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Comment by linearithmic | Hacker News Reader

I'd be curious about forecaster estimates of monetary damages from the drone strikes.

I did briefly look into how much the estimated $7B was as a proportion of GDP: 7B/2T = 0.35% of GDP, which feels like a lot. For 41 planes it'd be $170M per plane, which seems reasonable when compared to US bombers, but unclear for Russian ones, but my guess is it's not too far off. This source (https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20250601-ukraine-says-it-...) says $2B for the planes alone, but then you also had the airbases &c, and maybe a submarine base <https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/major-explosion-hits-russian...>. I'd still expect it to be a bit exaggerated for propaganda effects, but it does seem reasonable all in all.

Possible, but seems high to me. I'm not sure if those planes were really destroyed or just damaged. My knee-jerk estimate would be somewhere in the hundreds of millions. Still a very successful operation by Ukraine though.

The explosions seem to have blown one wing off of the planes. That's not destroyed - the main fuselage is there, and the other wing is attached - but it's in need of a major rebuild. I suspect that it's a factory-only level of rebuild, but I don't actually know.

It's at least months to years before they're operation again, or years to decades until the factory can make that many new ones.

> not destroyed - the main fuselage is there, and the other wing is attached - but it's in need of a major rebuild

> months to years before they're operation again

Good point!

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