alt.hn

3/24/2026 at 1:00:38 PM

Missile defense is NP-complete

 https://smu160.github.io/posts/missile-defense-is-np-complete/

by O3marchnative

3/24/2026 at 1:32:01 PM

The author explains that this problem is actually adversarial, in the sense that the attacker gets to observe defenses and allocate warheads and decoys accordingly.

Thinking of our current circumstances, this suggests another cost of war: our offensive capabilities, as well as our defensive capabilities become more observable. Our adversaries are studying our strengths and weaknesses in Iran, and they will have a much improved game plan for countering us in future conflicts.

by jsw97

3/24/2026 at 1:50:35 PM

This is absolutely true, but there is a strong counterpoint: You also learn the limits of your own systems and how to operate them most effectively yourself (and better than adversaries can, too).

Just to pick a recent example: Russian air defense in the early stages of the Ukraine war was dismal (more specifically: defense against big, slow drones like Bayraktar), despite having sufficient AA capability "on paper"-- the war allowed them to visibly improve.

I'd expect much more value from validating and improving your equipment and its handling than the actual "cost" of revealing its capabilities to adversaries in almost every conflict.

by myrmidon

3/24/2026 at 2:21:19 PM

There is an assumption here that the value in improving defenses is the same as improving offensive weapons. That is not the case in the assymetry that drones provide and Russia is the first example.

Russia has not been able to improve AA capabilities to the point where it's "safe", for any definition of the word, neither has Israel. Israel and Gulf states often tout over 90% interception rate yet it's really at the mercy of Iran to not target their most vulnerable sites. If Iran was routinely targeting desalination plants and refineries it wouldn't matter if it was 99%: one hit is all it takes. Similarly Russia cannot keep Ukraine from targeting their oil infrastructure.

Air defenses need to be 100% to prevent physical, economic and moral damage. That is an impossibility.

by dlisboa

3/25/2026 at 10:51:37 AM

That's only if you continue to assume vulnerable and unfortified critical infrastructure. Did you know the majority of damage from a nuke is more from the aftermath of the blast in fires and crumbling infrastructure than the blast itself. And that can be adequately prepared for one if one needs to.

by corimaith

3/24/2026 at 7:50:08 PM

I don't see how drones don't make all conflicts into WW1. 100 Billion dollars buys about 3.3 million Shaheds assuming the manufacturing is not made more efficient. There are many questions on whether its possible to spend 100 billion dollars on Shaheds, or launch all of them. But this is more than enough to destroy any logistics and transportation infrastructure necessary for a ground invasion.

There are many many countries who can afford 100 billion dollars for stored military equipment that has a long shelf life. The US makes ~50k artillery shells a month at a cost of about 10k per shell.

by lumost

3/25/2026 at 8:01:38 AM

> stored military equipment that has a long shelf life

Given the pace of advance and changes in strategy, high production capacity is probably more beneficial than inventory.

by blitzar

3/25/2026 at 8:48:58 AM

Maybe, until your production facility is destroyed. Storage is an easier problem to distribute than production.

by LadyCailin

3/25/2026 at 12:05:54 AM

I think that what makes it not WWI is that not even trenches really save you from precision munitions.

by andrewflnr

3/24/2026 at 10:17:20 PM

From my extremely uneducated point of view it seems like that is true and probably what is already happening in Ukraine. However, at some point robots might be able to take and hold ground, and maybe they can be designed to require only decentralized, automated infrastructure to operate that is hard to strike economically even with drones. At that point, may the side with the most robots win.

by 2001zhaozhao

3/25/2026 at 8:57:18 AM

George Lucas vindicated once again.

Of course, once loitering, intelligent munitions make it too dangerous to be an economically valuable human outside of a bunker, we'll need robots running the robot factories, then we get Philip K. Dick's scenario in The Second Variety.

by khafra

3/24/2026 at 8:11:11 PM

> US makes ~50k artillery shells a month at a cost of about 10k per shell.

50000 * 10000 * 12 is 6B/year. I was surprised, but I suppose that passes the smell test for a ~1T/year defense budget.

by Cpoll

3/24/2026 at 8:42:05 PM

Now imagine for the same $10k cost making a cruise missile, instead. This is close to what a Shahed is -- the estimate is $20k-$50k / unit, so close enough.

This is bonkers. Countries can now afford for the same cost * to make not a 10-20 mile range artillery shell, but a 1500 mile effective range cruise missile.

* Defense costs are "fake" to a large degree. A lot of that is really corruption with money flowing from the taxpayers to the arms manufacturers, but still if we go by the numbers...

by rdtsc

3/24/2026 at 9:22:35 PM

They are fake in the sense individual items are listed as having costs that are not accurate.

But really the defense deals are very complicated, and not based around buying x number of items.

You’re making a not well-formed query. How much is a shell?

Adam Smith pointed out the first pencil costs thousands of dollars, but the second is mostly free. Same dynamic here, but multipled by a thousand.

by pyuser583

3/24/2026 at 9:40:48 PM

> Adam Smith pointed out the first pencil costs thousands of dollars, but the second is mostly free. Same dynamic here, but multipled by a thousand.

The shells are already made by the 10 and 100s of thousands, Shaheds are also not a research project, so either one is in amortized serial production now.

What I meant is that a $10k shell doesn't cost that much. Russians are making the equivalent artillery shells for an _order_ of magnitude less for around $1k. A lot of defense costs are just overinflated simply because they can be. The government is spending taxpayer money, it's not really coming from the politicians' pockets. If the kickbacks are just right, they may in fact flow back into the politicians pockets.

by rdtsc

3/25/2026 at 8:34:26 AM

A lot of defense spending revolves around overall manufacturing capacity. Deals contain options that won't be executed unless it's war time. These options increase the cost of the deal as the manufacturer needs to keep capacity.

by Maxion

3/24/2026 at 11:42:56 PM

It is vastly more complicated to find targets at 1500 miles than at 20. So drones are effective at destroying big stationary civilian infrastructure and much less at long distance strikes at military targets. Russia's inability to destroy Ukrainian aviation is a good example.

But then with solar and batteries civilian infrastructure becomes much more resilient against drone strikes.

by fpoling

3/25/2026 at 2:34:07 AM

At a certain distance, I'd contend all infrastructure is big and static. Our energy comes from large facilities, without these facilities continent scale infrastructure will grind to a halt at 1500 miles. Rail, power lines, warehouses, factories and trucks are all relatively static. It's not unreasonable to expend a Shahed type drone on a simple semi-truck parked overnight from nearly a continent away. There are only 3 million semi-trucks in the entire US, and I'd be shocked if the country could run without them.

by lumost

3/25/2026 at 10:06:01 AM

Ukraine tried to come up with drones that can fly over 1000 miles. But drones the size of Shaheds just cannot fly that distance without significantly reducing the warhead. To attack things beyond that range Ukraine have used essentially Cessna. Which is much more expensive and visible on radars.

Instead Ukraine came up with an idea of mass producing extremely simple cruise missiles that could fly 2000 miles and deliver up to a ton of explosives with a cost of 100K and make 1000 of them per month. But then it seems Russia was able to discover the production sites and destroy them.

by fpoling

3/25/2026 at 12:20:37 AM

> It is vastly more complicated to find targets at 1500 miles than at 20.

It's true but they are so cheap that launching a whole bunch and/or improving them incrementally is possible. Yeah they are for stationary targets mostly, for sure. And of course their sounds and relatively low speed does make them somewhat easier to shoot down with short range AA guns and can have automated acoustic early warning system (it's like a flying lawnmower or chainsaw).

by rdtsc

3/25/2026 at 4:09:44 AM

1500 mile range is questionable in practice I've read - drones require remote control for maximal value and that's a capability that may not extend nearly as far as the paper range of the drones

by dgoldstein0

3/25/2026 at 4:22:09 AM

They can’t be used for moving targets but for infrastructure they can be effective. At the cost of only a few artillery shells send 10 and maybe 3 will hit.

