Ukraine.

Though the “suicide drones”, while designed as loitering munitions, are basically used as propeller driven cruise missiles rather than in a loitering role.

I feel like your argument shows the opposite: there are significant economies of scale to making munitions. If we have to make a lot of interceptors, in the long run-- it's going to be much cheaper than it is currently.

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