Ukraine is game to you? Part deux.
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The rate and weight of fire an artillery battery can lay down is somewhat more than drones can bring to the party. Drone spotting + artillery strikes me as an effective way to certain things, like take out dismounted infantry. Hitting moving vehicles, not so much.
Also, Russia v. Ukraine is sort of a unique situation with a ton of caveats when trying to draw lessons for other armies that aren't fighting peer vs. peer land wars with almost no air dominance to either side.
Yeah hitting Pearl-Hickam the home of PACCOM that is one of the smartest things anyone could ever do.
uh. ok let me unpack this one for you right away and put a stop to this quick like.
Your idea of drones being the super duper kill everything thing in Ukraine? Wrong. It's not.
For the majority of the war drones were a small percentage of combat deaths in fact the biggest killer was artillery and still is one of the largest proportions by far. The reason drones have taken over lately? Everyone on the ground is trying to paint a rosy picture about it, pushing the "look our shitty FPV drones are causing masses of casualties now!" or the Russian side with all their shitty Shaheds, but that is hiding the simple truth, the lack of artillery shells, barrels, atacms, M31/M31A1/M31A2s
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/03/world/europe/ukraine-russia-war-drones-deaths.html
If you read between the lines of what this article says e.g.
and
I can promise you all the smart military planners ARE NOT learning any new lessons here on how drones will replace everything, what they are learning is how drones are and can be a force multiplication tool for a lot of units but mostly that this war proved the 1990's theories right, that a peer LSCO is going to be EW heavy and for us to harden our ISR datalinks.
The underlying assumptions to support this
1. Russia is not a peer to any NATO force full stop.
2. Russia is only a peer force to Ukraine.
3. Both sides have been constrained by their own degraded and minimal capabilities. Hence their pivot towards drones but even they admit it they don't make a difference where it matters.
What this told me after the peace dividend and GWOT our logistics in NATO went to shit.
NATO Stockpiles Are a Mirage: The fact that three years of fighting "nearly emptied" the arsenals of NATO nations shows a catastrophic disconnect between peacetime planning/production and wartime consumption.
The Drone Gap is a Production Gap: Drones are filling a vacuum that our complex, expensive, and slow-to-produce artillery shells and missile production lines simply could not satisfy. The 70% casualty rate is less a celebration of drone effectiveness and more a reflection of the necessity to substitute cheap, mass-produced technology for the traditional, high-cost, high-margin defense systems.
The reported figure that "drones cause 70% of casualties" is a strategically misleading statistic that conceals the true scale and nature of battlefield lethality, serving as propaganda to manage domestic and allied perceptions.
They're also playing the "let's hide the real numbers behind percentages" game here.
Let me say it this way.
Russia is not a peer of ANY NATO member state.
Russia IS a peer to Ukraine.
Don’t know how it works for other NATO members, but a WAPO article some time ago on artillery production revealed what appears to be an antiquated process. Perhaps more nimble nations such as Ukraine—who have experienced the threat first-hand—will be making much-needed process upgrades.
Also everyone's moving around in super small groups all the time, and expending an artillery shell on like three guys is hard to justify.
The big thing drones have done is increase the amount of information going into battlefield management systems, which is why everyone's travelling in small groups because around zones of contact like Pokhrovsk everyone can see everything all the time because there are so many drones flying constantly.
The most dangerous thing a drone can have on is a camera. An explosive is only the second most dangerous thing.
The US is updating the production processes but it is running into issues. Basically the US has a bunch of huge plants that make a single item at scale but are horribly inefficient when run at anything than peak output. The new lines are designed to be more flexible but are running into teething problems.
No it's plenty easy to justify, artillery shells at peak output from the factories make them dirt cheap.
The Not actually a problem for us but is a giant one for Ukraine is we don't do attritional warfare.
We just know it's smarter to lob an SDB onto the forehead of the nearest enemy General and disconnect all of the thousands of soldiers from the C2
Do you guys know what would happen to the UK? or say Germany if Russia invaded? Hell even Poland, lets just play a lets pretend here. This is the UK after the many years of the peace dividend and then GWOT so we've massively focused on light infantry and all that shit as we did. Also let's pretend we have a land border with them too.
Well:
Week 1. All the Russian generals are dead. We unleash massive counter offensive EW, ISR and Air superiority and fucking splatter the fuck out of logistics nodes, comms nodes, and all of the OpFor C4ISR capabilities.