Another advantage is because of simplicity and cost it allows quick iteration and adaptability. Use honeycomb patterns to lower radar signatures, use specialized antijamming gps/glonass antennas. Engine is too slow? Add a small turbojet. Color too light and visible at night? Paint it gray, etc. That can happen at the speed of weeks and months. Try doing that with Tomahawks, artillery pieces or HIMARS.

by rdtsc

3/25/2026 at 7:55:09 AM

There are two reasons this logic is incorrect.

1. It's not Iran's mercy, but deterrence. If Iran was to target critical infrastructure constantly, Israel and the U.S. would bomb its much more easily. Both sides currently avoid doing that for the same reason.

2. Targeting the same places again and again will mean they cannot target other places, like cities, where even a miss has greater impact. So the economy of munitions make them prefer to not do that.

by afdbcreid

3/25/2026 at 9:29:06 AM

Uh, Israel and USA are already bombing core infra in Iran. Iran is retaliating against Israel as your point 2 states, and against the Gulf countries on their critical monetary assets - because that's where it hurts either party. Targeting civilian infra in Israel means Israel's image of infallibility is shattered, while targeting monetary assets in Gulf countries (like gas fields, refineries, financial districts, etc) means that they're intent on applying pressure to the Gulf countries. They can't do the former to the latter because of the extremely large (90%+) expat populations, and they can't do the latter to the former because Israel's sensitive assets were presumably prepared for the long fight, so are likely to be heavily guarded.

by fakedang

3/24/2026 at 2:31:50 PM

Air defenses do not need to be 100% effective to be... effective.

Russia cannot keep Ukraine from targeting their oil infrastructure, yet here Russia is, still fighting on. Ukraine cannot prevent Russia from targeting their energy infrastructure or apartment buildings, yet here they are, still fighting on.

If we're talking about strategic/civil air defense, then you must figure out what's tolerable to your population (and how to increase and maintain that tolerance), and then figure out all the means to reduce the incoming attacks to below that tolerance. That must include the full spectrum of offensive, counter offensive, defensive, and informational options.

by icegreentea2

3/24/2026 at 3:11:53 PM

In the Ukraine-Russia war, air defense is used to deny air superiority to the enemy. Just a few days ago, Ukraine blew up Russia's helicopters in the air with drones. It's not the successful hits that matter, it's the capabilities that you deny by posing that credible threat.

by energy123

3/24/2026 at 10:42:39 PM

The difference being, Ukraine has no choice but to fight on.

by bojan

3/25/2026 at 5:07:28 AM

What produces this Iranian "mercy" at a time when Iran is extensively bombed, if not a combination of defensive and offensive capabilities providing escalation dominance?

by yosefk

3/25/2026 at 8:04:49 AM

MAD

If they strike desalination plants, Israel/us can do the same … really mass casualty event could follow.

And they might, at some point the Iranian gov might feel desperate enough to be like “fuck it, we have nothing to lose” … Dubai could end up with a lot more graves.

Almost all of their water comes from these plants, and humans can’t survive without water for more than 3 days …

There are reserves/stores sure, but how long will they last, and which part of the population do they cover? In a week you could have thousands of civilians dead on both sides.

So MAD keeps things in check.

I think this is whaly Iran has invested so much into rockets - they are very ineffective at providing decisive military victory by themselves, but without them, Iran will be at Israel’s mercy, and they have proven to not possess that in great amounts lately

by seer

3/25/2026 at 10:41:08 AM

Israel already attacked desalination plants. Iran already responded by doing the same to the surrounding countries.

by watwut

3/25/2026 at 9:29:20 AM

This is part of the logic behind strategic bombing, and there's a lot of writing on how it doesn't win wars and can sometimes be counterproductive: firstly it's harder to hit and damage infrastructure than you might think (especially once your target stars fortifying at all), secondly it can be easier and faster to repair critical infrastructure than you might think, thirdly it can easily get way more expensive than you might think, and lastly it doesn't demotivate people like you might think, in fact it tends to will people to fight harder, just because spite is such a motivating force.

by rcxdude

3/25/2026 at 2:08:21 AM

It doesn't have to work, when the military industrial complex benefits either way.

The U.S. is on a path to spending trillions of dollars to putting missile defense (and offense) systems in space with the Golden Dome.

by infinitewars

3/24/2026 at 4:59:27 PM

> interception rate yet it's really at the mercy of Iran to not target their most vulnerable sites

And what this site and you don't account for, is Iranian rather low missile accuracy.

If Israel was at the mercy of Iranian attacks, Iran could have simply struck Israeli airbases to the point they cannot be used, and then stop any Israeli attacks on its territory.

It's pretty obvious they don't have the capabilities of doing that

by breppp

3/24/2026 at 5:40:12 PM

Iran has successfully targeted countless bases around the Middle East, a lot of this news simply isn’t being covered. Most of these strikes are on static assets like radar, depots, and other structures. If you are thinking about the F35s, strikes that hit runways are repaired in a matter of hours. As for the F35s themselves, they are constantly on the move or simply kept in the air. Service and storage is done on remote bases outside of the target zone. This has been standard practice since military aircraft has been introduced.

by cheney_2004

3/24/2026 at 5:50:52 PM

That's certainly what Iranian propaganda is saying, as if everybody is censoring their great successes. Fact is there is no meaningful reduction in Israeli attacks, while Iranian launching ability had greatly suffered. So these air bases are probably not being hit. Apart from it in the era of OSINT satellite imagery, it is no issue to publicize such damage, I don't know of any such imagery

Regarding the gulf, there the Iranians are having better success as at those ranges intercepting drones is harder and due to the general military ineffectiveness of the gulf nations

by breppp

3/24/2026 at 8:15:30 PM

> Apart from it in the era of OSINT satellite imagery, it is no issue to publicize such damage, I don't know of any such imagery

Not sure about other providers, but Planet Labs has applied a 14-day delay to satellite images of the middle east.

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/satellite...

by anonymous_user9

3/25/2026 at 7:05:57 AM

There are chinese and russian satellite imagery, but we can also wait two weeks for western sources

by breppp

3/24/2026 at 9:02:34 PM

I haven't seen imagery of damage to Israeli airbases, but plenty of imagery showing damage to US military bases. e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0cIOMVBSbU . Worth keeping in mind that in the case of Israel, censorship is very effective.

From the Iranian perspective, the overall strategy seems to have been:

1. Deplete intercepter stock and probe US/Israeli defences using large amounts of older less accurate missile stock and waves of drones.

2. Target radar and early warning systems.

3. After 'blinding', make further use of more vulnerable but cheaper and more accurate drones to target specific infrastructure.

Given this approach it makes total sense to see their 'rate of fire' reduced by 90%. This is not necessarily an indication of reduced ability to launch attacks - their attacks are now more effective. They have demonstrated that each time the US and Israel escalate they successfully respond almost immediately. Talk of their capabilities being wiped out is demonstrably nonsense.

Ted Postol makes much the same points. He also claims to be surprised by the accuracy of recent missiles launched by Iran and assumes that his earlier analysis underestimated this because it was done based on the older stock Iran was using.

It seems pretty clear to me that Israel and the US are on the back foot here. Defences are inadequate. Economic pressure is building. Iran still has plenty of options to increase pressure (e.g. Houthi involvement, further infrastructure targeting, additional constrictions on the strait of Hormuz). By comparison US ability to increase pressure now seems limited to threatening major war crimes (wiping out Iran's power grid and putting the country into blackout). Not to say many of Iran's actions haven't also been war crimes.

