Hacker News Reader

Comment by verdverm | Hacker News Reader

One only needs to look to Ukraine for how this might play out in the long-run, remixed a bit.

1. Neither side has been unable to stop the other from mass producing drones. Too easy to build in small facilities, whack-a-mole scenario.

2. Interceptors will become depleted, more "squeakers" will get through as time goes on.

Some graphs: https://bsky.app/search?q=ukraine+drone+graph

View on HN

Not these drones. Factories are in fact HUGE, very far away and staffed by scammed migrants and children. Yelabuga is ~1000 miles from Ukraine.

https://www.euronews.com/2025/07/21/russia-ramps-up-drone-pr...

African women tricked into making Russian drones https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdrzdpre058o

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/07/25/europe/russia-secretive-d...

Ukraine managed to hit it couple of times, but they would need tens of Tomahawks to properly deal with the place

https://english.nv.ua/russian-war/drones-hit-yelabuga-in-tat...

Ukraine war: Deepest Ukraine drone attack into Russian territory injures 12 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68712158

It's important to separate the short range quadcopters that are easily built in small workshops from the long distance winged drones that can weigh several hundred pounds (like the Shahed drones).

The latter, as they're built by Russia currently, require a decent size facility to build en mass. It's not the kind of thing Hamas could build in their tunnel system, for example.

I agree with your second point that interceptors will become depleted though and this is a serious problem.

Ukraine is building long range drones as well. Look to the strike stats inside Russia, many well over 1000km.

The IRGC is significantly more resourced than Hamas, building enough to fire off 100s a week should be no issue for them. They can build ballistic missiles, they twice struck an oil refinery in Bahrain today: https://bsky.app/profile/elhamfakhro.bsky.social/post/3mgd5o...

I agree, it would be hard to stop Iran from producing a significant number of long range drones (hard to stop it from getting the parts it needs when it route them through the Stans or the Caspian sea).

Note that neither Ukraine or Russia have air supperiority. It would be much harder for IRGC to build and launch hundreds of drones with basically predators stalking the sky & strikes from manned jets availalbe on short order.

Until the ammo runs dry, those birds in the sky need something to fire, and contrary to what dear leader says, we don't have a forever supply and usage is significantly above production.

I don't think it is realistically possibly to run out of JDAMs.

Fight fire with fire. Anti-drone drones that are near cost parity. Or make some investments to develop, cheap, mobile, relatively short ranged point-defense systems. A middle ground between CWIS and CROWS or a CROWS-like system optimized for drone defense. The engagement distance will be close, but it turns the asymmetry back around.

This is what Ukraine is doing, but it will always be imperfect. Shahed style drones don't fly a straight path. Ukraine has built out an auditory detection network using cheap phones, has mobile response teams for different types of incoming threats, yet it is still not enough.

Given the resources we are using today, while still seeing drones and ballistics get through, does not bode well for a 100% reliable system.

>Search is currently unavailable when logged out

Do you have any specific links?

noted, hope they change this logged out thing with the upcoming search update

https://bsky.app/profile/cordhenning.bsky.social/post/3melao...

https://bsky.app/profile/emmanuellechaze.com/post/3lq5duclgi...

Is that a squeaker, or a squirter?

I think you are right that the more liquidy of the two is what Hegseth said

Reply on news.ycombinator.com