Week 2. Mopping up: We now have hundreds of thousands of lost, hungry, russian soldiers wondering around the British countryside and slowly the army collects them all up and moves the abandoned gear around.
Week 3. What the fuck are we going to do with all these Russian POWs who don't want to go home? Wait what? Our POW camps are better than their lives back home full stop? Even the ones in Rotherham and Bleanau Gwent? Holy Fuck.
Did I mention artillery or FPV drones at any point at all?
No.
There's a reason why.
Because it's over so fast there was no need or time to make home brew drones to make up for the capability gap of having an actually decent military.
Well:
Week 1. All the Russian generals are dead. We unleash massive counter offensive EW, ISR and Air superiority and fucking splatter the fuck out of logistics nodes, comms nodes, and all of the OpFor C4ISR capabilities.
Week 2. Mopping up: We now have hundreds of thousands of lost, hungry, russian soldiers wondering around the British countryside and slowly the army collects them all up and moves the abandoned gear around.
Week 3. What the fuck are we going to do with all these Russian POWs who don't want to go home? Wait what? Our POW camps are better than their lives back home full stop? Even the ones in Rotherham and Bleanau Gwent? Holy Fuck.
Did I mention artillery or FPV drones at any point at all?
No.
There's a reason why.
Because it's over so fast there was no need or time to make home brew drones to make up for the capability gap of having an actually decent military.
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Another reason that NATO countries need fewer artillery rounds is that their artillery crews can actually aim. Russia started with a stockpile of 20 million rounds, they are manufacturing 3 million rounds per year, and have imported another 6.5 million from North Korea. That means that they've fired of somewhere in the vicinity of 40 million rounds. A while back, Ukraine reported that they've taken about 400k casualties. They've undoubtedly lost more people since then, but not all casualties are from artillery. That gives an average of less than one casualty per 100 rounds fired. By contrast, we should expect an average NATO artillery crews to have a hit rate of 30-50%, and each hit would typically cause more than one casualty. That's why we don't need to stockpile tens of millions of rounds.
That used to be true and for a moment, yeah Excalibur, SDB etc were amazeballs.
Then EW took out GPS and they kept missing. The theory - you can strike everyone with pinpoint precision from afar, doesn't always match reality. INS quickly accumulates errors and in a few minutes your CEP is much bigger than a plain artillery shell.
Sure some weapons have radar terrain contour mapping and other non GPS guidance but that is also way less accurate. Think tens of meters CEP to "terrain is featureless, we crashed into a different country" with some Tomahawk missiles in Iraq.
Everyone learned from Ukraine and I wouldn't expect GPS to work reliably as guidance from now on. Russia used it to deny western weapons, Ukraine used it to make Kinzhal miss, everyone has them and China etc will make sure to blanket their bases with EW. Satellite based systems are super weak and easy peasy to wreck.
That's because they weren't designed with it originally because of GWOT, you think there hasn't been hardening ongoing and planned fixes, also you talk about Russian capabilities and think we don't have SEAD/DEAD or our own EW and ESM capabilities? Which are going to be complete overmatch at a level beyond Russian comprehension we're talking mutiple orders of magnitude.
I said it. Here.
Stop acting like the UK is Ukraine, I know we share the same two starting letters in our name but that's where all similarities end. Especially military capabilities.
Russia is generally understood to have superior EW and ESM compared to NATO.
EDIT -
https://icds.ee/en/russias-electron...lenging-nato-in-the-electromagnetic-spectrum/
Executive Summary
• Russia’s Armed Forces’ electronic warfare (EW) capability development will pose a serious
challenge to the proper planning and execution of NATO’s defence of the Baltic states, and
NATO’s entire Eastern Flank, in the event of a Russian assault. This capability is an integral part
of Russia’s anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) approach and is clearly tailored to target NATO’s
C4ISR.
• Russia’s growing technological advances in EW will allow its forces to jam, disrupt and interfere
with NATO communications, radar and other sensor systems, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)
and other assets, thus negating advantages conferred on the Alliance by its technological edge.
Be it in the air, maritime, land or cyber domains, NATO will encounter an increasingly capable
adversary focused on developing and deploying a vast array of EW systems as “force enablers
and multipliers”. Many of those systems are being introduced in units across all services
stationed in Western Military District (MD) adjacent to NATO’s borders.