How much more damage can Iran accept? Nobody is about to be voted out of power there so I would think quite a bit (as unpleasant as that is for the millions of innocent people caught up in this madness). I think the truth of all of this is that the US and Israel have no way to wipe out Iran's missile and drone capabilities. Postol even suggests nukes wouldn't even accomplish that. So now what? Taco or push further for Iranian political unrest or division.

My feeling is that this is going to get a lot worse for everyone involved.

by tmnvix

3/25/2026 at 10:49:06 AM

One of the things Iran figured out fairly quickly about Israel is that reducing their rate of fire is more effective for wearing down the population, and eroding political support for the war.

The longer Iran can keep the air raid sirens blaring in Israel, the better.

by bigfatkitten

3/25/2026 at 5:13:22 AM

I suspect you're giving the Iranian response too much foresight and credit here. With the decapitation strike, it's unlikely that a coherent plan of "launch all the cheap stuff first" remained intact. The upside of decentralized control is that it's hard to shut down; the downside is that it's hard to do exactly this kind of coordination.

My guess (which seems to be borne out by the numbers, at least as gets reported) is that the bulk of the IRGC's missile capability has been launched already. Certainly not all, but it will continue to diminish over time rather than increase. Still, that doesn't mean the remaining stock isn't incredibly dangerous.

> My feeling is that this is going to get a lot worse for everyone involved.

There I agree.

by stickfigure

3/25/2026 at 12:13:58 AM

If Iran was having great success with their attacks, they wouldn't therefore tail off the intensity if they could help it. They would just start scoring more hits with the same, presumably maximum, rate of fire.

I think the obvious answer is the correct one here, that Iran's launch capacity has been degraded. That's not to say it will ever go to zero, so a lot of your other points still have some merit.

by andrewflnr

3/25/2026 at 10:46:10 AM

> f Iran was having great success with their attacks, they wouldn't therefore tail off the intensity if they could help it.

They would for pragmatical reasons - they do not want to spend more ammunition then necessary. They very clearly do eye for eye thing - when something is attacked inside their territory, they attack similar thing outside.

They are not running the "operation epic fury to prove we are manly men" thing. They are running the "operation regime survives in a long term" thing.

by watwut

3/25/2026 at 8:22:54 AM

That assumes they want to escalate. So far at least their official statements have been clear about tit-for-tat.

It could also backfire spectacularly. If a bunch of civilians suddenly get killed or other war crimes committed unilaterally by them (such as targeting energy infrastructure) their adversaries could gain political support for the current effort. Whereas gradually forcing all interceptors to be expended is a massively expensive slow bleed and gives the opponent little to nothing to spin in their favor.

by fc417fc802

3/25/2026 at 8:26:29 AM

> comparison US ability to increase pressure now seems limited to threatening major war crimes (wiping out Iran's power grid and putting the country into blackout). Not to say many of Iran's actions haven't also been war crimes.

US can destroy the entire Iranian economy that rests on oil. The only thing that stopping them right now seems like a fantasy by Trump that post-war Iran will become a Venezuela. Iran could then damage the Gulf oil facilities but does not have the same capabilities to completely destroy the facilities, due to problems getting the ammunitions to the targets

> I think the truth of all of this is that the US and Israel have no way to wipe out Iran's missile and drone capabilities

Everyday Israel is bombing the entire supply chain for drones and ballistic missiles in Iran. That means the companies making the explosives, optics, fins, stabilizers, engines, etc. The amount of destruction will greatly set back the Iranian ability to replenish their stockpiles and should also affect the war in Ukraine.

Iranian ballistic missile capability, at least the long range one is limited by its amount of launchers, and these are also hunted rather effectively.

I wouldn't underestimate complete air superiority, as the ability of the US and Israel to cause damage to Iran is far greater than otherwise, and Iran entire economy is concentrated on a very small number of targets

by breppp

3/24/2026 at 5:07:20 PM

You're making the same argument I am. If Iran had a small increase in accuracy they could hit targets that'd disable a lot of Israel military and civilian infrastructure. A lot of stuff is getting through. To counter that Israel has to achieve a perfect interception record. The balance is throughly on the side of offensive drone/missile warfare.

by dlisboa

3/24/2026 at 5:46:22 PM

I don't think we are arguing the same thing. I am arguing that even without any air defense, Iran would have difficulty hitting its targets in Israel with ballistic missiles due to low accuracy. When adding interception rates they have a real problem in attacking strategic facilities, air bases is a good example, which would be much more important than desalination plants.

You can then see that they shifted to completely attacking large cities, usually with cluster bomblets. The reason is when you are bombing a large area, aim is less of an issue, similar to WW2 carpet bombing

Your post alludes to drones, these do not reach Israel (from Iran) at all and are all intercepted

by breppp

3/24/2026 at 11:40:51 PM

Shahed drones have a maximum range of 25000 km [bbc_1]. The distance from e.g. Isfahan to Tel-Aviv is ~1592 km [google]. Shaheds can reach Israrel from Iran.

As to them all being intercepted, in the 12-day war that seemed to be the plan, i.e. force Israel to waste interceptors on cheap drones [bbc_2]. That seems to have changed in the current conflict.

_______________

[bbc_1] With a maximum range of 2,500km it could fly from Tehran to Athens.

[bbc_2] When Iran attacked Israel with hundreds of drones in 2024, the UK was reported to have used RAF fighter jets to shoot some down with missiles that are estimated to cost around £200,000 each.

Both exceprts from:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-b3a272f0-3e10-4f95-...

[google] https://www.google.co.uk/maps/dir/Isfahan,+Isfahan+Province,...

by YeGoblynQueenne

3/25/2026 at 6:11:41 AM

During WW2, the British used Spitfires to shoot down V1s. The V1s, pushed by a simple pulse jet, I presume are much faster than the drones. So some WW2 aircraft could be re-armed and used to shoot them down cheaply.

The British also employed a belt of radar-guided flak guns to shoot them down.

I don't hear any comparisons with the V1s, so my idea must be stupid, but I'm not seeing the flaw in it.

by WalterBright

3/25/2026 at 7:02:29 AM

A v1 was 30 feet long with a 20 foot wing span, and had no evasive capabilities.

by jounker

3/25/2026 at 7:41:18 AM

Do the drones being launched by Iran have evasive capabilities?

by WalterBright

3/25/2026 at 7:15:32 AM

> As to them all being intercepted, in the 12-day war that seemed to be the plan

That's doubtful, these are different interceptors than the ballistic missile interceptors (AA missiles). That doesn't make sense as a strategy if they cannot hit any targets

by breppp

3/24/2026 at 11:47:29 PM

You need an edit on your first range (typo). 25Mm is amazing, nowhere is too far away (except the moon).

by gnabgib

3/24/2026 at 2:21:36 PM

Practise is good, but exhaustion is bad. Russia is getting exhausted, which is why their influence collapsed in Syria, Azerbaijan and Armenia, allowing the US to overtake those vacuums.

The US in WW2 staged their 20th century by letting others (China, South East Asia and the British/Soviets) get exhausted first. This was more an accident of geography rather than US grand strategy, but it worked all the same.

by energy123

3/24/2026 at 2:48:42 PM

Except this looks likely to exhaust the US/Israel alliance, if it continues long, leaving China in the "US in/after WWII" spot in the analogy.

by ceejayoz

3/24/2026 at 4:22:02 PM

USA won't injure or kill 1 in 25 of young adults in the Iran war, unless somehow Iran does have a nuke and wants to use it, come on.

by elfly

3/24/2026 at 4:22:59 PM

Raw manpower is hardly the only aspect of war.

Especially in modern war.

