How much money did russia burn in that attack? …and for what? To train Ukraine to be the best at air defense out of any nation on earth? This will never win the war for russia, no matter how many they send at Ukraine. This is a bullshit strategy meant to buy time.
edit I just did a back of the envelope calculation, russia spent probably at least ~50 million usd in drones alone in this attack not to mention the cost of logistics and staging, is this really a “cheap” strategy?
What did the ~50 million do for russia in terms of building true power? This is just desperate terrorism.
The point is OTHER NATIONS are not prepared for it.
Russia saturating OTHER NATIONS air defences this way would be catastrophic if done properly.
Only Ukraine is in a position to defend against it properly and come out the winner in $ terms.
You still aren’t addressing the problem that no amount of shaheds/flying bombs, no matter how great, can project even a gram of true power. All they do is kill, maim, temporarily break and terrify. That is NOT the same as projecting military power.
Shaheds don’t “invade”, that implies a sense of permanence on the battlefield they don’t possess, they don’t even really “fight”, all they do is “murder”.
I disagree. If Russia wasn’t a dumbfuck and targeted military assets of another neighbouring nation they could without a doubt saturate their air defences and take out very strategic targets which would make the following ground invasion easier.
Where is your evidence of this? I see none.
Evidence of what? That a Shahed is capable of hitting a military target instead of a apartment complex?
Of course it can, you’d have to be an idiot to think that’s not possible, but the military complex is better defended so it’s more likely to get shot down, using EXPENSIVE missiles because people aren’t taking action on what is happening in Ukraine and building drones to fight these things.
You think you can’t over saturate the air defences? Of course that’s possible, you just need enough drones to do it.
They’re already struggling in the middle east to deal with what Iran is sending because they are unprepared, and they are asking Ukraine for help.
They’ve used almost 1000 patriot missiles in the Iran war already, that’s almost 4 BILLION dollars lost, and you think they could effectively defend against 10x this 1 attack that Russia sent, and that spending 500 million to destroy more than 4 billion (it would be way more) is a waste?
Edit: And like WTF. UKRAINE is using drones to hit military targets and seriously hurting Russia, like dude, it’s possible. If Russia wasn’t fighting Ukraine they could stock pile 10k drones so easily.
Not really, the entire job of an Army is to not have an address you can look them up with and send a flying bomb too. It is a moving apparatus and therein lies the rub for an Air Force or Navy opposing it.
It is far easier to kill somebody living in a house, or a fire station or blow up a electrical substation, those don’t move.
Hitting a well defended, mobile Army? That is an entirely different ballgame and shaheds aren’t going to be especially effective in that environment. Sure you have frontline equivalents to the shahed, but once heavy machine guns and flak cannons come into the question shaheds are literally just target drones whether we are talking static or mobile contexts.
To put it another way, sure shaheds/flying bombs work but any counter your enemy invests in is eventually going to outpace you in power because your attacks are so inherently disposable yet costly in nature.
A combined arms defense/offense will almost always be more efficient than a “monoculture” flying bomb saturation strategy and it will be useful in a vastly broader array of contexts.
These are only some of the far more cost efficient counters that exist.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/03/24/british-troops-shoot-down-dozen-iranian-kamikaze-drones/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Precision_Kill_Weapon_System
https://www.army-technology.com/projects/l3harris-vampire-multi-purpose-weapon-system-usa/
https://www.missiledefenseadvocacy.org/defense-systems/marine-air-defense-integrated-system-madis/
https://www.dvidshub.net/video/1000630/12th-cab-aviators-explain-apache-effectiveness-counter-drone-operations
https://united24media.com/latest-news/tiny-baguette-sized-missile-poised-to-crush-russias-drone-advantage-13252
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martlet_(missile)
https://militarnyi.com/en/news/navy-mi-8-destroyed-12-shahed-drone-3-hours/
There is an important aspect missing here. A drone Army, can stand down, be put to rest in cold storage indefinitely, until called upon. Meanwhile software and accessories can improve in peacetime for pennies with plug and play retrofits. Even a limited production capability can build up to enourmous values over time. When called into service, a drone army goes into full force almost immediately with a charging, and a good dusting off.
Regular armies require constant training, practice, and cost enormously in peacetime and war. Skills get old, soldiers retire etc…
Let’s consider the evolutionary potential of dones with fully networked target discrimination and AI based targeting and piloting capabilities. Not even something novel, just the maturation of today’s existing tech. Drone doesn’t mean Shahed. Think drone tank. Drone planes Loitering drone munitions. Small one time pop-bots with limited raspberry pi zero computing don’t do much, but anti-drone drones get more ability. Think of the asymetrical terrorism possibility of a self driving Tesla/Waymo but now the “brains” get installed in a more militarized body.
Combined arms at the speed of computing. What if next gen shaheds don’t just pop once, but evolve to carry multiple payloads.
You bring up a lot of good points, but don’t let complacency define your concept of drone capabilities in the modern military in the very short term with off the shelf tech. This is the dawn of a new era, and capability of how “smart” anything can have in terms of hardware and software will be mathmatically optimized based on its purpose. Munitions like 1 and done kamikaze drones get relatively little, something like a tank gets full autodrive autoshoot AI etc… The distinction between drone missiles being shot from drone planes and beyond, across the combined arms paradigms is on our doorstep.
The total war imperative also gets a boost, because drone warfare becomes ultimately a competition of industrialization, vs deindustrializations. Can you build technology faster/cheaper and more effectively deployed than your adversary industrial capacity can defend. Civilian and military tagets can’t be easily distinguished. This is quite opposite of your “low barrier to entry with low labour and tech costs” points about shaheds.
What on earth makes you keep thinking I’m talking about Ukraine? That’s twice now you’ve done this.
I’m talking about how unprepared others are for this, and you’re acting like we’re prepared for this, while we have an active war going on where we are not prepared for drone warfare and they are asking Ukraine for help because of it.
Not all military targets are well defended bases either, but even Iran has hit US and partner military bases with drones.
What I have contention with is the idea that this is an unstoppable strategy, it is a dead end strategy to monomaniacally pursue flying bomb production as a method of building overwhelming force.
Yes Iran can use it to deny the Strait Of Hormuz. Ok, I just don’t think that actually proves as much as people think it does.
If Russia was stupid enough to attack Lithuania (or other baltic state) like people think might happen, if they have not prepared properly (as of today, they are not), they could overwhelm the air defences and take out more strategic value than the $500 million cost.
Edit: The only thing preventing that right now is the ongoing war in Ukraine, but if that ended, they could stockpile.
Edit: According to official Ukrainian data[1], the total number of Shahed-type UAVs launched by Russia in 2025 amounted to 54,538, including approximately 32,200 Shahed-type strike UAVs. https://isis-online.org/isis-reports/a-comprehensive-analytical-review-of-russian-shahed-type-uavs-deployment-against-ukraine-in-2025
Edit: Also I gotta go, won’t be around for awhile to continue this if it’s even worth continuing.