• Moscow’s interest in boosting EW capabilities vis-à-vis NATO has its origins in seeking to
asymmetrically challenge the Alliance on Russia’s periphery and maximise its chances of
success in any operation against NATO’s eastern members. Russia has consistently invested in
EW modernisation since 2009, with modernised EW systems entering service across strategic,
operational and tactical levels to augment capabilities of all service branches and arms.
Modernisation of the EW inventory is set to continue in the State Armaments Programme up to
2025, which means Russia’s military will benefit greatly from further advances in EW capability.
Or have your favorite LLM summarize this panel discussion:
https://www.csis.org/events/russias-electronic-warfare-capabilities-2025
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Yes, that's easy, but honestly, GPS jamming is rarely the problem. The problem is GPS spoofing. Theoretically, you can home on that too, but you have to realize your being spoofed first, and that's much less clear.
Those two specific reports, particularly the original September 18, 2017 ICDS one and January 29, 2018 CSIS discussions, represent the peak of the pre-2022 Western intelligence consensus
These reports focused heavily on the theoretical capabilities of showcase systems (Krasukha-4, Murmansk-BN) and Russia's stated doctrine, which was a core component of Moscow's deterrence propaganda but lacked operational verification.
They failed to account for the systemic corruption and C2 rigidity that underpinned the entire Russian military. The EW capability was assessed as a standalone technology, ignoring the human and logistical plumbing required to make it functional, sustained, and adaptive in combat.
They did not foresee the massive attrition of high-value systems and specialized personnel that a protracted, modern war would inflict, compounded by the inability of the sanctioned industrial base to replace critical microelectronic components.
I've talked in depth about Russian military incomptence at length and in depth here before and other threads. The search function exists.
Keywords Serdyukov, Dedovshchina by user Hangfire
YAWN.
We're now in 2025 and well my laughter and spit take tell you all you need to know about my assessment of Russian EW capabilities.
These reports focused heavily on the theoretical capabilities of showcase systems (Krasukha-4, Murmansk-BN) and Russia's stated doctrine, which was a core component of Moscow's deterrence propaganda but lacked operational verification.
They failed to account for the systemic corruption and C2 rigidity that underpinned the entire Russian military. The EW capability was assessed as a standalone technology, ignoring the human and logistical plumbing required to make it functional, sustained, and adaptive in combat.
They did not foresee the massive attrition of high-value systems and specialized personnel that a protracted, modern war would inflict, compounded by the inability of the sanctioned industrial base to replace critical microelectronic components.
I've talked in depth about Russian military incomptence at length and in depth here before and other threads. The search function exists.
Keywords Serdyukov, Dedovshchina by user Hangfire
YAWN.
We're now in 2025 and well my laughter and spit take tell you all you need to know about my assessment of Russian EW capabilities.
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Russia and China had plenty of time learning about western weapons drip fed to Ukraine.
If it was released all at once a few years ago, they wouldn't have a chance. Instead, every new weapon system was amazing then defeated a few months later.
Paradoxically, it's the new stuff that quits working. Old expensive radar terrain or visually guided ones sort of work. Excalibur, first fielded in 2007, and SBD, 2008, are the first to fail.
SDB home on jam capability is mentioned on Wikipedia. In practice, I don't see any hits mentioning it and usage stopped, it's probably ineffective. Reality vs marketing.
More critical is Russia learning to defeat Patriot. Wiggle and the full auto mode misses way more often, who would have thought. The west now has a place where they can test their counter-countermeasure but for now, Russia is ahead. But it seems like we are just drip feeding there too, and send old shit instead of state of the art prototypes. Oh well.
If it was released all at once a few years ago, they wouldn't have a chance. Instead, every new weapon system was amazing then defeated a few months later.
Paradoxically, it's the new stuff that quits working. Old expensive radar terrain or visually guided ones sort of work. Excalibur, first fielded in 2007, and SBD, 2008, are the first to fail.
SDB home on jam capability is mentioned on Wikipedia. In practice, I don't see any hits mentioning it and usage stopped, it's probably ineffective. Reality vs marketing.
More critical is Russia learning to defeat Patriot. Wiggle and the full auto mode misses way more often, who would have thought. The west now has a place where they can test their counter-countermeasure but for now, Russia is ahead. But it seems like we are just drip feeding there too, and send old shit instead of state of the art prototypes. Oh well.
What? Dude, are you ok? I... what? I don't even understand you at this point.
Not really. Put one antenna pointing upwards, one downwards, and an insulator in between. If the signal strength from the antenna pointing downwards is stronger than the one pointing upwards, you're being spoofed.