Running out of fancy equipment, for example, causes quite a few problems if your opponent hasn't. Like interceptor missiles.

by ceejayoz

3/24/2026 at 9:03:20 PM

Currently conflict is a really good sales pitch for buying more interceptors.

You could expect order books to get so thick that production increases.

I mean looking from the side lines, I could see why many countries might want to have a few interceptors on hand. Just in case, it's certainly a nice way to buy some time.

by jopsen

3/24/2026 at 9:41:50 PM

The defense against Bayraktar at the beginning (the big column to the north of Kiev) was dismal because AA assets were turned off, not because they were unable to shoot Bayraktars.

The problem was command and coordination.

Darwin worked and Russians learned (as did Ukrainians).

Regarding your last point: In peace time, you want to prioritize hiding your true capabilities (perhaps inflating them in (misleading direction) to deter them from attacking). Once the ware breaks out, you want to improve your capabilities as fast as possible.

by don_esteban

3/25/2026 at 9:01:13 AM

I'd argue that few things are more dangerous for a country than drastically overestimating your own military assets while trying to do big stick diplomacy-- that's how you end up completely lost (WW2 France), or throwing away hundred thousands of lifes for little gain (Russia now).

Sure, opponents thinking your "stick" is bigger in peacetime is nice, might save you some money and improve diplomatic outcomes, but those gains are marginal compared to overestimating yourself and then finding out the hard way...

by myrmidon

3/24/2026 at 11:58:52 PM

With Bayraktar it was a software update for radar that allowed for Russian to destroy them. The radar signature of Bayraktar was way off from a typical target that radars were looking for at the beginning of the war.

by fpoling

3/24/2026 at 2:20:27 PM

"Data moats" are a problem for military tech, too, I guess.

by neutronicus

3/24/2026 at 2:42:02 PM

One very interesting instance of the "military data moat" is Ukraine's annotated database of drone footage, perhaps the first of its scale from live engagements [0]:

> They can now draw on an enormous pool of real warfare information. Last year alone, Ukrainian drones recorded around 820,000 verified strikes against Russian targets... Meanwhile, the country’s Avengers AI platform detects upwards of 12,000 enemy targets every week. Developers can now access these sources and the data that they gather to train their systems on the movements of a real Russian turtle tank or a camouflaged Lancet launcher.

> “Ukraine currently possesses a unique body of battlefield data unmatched anywhere in the world,” recently appointed Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said in a statement. “This includes millions of annotated frames collected during tens of thousands of combat drone missions.”

With the latency and offline constraints of battlefield technology, smaller models, trained with better data, may prove to have a significant edge. But it's still early days on how data like this might prove advantageous in other environments.

[0] https://resiliencemedia.co/how-ukraine-is-transforming-its-b... (unconfirmed source, this is not an endorsement)

by btown

3/24/2026 at 8:20:30 PM

Definitely, you have to weigh the benefit of experience against the cost of revelation. (And all the other costs of course.)

by jsw97

3/24/2026 at 3:43:21 PM

>much more value from validating and improving your equipment and its handling than the actual "cost" of revealing its capabilities to adversaries in almost every conflict.

The value of carrying a big stick is lost when others see the stick breaks after a few swings. There's value in maintaining military kayfabe - revealing hand in sideshows and losing deterrence for main events as result can be much costlier down the line. What was learned that wasn't already known and deliberately avoided in polite conversation?

by maxglute

3/24/2026 at 2:48:55 PM

There is no amount of math that can make up for the lopsided dynamic of hypersonic missiles. The only reason the “iron/gold dome” con job was even plausible to plunder trillions in U.S. Monopoly money was because missiles were crude, slow, and not MIRVed or had decoys at one time. That was a long time ago though.

MIT Prof. Emeritus, Theodore Postol, has been trying to warn about this basic, mathematically proved fraud for many years now. However between the indifference because the party was still in high swing and the plundering was making people rich who could pay professional lobbyists/liars, very few people were paying attention or really cared, even though it’s clear fraud and just a false confidence; as is the objective of a con job, which comes from “confidence trick”.

There are several lectures he gives and more recent appearances on various YouTube channels where he clearly describes the inherent fraud in “missile defense”.

Here’s the synopsis; it’s like trying to prevent sand from hitting you once someone has thrown a fist full of dry sand at you.

It’s basically just the end game in a long history of American snake oil salesmen turned missile defense salesmen. You get useless junk, they run off with your wealth.

by roysting

3/24/2026 at 11:14:50 PM

MIT Prof. Emeritus, Theodore Postol, has been trying to warn about this basic, mathematically proved fraud for many years now.

Indeed, there are any number of very smart people who made up their mind 40 years ago in opposition to Reagan and SDI.

Surprisingly, very few of these folks have evolved their position over decades of changes in the strategic and technology pictures:

Defensive systems can’t work and are inherently destabilizing even though everyone knows they can’t work.

(I’m modestly agreed on the second point!)

by twoodfin

3/24/2026 at 3:49:59 PM

I agree that a barrage of maneuvering missiles can be neigh impossible to defend against.

Regarding these cluster munitions though, other than very densely populated areas, do they inflict much damage ? Are they more powerful than a grenade, say ?

It's going to devastating to soft tissue surely, and pierce through ordinary sheet metal, but normal concrete walls might offer sufficient protection. Unless, of course, it punches through the ceiling by virtue of sheer kinetic energy.

BTW I have no expertise in these matters, so corrections would be very welcome. I also recognize that I am commenting about something from the comfort and of being out of range and this discussion can be very distressing.

by srean

3/24/2026 at 10:39:28 PM

> Regarding these cluster munitions though, other than very densely populated areas, do they inflict much damage ? Are they more powerful than a grenade, say ?

Also not an expert, but I get the feeling that "cluster munitions" is pretty much an umbrella term.

Because of the CCM [1], we tend to associate the term with the "ligther" variants, which are used as anti-personnel weapons. These variants probably wouldn't be much more destructive than a few grenades.

But what Iran is currently using, appears to be missiles with 500-1000kg payload. This puts each submunition in the 50-100kg range. This should deliver a lot more of a punch than a grenade. Also, because of their weight, they probably wouldn't be covered by CCM, had Iran ratified it.

And, yes, it is unsettling geeking out on this stuff, that may actually be killing people as we write our comment.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_Cluster_Munition...

by m000

3/24/2026 at 4:06:30 PM

Instead of a cluster of grenades think many drones, the numbers start looking pretty bad when you have 100s of drones rather than a couple of missiles.

by reillyse

3/25/2026 at 12:02:58 AM

Technically those are ballistic missiles with Multiple Independent Re-Entry vehicles not cluster munitions.

by elzbardico

3/24/2026 at 10:40:51 PM

> I'd expect much more value from validating and improving your equipment and its handling than the actual "cost" of revealing its capabilities to adversaries in almost every conflict.

That depends on how far out of touch your reputation was with the facts. If you're not able to live up to your preexisting reputation, being tested is all downside even if it improves your actual capabilities.

by thaumasiotes

3/24/2026 at 3:00:05 PM

It doesn't have to be, defender reveals everything and attacker chooses best strategy.

1. The defender could use both electronic and physical decoys, use air and sea mobile platforms that are always in motion and are difficult to track.

2. The defender can fire at decoys, to convince the attacker the decoys work when they don't.

3. The defender could mix in cheap decoy interceptor missiles that miss so the attacker concludes defenders need 10 missiles to intercept when the real number if 3 and the attacker thinks the defenders are running low on interceptors, when in fact the defenders have held most of their interceptors in reserve.

4. Defender can pretend that expensive systems have been destroyed so that attacker adapts their strategy. For instance, if your defense hinges on a small number of extremely expensive fixed X-band radars and the attacker targets them. Allow some of them to be appear to be destroyed when in fact, you have disassembled them and moved them somewhere else to use later in the war.

I see no evidence anyone is doing any of this today, I'm not making any sort of claims about deception operations in the current conflict.

by EthanHeilman

3/25/2026 at 1:37:00 AM

Many historical wars have been won by deception.

Sun Tzu taught us: When you are weak, appear strong. When you are strong, appear weak.

by dotancohen

3/24/2026 at 3:02:26 PM

On the other hand, the best way to improve your capabilities is to use them frequently.

The Russian army assumed a state of readiness for the Ukraine invasion that turned out to be, well, less. Their special forces floundered, their logistics were (are still!?) unpalletized - using bespoke metal containers and wooden crates! Whereas the US military learned an awful lot from its (mis)adventures over the last decades.

by simonsarris

3/25/2026 at 12:04:28 AM

I think Russia's strategy fault was more that they didn't expect the amount of support Ukraine could coalesce in such a short time.

by elzbardico

3/25/2026 at 10:37:45 AM

On the other hand the Air force is getting the workout of their lifetime. Which could come in handy. The low bodycount among US military so far makes the whole clusterfuck just and expensive training program.

by ReptileMan

3/25/2026 at 7:20:31 AM

"Our adversaries" are in the US government, or is this not crystal clear by now?

by GeorgeWBasic

3/24/2026 at 1:41:13 PM

Or perhaps they will learn they are outmatched, lack the resources and technological capabilities to compete, and deterrence will have been established.

by SegfaultSeagull

3/24/2026 at 2:31:09 PM

Very few countries lack the technological capabilities to produce these kinds of drones.

What most countries don't have is, for lack of a better term, the resolve Iran has shown. Venezuela could have built drones and resisted just the same, but it's internally divided enough that it was possible to strike a deal with an inside faction and have a coup from within.

by dlisboa

3/24/2026 at 9:32:38 PM

There is a huge difference between 'deterrence' in the sense of deterring a country from taking aggressive action it might have otherwise considered, and 'deterrence' in the sense you are using here (surrender without fight, we are so much stronger than you).

by don_esteban

3/25/2026 at 12:13:56 AM

Iran can establish deterrence with asymetric means and let's not forget, that contrary to what most americans think, Iran is not a backward hell hole like Somalia or Afeganistan. For a third world country we could say they have a competent R&D infrastructure, with a good number of STEM graduates every year (with roughly half of them being woman, which shows they are casting a wide net for talents).

They also have a lot of leverage points in their geography, in the fact that the US is at a historical low point in its military capabilities.

US and Israel strategy seems to be to completely destruct Iran's economy, but the problem is that this is a game where they can also shoot back.

by elzbardico

3/24/2026 at 2:08:11 PM

Iran has always known that the US is a higher tech nation, but you should not just expect them to surrender on that basis.

by pjc50

3/24/2026 at 2:36:30 PM

That's not what deterrence means. From google: the action of discouraging an action or event through instilling doubt or fear of the consequences.

It's meant to avoid conflict altogether, say with China and Taiwan.

by deburo

3/24/2026 at 6:13:30 PM

Iranian here, you're assuming sanity.

That doesn't work when your opponents pray for death and see martyrdom as victory.

This is genuinely how Shia extremists think. They have nothing to lose and will sacrifice everything and everyone for their cause. They don't care about Iran or Iranians or prosperity of the nation.

by swat535

3/25/2026 at 12:06:36 AM

Every country that has a opposition diaspora says the same stuff you're saying here. For what is worth, you could be from a family of Savak secret police members.

And frankly that's not how it looks to me.

by elzbardico

3/25/2026 at 12:42:49 AM

Every country's diaspora claims their country is ruled by Shia Muslims?

by rendang

3/25/2026 at 7:34:47 AM

No, he or she is saying that even Americans who have moved overseas could be heard to complain about the "fascist" authoritarians in power in the US now. They would sound functionally identical to an Iranian emigrant talking about Iran; only the details would differ

by kochikame

3/24/2026 at 1:44:11 PM

History would suggest otherwise; rarely is this ever the case.

by biker142541

3/24/2026 at 2:09:18 PM

History doesn't necessarily make it clear when a war might have started but didn't because of some specific factor. Mainly you see the wars that did happen. (It has a strong survivorship bias in the sense that a war "survived" history if it went ahead for real rather than being considered and decided against.)

by quietbritishjim

3/24/2026 at 2:01:55 PM

You seem to be implying that there is a long history of countries starting wars against the USA?

by marcosdumay

3/24/2026 at 2:09:55 PM

More like the USA starting wars against countries, and those countries not immediately surrendering, to which the USA is shocked.

by gzread

3/24/2026 at 2:33:36 PM

I think that there's a more general issue here with the US and the West in general having a mindset built up on playing Risk and Civ, which considers the foreign country as a whole as their opponent, whereas in practice, the adversaries are a multitude of individuals, for almost none of whom a surrender is the rational choice, especially (as sibling comments pointed out) when part of their reasoning and authority is based on a divine mandate.

by falcor84

3/24/2026 at 2:50:38 PM

to be clear: your claim is that the us military is misinformed because key constituents have played too many board games?

does hearing it back like that make it seem absurd to you as well?

by testaccount28

3/24/2026 at 3:48:26 PM

Well, yes (except that Civ isn't a board game). And no, it doesn't make it seem absurd to me.

My argument is that Western strategic thought (with games being a codification thereof, rather than the source of) generally considers countries as mostly atomic actors that can be defeated - the history of European warfare being filled with "gentlemanly" surrenders followed up by peace treaties, with guerrilla warfare being a very rare exception.

On the other side, the reality in the East is that a state's collapse doesn't end the conflict, but just prolongs it. The army doesn't surrender, it goes home with its weapons and reconstitutes as insurgents. I can't actually think of a single proper surrender of an Eastern country ever, except for Japan in 1945.

by falcor84

3/24/2026 at 3:58:52 PM

> Well, yes (except that Civ isn't a board game).

It is actually several physical board games, the oldest of which is older than (and unrelated to) the computer game [0], as well as being a series of computer games that are basically digital board games.

[0] Well, except for the computer game based on it and its expansion, which, because of the other computer game, had the long-winded title "Avalon Hill's Advanced Civilization".

by dragonwriter

3/24/2026 at 9:26:17 PM

Finland comes to mind.

by pyuser583

3/25/2026 at 12:52:41 AM

As an example of an Eastern country? Well touché, I suppose you're historically correct, but what I had in my mind for this distinction is not the line in the middle of Europe (between the First World and Second World), but that between Europe and Asia. Sorry if I miscommunicated.

by falcor84

3/24/2026 at 4:59:20 PM

> when part of their reasoning and authority is based on a divine mandate

If you are atheist is becomes rational to surrender to the people that are invading your house and killing your friends at random?

by marcosdumay

3/25/2026 at 3:42:42 AM

Yes.

Absolutely.

If there are invaders who are killing everybody around me and telling me that they'll stop and generally let me be if I surrender and agree to live in a democracy, I expect that I'll be very inclined to accept. Maybe afterwards, if I see it's not working out, I may still consider guerrilla resistance down the line, but I don't see the benefit of fighting and most likely dying just for the sake of defiance, and to then allow any survivors a chance to continue in their resistance for another decade or so, until eventually they might be able to start rebuilding a nation from the rabble.

In what world is surrender, keeping our lives and infrastructure, not a more rational approach?

EDIT: To be clear, while I occasionally have pacifistic thoughts on pretty spring days, I'm not arguing for pacifism here - fighting is absolutely rational when you have a clear path to victory, but if you don't, then I think it's just an absolute waste of human lives.

by falcor84

3/25/2026 at 6:25:16 AM

Fighting is rational when the alternative is being killed.