The point is that western superiority and NATO/US invincibility is rapidly declining. Patriot is the end boss for missile attacks. Russia learnt to work against it, just like any other weapon system. FT:
Russian missile upgrade outpaces Ukraine’s Patriot defences - https://on.ft.com/4ntwp0n via FT
6% interception rate is almost at the point of don't even bother. This means any static asset - air and army bases, nuclear or conventional, can't be assumed to be safe. In a first strike from Russia, the Patriot systems stationed there, with operators that have way less experience than the ones in Kyiv, will have well, maybe 6% chance per interceptor of hitting something, probably much less.
I'm not saying that NATO would lose, just that some of the tech magic we had is much less effective now. They are still attacking on motorbikes and Ladas, no way they make it across Poland, but still, if they want to bomb you, they will hit something. And the other way around, the thinking that we would just flatten everything with pinpoint accuracy from afar, remains to be tested. SCALP scores nice hits once in a while, so does ATACMS, but the year of the HIMARS* is over for example - no GPS, no hit.
* So everyone placing big orders on HIMARS missiles and launchers are buying defeated tech. Maybe you can use it to pester some smaller opponents but China definitely will have a distributed GPS spoofing network nudging you off course, and the power required, fraction of a milliwatt, is too low for a homing beacon.
Of course there are plans to sell rockets with inertial/terrain-coupled, radar-seeker, and anti-radiation seekers, in the future, so the launcher purchase isn't totally wasted, but still, it's Russia 1 - HIMARS 0 until upgrades.
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Dude you know we have THAAD too and the shit we're sending Ukraine is our offcasts, we're NOT giving them the best. I have literally zero idea where you're getting this, even our Patriot batteries going over are the older ones with the older interceptors.
Yes we are sending limited numbers of PAC-3 but most of the Ukraine inventory is PAC-2
The older PAC-2 missiles use a blast-fragmentation warhead designed to explode near the target. These are less effective against the highly maneuverable, terminally diving Russian missiles.
The PAC-3 MSE uses "hit-to-kill" technology, which destroys the target through direct kinetic impact. This is the only reliable way to neutralize a warhead during complex, terminal maneuvers.
By sending a mix of older and newer systems, NATO is providing Ukraine with just enough PAC-3 MSE capability to achieve critical intercepts (like the Kinzhal missile) while preserving the bulk of the stock for the defense of NATO territory against a potential peer conflict.
Lockheed Martin is currently ramping up production, aiming for a peak of 650 to 750 PAC-3 MSEs per year by 2027
However, the demand is enormous, with allies like Poland alone contracting for 644 PAC-3 MSE missiles. The total US inventory of the PAC-3 MSE is only about 1,600
So given the low inventory and extremely high global demand (especially from the Indo-Pacific and Eastern Europe), the US cannot afford to ship large quantities of its newest and best interceptors to Ukraine without jeopardizing its own strategic defense posture and the security of critical allies.
But the FT article doesn't understand this and it's patently obvious that you don't either. So... They simply don't get the idea of strategic inventory tiering, Ukraine is important yes for Europe, but not THAT important for the world as far as the US see's it.
It's funny you mention HIMARS and M270 and ATACMS but forget that it was phased out for PrSM. Which is half the size of an ATACMS, better range, warhead and seeker improvements too and also the upgrades of M270 and HIMARS with the CFCS /A2/Mod1/Mod2 standards now, but go on... keep trying to tell me I should be impressed with Russia
Yes we are sending limited numbers of PAC-3 but most of the Ukraine inventory is PAC-2
The older PAC-2 missiles use a blast-fragmentation warhead designed to explode near the target. These are less effective against the highly maneuverable, terminally diving Russian missiles.
The PAC-3 MSE uses "hit-to-kill" technology, which destroys the target through direct kinetic impact. This is the only reliable way to neutralize a warhead during complex, terminal maneuvers.
By sending a mix of older and newer systems, NATO is providing Ukraine with just enough PAC-3 MSE capability to achieve critical intercepts (like the Kinzhal missile) while preserving the bulk of the stock for the defense of NATO territory against a potential peer conflict.
Lockheed Martin is currently ramping up production, aiming for a peak of 650 to 750 PAC-3 MSEs per year by 2027
However, the demand is enormous, with allies like Poland alone contracting for 644 PAC-3 MSE missiles. The total US inventory of the PAC-3 MSE is only about 1,600
So given the low inventory and extremely high global demand (especially from the Indo-Pacific and Eastern Europe), the US cannot afford to ship large quantities of its newest and best interceptors to Ukraine without jeopardizing its own strategic defense posture and the security of critical allies.
But the FT article doesn't understand this and it's patently obvious that you don't either. So... They simply don't get the idea of strategic inventory tiering, Ukraine is important yes for Europe, but not THAT important for the world as far as the US see's it.
It's funny you mention HIMARS and M270 and ATACMS but forget that it was phased out for PrSM. Which is half the size of an ATACMS, better range, warhead and seeker improvements too and also the upgrades of M270 and HIMARS with the CFCS /A2/Mod1/Mod2 standards now, but go on... keep trying to tell me I should be impressed with Russia
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Citation required. The claim is that the battery has trouble establishing an intercept point, due to terminal dive and abrupt high G manouvre in the last phase. How is hit to kill any help, it still needs to hit. I have found zero sources that claim PAC-3 has improved reliability against agile targets.
THAAD is not a magic missile shield, it is designed against ballistic threats. Ballistic missiles go really fucking fast as primary defense, and being untouchable high most of the flight, but now they wiggle. From
https://euro-sd.com/2025/09/articles/armament/46457/hypersonic-weapon-interceptor-developments/
About hypersonic cruise / glide missiles:
So, maybe in THAAD 6.0, definitely not deployed yet. So no, THAAD can't hit maneuvering targets right now even if they are ballistic, and definitely not cruise missiles like Kinzhal as they fly below 40 km altitude and the interceptor can't hit anything that low.
What could work, too bad they are out of ammo:
SAMP/T and the Aster interceptors are specialized in agile targets. Sea skimming missiles, things with fins and fly funny paths.
Ukraine is one big testing ground for missile and drone tech right now. Russia is gaining experience at a scary pace. They may be badly hurt but they still have some top tier R&D, upgrading Iskander and Kinzhal to "future tech" level of agility and fooling a prime AD weapon system, even if it is older spec. If their missile can pull more Gs than Patriots, even if the fancier radar can see / predict its current path, the intercepter will still miss.
SAMP/T and the Aster interceptors are specialized in agile targets. Sea skimming missiles, things with fins and fly funny paths.
Ukraine is one big testing ground for missile and drone tech right now. Russia is gaining experience at a scary pace. They may be badly hurt but they still have some top tier R&D, upgrading Iskander and Kinzhal to "future tech" level of agility and fooling a prime AD weapon system, even if it is older spec. If their missile can pull more Gs than Patriots, even if the fancier radar can see / predict its current path, the intercepter will still miss.
Yes and there are multiple ways to mitigate the maneuvering advantage in how the interceptors are used.
Ukraine doesn't have enough interceptors, so I assume they are keeping them for higher value target defense. Which means a much lower rate of interception.
Sucks, sure. But that's how it is.
Yes, if you design and build a system to do it, it's quite possible. But, if your hardware isn't designed for such detection, it's much less obvious than jamming.
That's a good point. At least, assuming that the keys are actually secure, that does make spoofing very difficult.
This post has a good counter to the Financial Times piece.
This tells me you don't understand how these systems work. They establish a large "basket" so that the interceptor can see the target and intercept. A PIP is simply the center of that volume.
You're kidding right? That would have been a colossal waste of money to develop THAAD if it couldn't hit maneuvering targets (hint - it CAN hit maneuvering targets). Hitting maneuvering targets is why kill vehicles have a fair amount of propellant and can generate significant delta-v.
Can an incoming missile maneuver enough to generate a miss? Sure, sometimes - but it's not magic. If an intercept had enough delta-v to intercept before the changes, it has enough to hit after and you can update interceptor software just as easily as Russia updates its missile software. You're not changing physics here.
Interceptors are not perfect, but they aren't suddenly rendered obsolete by an offensive missile software update either.
This tells me you don't understand how these systems work. They establish a large "basket" so that the interceptor can see the target and intercept. A PIP is simply the center of that volume.
You're kidding right? That would have been a colossal waste of money to develop THAAD if it couldn't hit maneuvering targets (hint - it CAN hit maneuvering targets). Hitting maneuvering targets is why kill vehicles have a fair amount of propellant and can generate significant delta-v.