FDR made a big mistake announcing that he was going for unconditional surrender. This resulted in Germany fighting to the bitter end. Hitler dragged it on to the last few hours - he knew what was going to happen to him when the war ended.

by WalterBright

3/25/2026 at 9:47:07 AM

Yes and its much more rational to see that the invaders are natural born liars and they installed puppet dictatorships while talking "democracy" and very literally a few days ago backstabbed and invaded you while in the pretense of doing peace negotiations. Logically for an Iranian the most rational response would be to always kill Americans or Israelis in this case.

by donkeybeer

3/25/2026 at 8:24:20 AM

[dead]

by trick-or-treat

3/24/2026 at 2:31:33 PM

The Iranians just hit an F35 with a proverbial box of scraps they put together in a cave. The Chinese military must have experienced collective euphoria when they saw that.

by nerfbatplz

3/24/2026 at 2:49:20 PM

To be clear, that F35 was being incredibly careless, flying low in broad daylight. All the stealth features of an aircraft are useless if you can look at it with your own eyes. In any conflict with China, F35s would not be flown that way.

by 9cb14c1ec0

3/24/2026 at 3:04:46 PM

You're holding it wrong?

How many cheap-ass drones could you buy for the cost of one F35. 100k? A million?

by iso1631

3/24/2026 at 5:15:55 PM

None of these reached Israel from Iran this war, so maybe their superior quantity is not enough

by breppp

3/24/2026 at 8:18:37 PM

Iran does not have a million of them, the numbers they have are better utilized on targets in Gulf states.

If Iran launched 10000 Shaheds towards Isreal, you can be sure quite a few would get by.

Maybe Ukrainian drone interceptors can be made cheap enough to be good enough against massed Shaheds.

We are still early in the new paradigm, there will be significant developments.

by don_esteban

3/25/2026 at 12:08:07 AM

APKWS interceptor is about 35K USD and works much better than drone-based interceptors. The problem is to scale the production, training and deployment. Another problem is detection. One needs wast multilayered system that US military missed to build as big stationary radars are very hard to defend.

by fpoling

3/24/2026 at 4:25:51 PM

In a direct conflict with China, the ICBM exchange would destroy the F35s on the ground.

by pjc50

3/25/2026 at 12:20:42 AM

There won't be a direct conflict with China, at least not in the last 10 years, because the US first needs to complete de-coupling his economy from China more, re-industralize in-shore or at least near-shore, and dramatically build up its military and logistic capabilities to fight an expeditionary campaign on China shores.

China also is not stupid, and no matter how much they posture, they won't invade Taiwan.

by elzbardico

3/24/2026 at 4:49:42 PM

China doesn't seem to think so. China believes they need to fight those F35s in the air.

Why would the opening salvo be ICBMs?

by mrguyorama

3/24/2026 at 8:06:08 PM

To deny the US the use of any nearby airfields (Okinawa, several others in Japan an Philippines). This will limit US airpower to carriers, which are few and sinkable.

Of course, China wants to be able to fight those F35s in the air - to mitigate the damage they can do to them (while the F35s still have airfield/carriers to land on) - also in order to make it easier to sink those carriers.

Still, you can bet that all US nearby airfields would be peppered very early in the conflict.

by don_esteban

3/24/2026 at 2:58:06 PM

To be clear, Trump announced that the US had destroyed Iran's air defenses, missiles and missile launch capabilities. Trump also said that the US enjoyed air supremacy over Iran and were flying when and where they wished.

Maybe one of these days we'll see a B-52 take off with JDAMs and not JASSMs but probably not, kind of scary to try and drop gravity bombs on a country that your stealth fighters can't fly over.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tohttYlvFvU

by nerfbatplz

3/25/2026 at 5:44:39 AM

The "pen-testing" discoveries go both ways. In Iran, Chinese HQ-9B surface-to-air missile systems and YLC-8B anti-stealth radars failed to intercept any aircraft. In Venezuela, Chinese JY-27A early warning radars failed to detect approximately 150 incoming U.S. aircraft. In Pakistan, Chinese HQ-9B and HQ-16 systems failed to intercept Indian strikes.

by drak0n1c

3/25/2026 at 6:22:58 AM

Not really. US, a competent operator of US made platforms losing hardware to Iranian box of scraps is different than third party operators vs overmatch environment, i.e. Pakistani had pathetic amount of IADs vs India, and by all accounts VZ didn't even integrate theirs.

IADs not integrated by marginal operators =/= stealth radar didn't work aka, physics of stealth detection is basic, and parsimonious likelihood is US gave up strategic intangibles for VZ and IR side shows. Even if IADs wasn't integrated it would still be worthwhile for PRC to send out stealth radars knowing they'd get glassed because it's rounding error investment to get near F35s without luneburg. At the end of the day, these radars are networked/uplink to beidou3 for a reason, their primary function for PRC is to serve as cheap telemetry gathering nodes that gather strategic US ephemera like stealth profiles, ew, order of battle and beamed it back to CETC.

by maxglute

3/24/2026 at 2:11:31 PM

You miss the fact that many adversaries will not act rationally.

by varispeed

3/24/2026 at 3:06:32 PM

Yes, if it was acting rationally the US Would not have spent billions trying to blow up an 80 year old man while massively increasing the price of oil and fertiliser globally leading to economic instability

But the US has not acted rationally. It hasn't since January 2021.

by iso1631

3/24/2026 at 3:41:27 PM

There could be a rational explanation if you assume US administration is compromised by Russia and Ayatollah's son wanted him out to assume power. One phone call to Putin, Putin's one phone call to Krasnov and everyone is happy. Son gets the power, Russia gets sanctions lifted, higher oil price, US and allies spend kit that cannot be now sold to Ukraine, Krasnov gets to play the stock market. Win-win-win.

by varispeed

3/25/2026 at 10:11:58 AM

That son almost died during US strike and survived by pure luck, so unprobable. The rest, not so much.

Free democratic world loses, dictators around the globe win. Sad days for mankind.

by kakacik

3/24/2026 at 11:20:28 PM

[dead]

by tosapple

3/24/2026 at 2:28:40 PM

Especially when they're optimizing for afterlife.

by baxtr

3/25/2026 at 12:23:05 AM

A big part of the US involvment in the current war is driven by Christian Zionists, that literally believe that there needs to be a fucking end-of-the-times war in the region so Christ comes back.

by elzbardico

3/24/2026 at 5:17:33 PM

The fact that many Iranian officials optimize stealing millions from the state, means they aren't optimizing for the afterlife

by breppp

3/24/2026 at 5:17:42 PM

This thread is talking about how the adversaries will attack America based on the current events that Iran is counter-attacking Israel and American bases since Israel and America invaded them illegally.

Lots of smugness about the supposed irrationality of the adversaries considering that backdrop.

by keybored

3/24/2026 at 2:26:47 PM

While this is true it's also impossible to avoid.

So you could also argue that this war will help the US to gain experience it didn't have before which might be favorable in future conflicts with parties that didn't have this experience.

by baxtr

3/24/2026 at 1:39:53 PM

there is a benefit as well, though, as it makes your threats credible.

by testaccount28

3/24/2026 at 2:25:28 PM

Did I miss this ? Missing from the discussion is that Iran's cluster munitions in each single missle have absolutely overwhelmed Israels defense and would likely do the same to US military as well. Also to consider, Iran's $20,000 drones versus our $1 million dollar interceptors.

by DivingForGold

3/24/2026 at 2:33:30 PM

Cluster munitions are great against infantry in open field; less so against population centres equipped with advance warning systems. As it stands, they fail to even cause the damage worth offsetting by firing interceptors. The damage these inflict on Israel is not unsustainable, and they don't do much to create deterrence.

Given a choice of conventional 500-800 kg warhead or cluster munitions warhead, I think that the nations in the current conflict would prefer being on the receiving end of cluster munitions (as a less bad option) every time.

by maratc

3/24/2026 at 3:13:53 PM

>The damage these inflict on Israel is not unsustainable, and they don't do much to create deterrence.

Has there been a study on this? What is the GDP loss of having however many Israelis go to bunkers due to incoming ballistics instead of working ?

If a trash cluster missile that costs 100k USD to build causes 1mio USD worth of GDP to not be produced (numbers completely made up) then it's very worth it.

by mamonster

3/24/2026 at 3:28:53 PM

No idea about studies or GDP; just observing that the losses inflicted by Iran on Israel in June 2025 did nothing to deter Israel from going on offence again eight months later.

by maratc

3/24/2026 at 5:01:15 PM

Ballistic missiles do not cost only 100k USD to build. They are very unlikely to ever be that cheap. Rocketry requires enough precision to not explode on the launcher. Ballistic missiles with conventional munitions are only useful for point targets. Cluster munitions like Iran uses are an admission that they aren't targeting specific systems, aren't expecting to penetrate defenses, or other reasons why they would waste a ballistic missile on the modern equivalent of the Paris Gun.

Harassment weapons don't do much. None of the harassment campaigns done by the Nazis for example really amounted to anything.

Modern Shaheds can be possibly built at a scale to affect that, but we really haven't seen it happen yet. That would be something like thousands launched in a single wave against a single city or installation. But they still lack the precision and warhead to be targeted meaningfully.

You need WW2 industrial scale manufacturing lines worth of Shaheds to get beyond harassment. You need to be producing hundreds a day or more. That kind of industry is nearly impossible to protect from your adversary so unlikely to take shape.

by mrguyorama

3/25/2026 at 6:35:32 AM

> None of the harassment campaigns done by the Nazis for example really amounted to anything.

I hate to say it, but the aerial bombing campaign against Germany in WW2 was not terribly effective. The Germans were quick to decentralize the factories, and burning down houses did not impair the war effort much.

What did work was bombing the oil infrastructure. Germany ran out of gas.

What also worked was using the B-17 fleet as bait for the Luftwaffe. The Luftwaffe could not help but rise to defend the country, and then they were shot down by P-51s and P-47s and Spits. The goal was to erase the Luftwaffe, and it worked. (Even though German warplane production increased, the pilots were dead and irreplaceable.)

by WalterBright

3/24/2026 at 8:29:47 PM

Depends, blanketing Ben Gurion (or any airbase) with parked aircraft on the tarmac with carpet munition is a really bad day.

But yes, against protected targets cluster munitions do not achieve much.

If you have relatively few low-precision missiles, using single warheads means you are risking achieving NO damage (easier to intercept, a good chance that it will hit nothing), with a cluster munition you are guaranteeing at least some damage.

I think Iranians are mixing both types of warheads.

by don_esteban

3/24/2026 at 9:08:12 PM

Russia regularly uses cluster warheads on their ballistic missiles to a devastating effect. It all depends on the type of the target.

by varjag

3/24/2026 at 2:30:09 PM

You could counter multipayload missiles by hitting the missile earlier in its trajectory before the payloads deploy, that was the plan for MIRV nukes but it requires usually forward interceptors or perhaps energy weapons we don't yet have.

by wavefunction

3/24/2026 at 8:31:56 PM

Hm, Iran destroyed several of the radars used for seeing their missiles in the early stages of their trajectory.

by don_esteban

3/24/2026 at 8:35:05 PM

Take China for an example. No one knows China's true military capabilities, because they're rapidly evolving and because they virtually never use them. If there's an element of surprise to be had, they have it. But that cut's both ways, because China itself doesn't have experience exercising those capabilities. The learning curve could be noticeable. Meanwhile, no one doubts the ability of the US military to execute.

by standardUser

3/25/2026 at 12:24:50 AM

Basically the only country left in the world with expeditionary capabilities is the US.

It is hard to compare this with China. Different goals and philosophies.

by elzbardico

3/24/2026 at 2:14:09 PM

who is our/us?

by p00dles

3/24/2026 at 2:24:03 PM

Veterancy is more valuable. Observers can tell only a certain amount about what you can do, but you know your limits much more deeply and you can adapt. In fact, it's much better we get our nose bloodied repeatedly now¹ so that we learn how fallible we are and make sure our processes involve aircraft carriers not being put out of commission during wars because of dryer lint fires.

¹ in a military sense; in a geopolitical sense obviously it's clear that Iran has been a misadventure

by renewiltord

3/24/2026 at 1:43:15 PM

That seems like an acceptable trade off to get some real world experience with what works and what doesn't with regards to massed drones and swarming. There is a lot we can learn in this conflict with relatively low stakes

by 1234letshaveatw

3/24/2026 at 2:19:58 PM

Stakes for whom?

>100 kids got murdered the first day of this "low stakes" war

by lejalv

3/24/2026 at 3:25:49 PM

Imagine the NATO reaction if on the very first day of Russo-Ukrainian war offensive is by Russia performing missiles bombing murdering 100 kids studying in Ukraine primary school.

Trump candid reaction to the Iranian school incident when asked by reporter was "I can live with that".

by teleforce

3/24/2026 at 4:32:53 PM

There were significant civilian casualties right from the start of the war in Ukraine, and several massacred villages.

Russian air defense shot down a civilian airliner mostly full of Dutch nationals and the response was just condemnation and tweaking the sanctions a bit.

by pjc50

3/25/2026 at 2:44:21 AM

My heartfelt sympathy to the MH17 victims and families, but the airplane was flying in the risky warzone. That does not discount the fact that it's an atrocious act by the Russian backed military.

However, to send missile to primary school killing hundreds of school girls on the very first day of the war, if intentionally is just pure evil.

by teleforce

3/25/2026 at 9:27:19 AM

It wasn't intentional; the building was used by the military years before. The US had really badly out-of-date intelligence and was negligent in updating it. There's absolutely no military benefit to bombing a girl's school.

Remember Hanlon's Razor, and remember how incompetent the Trump Administration has been in everything ever since he took office.

by shiroiuma

3/24/2026 at 9:10:56 PM

We don't need to imagine. Hundreds of kids sheltered in Mariupol theater building were killed in one attack in the first weeks of the war.

by varjag

3/25/2026 at 2:26:57 AM

Am I missing something?

The attack on the Iranian primary school (not makeshift sheltered building) is on the very first day of the war, not several weeks, months or years.

Not to downgrade the incident, but the Mariupol incident you mentioned probably happened in 2022 while the all out war started in 2014 [1],[2]. If you can refer and link to the particular incident it'll be helpful for verification.

[1] Siege of Mariupol:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Mariupol

[2] Russo-Ukrainian war:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Ukrainian_war

by teleforce

3/25/2026 at 8:20:34 AM

While the Ruissan invasion was ongoing from 2014, the 2022 full scale invasion is different both in scope and volume. It is viewed as its own global event and has it own huge Wikipedia article. Iran had also been attacked by the USA (and Israel) previously.

The theater was marked with huge inscription of "CHILDREN" on tarmac, in the pilots' native Russian. They killed them regardless.

Either way do you think that if it happened on day one instead of 3 weeks in the reaction would be any different?

by varjag

3/25/2026 at 9:37:05 AM

Yes on day one people barely know what's happening, life goes on as usual.

After several weeks of bombardment and siege like was happened in Mariupol, children were already stop attending schools, moved to other schools, go to bunkers, live in makeshift shelters or migrate to different cities [1].

"The Geneva Conventions state that the parties to a conflict must do their best to protect civilians, which may include moving civilians and civilian objects under their control if they are close to military objectives." [1]

[1] Fact check: What do we know about the airstrike on a school in Iran?