Can an incoming missile maneuver enough to generate a miss? Sure, sometimes - but it's not magic. If an intercept had enough delta-v to intercept before the changes, it has enough to hit after and you can update interceptor software just as easily as Russia updates its missile software. You're not changing physics here.
Interceptors are not perfect, but they aren't suddenly rendered obsolete by an offensive missile software update either.
M-code is pretty new in military terms and a lot of systems have not been updated to use it. The original encrypted signal was Y-code (which is just encrypted P-code). I will admit far more familiarity with C/A, P and Y code than the newer M-code. I was intimately involved with the former's use in missiles, but moved away from that aspect quite a while a go.
You talking about A, P and Y codes, is making my eyeball twitch and a chill in my occipital as I hear those two damn syllables in my head ITAR ITAR ITAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRR
It's all public.
There is a hell of a lot of unclassified stuff I would like to say, but will not because I don't know if it's public or not.
Not all of them. You leave the conspicuously incompetent ones alive.
Yeah but who would buy "gas station masquerading as a country" nukes. Like buying actual gas station food.
It just mean US is switching from continuous process (cheapest to produce at certain capacity) to smaller batch production process (more flexible but more expensive product). There is nothing antiquated on continuous production process, nor there is nothing modern in a batch process.
I only see two alternative suggestions
1. Hitting non protected targets - maybe? Kyiv is hit often enough and I bet there's a Patriot there.
2. Severe interceptor shortage - but as the article says, the shortage is not new. The dive in interception rate is. FTA:
So, a nothingburger of an article then, 2 alternative suggestions, 1 new to me, hitting lower value targets with BM is a reasonable but rather stupid idea, but none explains it away. I mean, the lessons and implications block literally says
And this is exactly what I was saying - Russia gets to test a fresh batch every few weeks and check if their tweak worked. Lockheed Martin, Raytheon needs Trump to say okay and someone to fund it before they can send over a new hardware patch. This asymmetry favors the Russians. But at least they get telemetry so it's not totally hopeless.
You like to throw out claims like they are obviously true without any supporting material. Care to drop a link?
What is known
PAC-3 MSE has a ring of 180 tiny solid fuel rocket motors near the nose for course correction. It has crazy agility, but no sustained Delta-V required to hit something that changed course and you are already at Mach 5+. The original intercept course must be valid and bring it near, it cannot chase.
THAAD is more like a conventional rocket. It has a Liquid Divert and Attitude Control System for control, but it doesn't do snap high g direction changes.
The problem
To intercept something, you need to pull 3-5x the G-force of the target.
PAC-3 could pull 100g+ for a split second, solid rocket motors in the nose are good for that, but you have limited shots, fire and it burns until it runs out, and you can't relight it. You don't want them to burn for too long either - you don't want to U-turn, so fuel per rocket is very limited. If you are lucky, you can hit one if it doesn't wiggle too much, but it sure sounds like a challenge.
THAAD has the fuel to correct, but its airframe and sensor loop are designed for smoother exo-atmospheric adjustments, not the violent 90g snaps required to counter a hypersonic jink inside the atmosphere.
THAAD has the disadvantage that it engages outside the atmosphere, or at least where air is thinner and fins won't help -> no fins. You can't nudge the nose and let the tail do the hard work, you need boosters big enough to dump Delta-V into course corrections. It is designed against mostly ballistic threats with 5-10g of agility, so ~40g total would easily defeat them (seems like a lot for liquid motors but probably the design spec, they know the x3 rule). Now Iskander / Kinzhal pulls 20-30g, THAAD as it is, is doomed, and v6.0 upgrade is moved up from 2032 to 2027. This alone signals the gap in capability, you don't rush an order (2032 to 2027) if all is well.
But THAAD is useless for a different, super simple reason: it has an operational floor of 40 km, below which its infrared seeker is blinded by air heating up the nose. It's for exoatmospheric interception, for real ballistic missiles. It launches using a booster, stage separation at t+17, wait a bit, and then ditch the shroud protecting the sensitive IR seeker when you reach 40000 meters or ~0.2% of sea pressure level or "flight level 1300".
Iskander, Kinzhal's paths peak at 50km and is specifically designed to fly mostly between 40-50km. It flies just high enough to be out of reach of lower tier systems but low enough that THAAD / SM-3 often cannot engage.
So, THAAD = no go by default. They found a nice gap in the missile defense.
Aster 30's PIF-PAF is designed to pull 60-100g continuously during the terminal phase, something PAC-2/3 cannot do, but we don't have enough of those.
There's also a second problem, you can't hit what you cannot track, and some trajectory changes are specifically meant to break the radar track - by moving outside "where it should be" and where the radar is looking. The 30g maneuver is meant to glitch outside the radar's search gate. To add insult to injury, each missile has up to 6 decoys with a thermal signature (for IR seekers), a thermal generator, active EW, and is probably shaped to reflect brighter or just as bright in the bands used for AD radars (easiest of all 3, enlarging radar cross section is far easier than minimizing it / stealth). Jerk, release 6 decoys and the radar blinks (loses contact, goes to wide beam) suddenly sees 7 things flying towards it and need to calculate new tracks. But this may be an easier fix than physics of the interceptor - it's an AESA, just program it to look wider and accept a fainter return, now you know it can and will glitch with 30g.
---
The fix in THAAD v6 is actually pretty simple in concept. Drive a Patriot M903 launcher next to the big THAAD system, plug it in. If stuff comes flying below the 40-50km minimum altitude, it can shoot a PAC-3 at it instead, but with much improved guidance and hopefully a better hit rate. It's stop gap, and explains why it can be fielded this quickly. By seeing the missile much earlier, you can track and hopefully predict its path faster, and with a much more powerful radar, you can scan wider to not lose track.
The real fix is a third layer - SM-3 kills in space (> 100km), THAAD > 40 km, SM-6 has a ceiling of 30km, Patriot 20km. Glide Phase Interceptor targets stuff in the 20-70 km range, so Iskander, Kinzhal, but also several of the Chinese not-quite-ballistic missiles with glide capability. But that's a 2029+ project, with remote sensing (Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor) as primary guidance, land/ship based radars can't see far enough because of the earth is a sphere.
Once it is deployed, you're golden. Ukraine knows where the damned Iskanders and Kinzhals are, there are plenty of maps with incomings including ballistics, but you can't hit them until the last 60 seconds and ~100km range. Spend a few seconds establishing target, calculating track and determining if it is a credible threat, and you have not much left for 20s flight time to intercept. Lose track once and you're almost too late. But with GPI, you can hit it in cruise and minutes earlier, and in a phase it cannot glitch, no air, fins don't work.
Ukraine sped this up. HBTSS was a science project with no deadline, then Russia launched a Zircon and scared US planners into action and got funding for it. GPI was aiming for mid 2030s deployment, and FY2024 NDAA mandate ordered initial operational capability by end of 2029. The race is on and we're reacting to already deployed weapons with future upgrades but once delivered, I don't see cruise missiles / low flying ballistics winning this, there's not much they can do except releasing decoys.
If you are wondering why not use SM-6 against Iskander - it uses fins to steer, but lacks the nose cone rocket motors of PAC-3, so it cannot pull that many G's. It still can't hit Kinzhal / Iskander during cruise, and in terminal dive phase, it's a big question if it can get near enough to blast it with its fragmentation warhead. Block IB with a bigger rocket motor is supposed to make it fly much higher and faster, possibly hitting these silly 40-50km missiles during the cruise phase, where they also cannot pull many g's due to lack of air. But that is another future upgrade and a much needed one, quasi ballistic missiles are a threat with no answer at sea.
Assuming you hit the target expending a dumb 155mm shell to take out three Russian conscripts is cost-effective even from a completely monstrous "it costs the Russian state more in signup-bonuses alone to reconstitute the fightiing strength" perspective.
Meanwhile, even Russian conscripts have training costs, the opportunity cost of a lifetime of earnings that now will remain unlived, and the human impact on their loved ones. For professional soldiers with 3+ years of experience a single Excalibur shell killing one such soldier is cost-effective even based on Russian standards.
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I’m not going into details, for obvious reasons, and you can decline to believe me - I’m fine with that.
You are correct about some of THAAD’s limitations, but just to define terms. Exo >120km, so THAAD can do Endo as wells, just above a floor.
Also THAAD launchers can shoot PAC-3 MSEs now. No need for a Patriot launcher.
You are correct about some of THAAD’s limitations, but just to define terms. Exo >120km, so THAAD can do Endo as wells, just above a floor.
Also THAAD launchers can shoot PAC-3 MSEs now. No need for a Patriot launcher.
Meanwhile, the realistic solution for Ukraine is to share real time satellite data with them so they can hit the launcher with a 10k drone while the missile is still on the ground. We could do that now, for free...