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/03/16/fact-check-wha...

by teleforce

3/24/2026 at 2:58:35 PM

How many protesters were killed leading up to it?

by 1234letshaveatw

3/24/2026 at 3:50:12 PM

How does bombing a school help protesters?

by keybored

3/24/2026 at 2:56:35 PM

The USA

by 1234letshaveatw

3/24/2026 at 2:46:21 PM

“Iranian kids may die... but that’s a prize I’m willing to pay.”

by keybored

3/24/2026 at 2:57:29 PM

"I much prefer nuclear conflict"

by 1234letshaveatw

3/24/2026 at 3:03:04 PM

Propose a nuclear free zone in the Middle East, propose a global nuclear free zone, propose to cooperate with other nuclear powers to disarm.

But that’s apparently not the real concern at all.

by keybored

3/24/2026 at 1:38:59 PM

If we really want to put a certain hat on we can also say those adversaries have an incentive to not prevent (or even incentivize) those wars for that same reason. Even if that's by helping along a guy that is easy to manipulate through a childlike ego become president.

by vasco

3/25/2026 at 12:53:36 AM

"Our" adversaries, huh? There are more people in our country than pedophile billionaires, but it's this group starting the wars, murdering civilians, and producing generations of "adversaries".

by grafmax

3/24/2026 at 2:31:45 PM

In strategic circles, this was a common thought in the 12 day war: Iran was essentially mapping and testing defenses.

As evidence of this, the US was forced to hastily move THAAD ground station radar from South Korea because Iran destroyed a bunch of them in the Gulf [1][2]. Bear in mind there aren't many of these and they cost half a billion dollars each.

Further evidence of this is how quickly it happened. Iran most likely had detailed contingencies and battle plans for this kind of event.

As an aside, this is what militaries do. They plan for things. So whenever you see some conspiracy about how government X reacted to situation Y quickly and thus had foreknowledge, you can ignore it. Military planners are paid to make up fictional situations and figure out how to respond. That's what they do.

Weapons are the ultimate export. You use them and blow them up and the customer has to come back and buy more.

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/11/redeployment-u...

[2]: https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/05/middleeast/radar-bases-us-mis...

by jmyeet

3/24/2026 at 2:46:59 PM

> Iran destroyed a bunch of them

If by "a bunch" you mean one.

by jandrewrogers

3/24/2026 at 2:50:01 PM

[dead]

by hollyhotdog

3/24/2026 at 1:46:26 PM

Game theory would be useful for these kinds of modeling.

Perhaps the government should have and advisory body that employs the smartest mathematicians for running these scenarios. Of course a lot of randomness needs to be modeled too. Wonder what would be a good name for such a body :)

Paradoxically, if anyone leaks unpalatable information from the inside that would be a problem for the government.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellsberg_paradox

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAND_Corporation

by srean

3/25/2026 at 5:47:19 AM

" .. the smartest mathematicians for running these scenarios .. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann

> Claude Shannon called him "the smartest person I've ever met", a common opinion.

> Von Neumann founded the field of game theory as a mathematical discipline.

> .. leading him to a large number of military consultancies and consequently his involvement in the Manhattan Project.

> In 1950, von Neumann became a consultant to the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group..

> In 1955, von Neumann became a commissioner of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), which at the time was the highest official position available to scientists in the government.

> In his final years before his death from cancer, von Neumann headed the United States government's top-secret ICBM committee..

by Maro

3/25/2026 at 8:43:13 AM

The Martian.

Towards the end of his life as cancer metastasised in his brain he would ask his visitors to give him sums to do to reassure himself that he was still there. Towards the end he wasn't and couldn't. One of the saddest things.

by srean

3/24/2026 at 1:39:29 PM

Two more sobering axes to introduce: cost and manufacturing capability.

Numbers are hard to find for obvious security reasons, but using the numbers most optimistic to the defender[0] suggests an adversary using a Fatah type hypersonic is spending 1/3rd the cost of an Arrow interceptor, and is launching missiles that are produced at a much faster rate. Interception is deeply asymmetric in favor of the attacker.

[0] https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-82314...

by owenmarshall

3/24/2026 at 1:57:56 PM

Calling a Fattah hypersonic is a misleading claim. It is simply a ballistic missile that reaches hypersonic speeds, which is different from a true hypersonic weapon in its flight path and ability to maneuver. This distinction is important because it makes it significantly easier to shoot down than something like a hypersonic glide vehicle or hypersonic cruise missile.

But I agree with your point that it does remain difficult to intercept and poses the shot-exchange problem.

by jonaslanglotz

3/24/2026 at 2:28:34 PM

There's videos from Israel showing Iranian missiles performing AD evading maneuvers that western media was saying was impossible a few months ago.

by nerfbatplz

3/25/2026 at 12:25:14 AM

But they can steer, videos show that.

This really shouldn't surprise anyone. Iran graduates as many engineers as the US (70% women), but few of them are working on front-end A/B optimization of some boutique dating site.

And, having taken grad classes with folks graduated from Iranian universities, their training is excellent. The Persian kids were always at the top of their class.

EDIT: for the record the class I merely audited was graduate level (rational) mechanics - the class par excellence if you're going to build a hypersonic.

Some observations:

Half the class was Chinese, the academically better half was Persian.

I was the only Westerner (albeit also foreigner)

The girls were wearing veils.

According to the professor, the best mecanist (?) of the 20th century, Clifford Truesdelle, was an American

The Professor was Iranian.

by shdudns

3/24/2026 at 5:26:52 PM

[dead]

by redtrees11

3/24/2026 at 2:24:55 PM

Currently, we're using $1M interceptors to take out $30K drones. This asymmetry is here to stay.

The end game probably involves < $1000 autonomous drones that target IR or RF and drop something like hand grenades. On the defense side, there would similarly-priced interceptors with bolas, backed up with sharp-shooters for important targets.

At that point, it turns into a logistics problem that's much easier for the attacker than the defender. Iran's already demonstrated that one successful drone can do $100B-1T in damages, so a hit rate of 0.1% means a 1:100K cost:damage ratio.

by hedora

3/24/2026 at 2:56:52 PM

This leans towards my belief that the US is fundamentally fighting last century's war against adversaries that have _massively_ evolved.

Look at the Ukranians: they are currently fielding an entire suite of counter-drone tech: fast pursuit systems to hit Russian drones on launch, cheap FPV drones for last-mile intercept, integrated radar/acoustic monitoring to target and respond to launches... and of course, the Russians are responding with IR floodlights and air to air launchers on their drones, or even just launching a bunch of cheap foam decoy Gerbera's in the middle of their Shahed's to soak up intercepts. Meanwhile, the front lines are basically static -- any infantry from either side that tries to go into the kill box gets picked off by loitering drones.

And the best the US can field today is "$1mm per Patriot" or "cover a tiny area with Land Phalanx (which also costs something like $4k/second burst)".

by owenmarshall

3/24/2026 at 3:37:27 PM

This betrays your ignorance of drone defense tech.

The US had APKWS (anti-drone guided missiles) operational in the 2010s and these have been widely deployed. They are effective and cost less than a Shahed. These are just mods of an existing dirt-cheap rocket for which the US has an effectively unlimited supply. The Europeans have similar systems under development.

The US has deployed high-power anti-drone laser systems for a few years now with several operational kills. These are still new but are expected to replace CIWS. It can kill a drone for the cost of a Starbucks coffee and has a virtually unlimited magazine.

US pioneered military drones and defenses decades before the Ukraine/Russia war. There are many operational lessons to be learned from that war but both sides are using drone defense tech that is considerably less sophisticated than what the US has available.

by jandrewrogers

3/24/2026 at 4:10:37 PM

> The US had APKWS (anti-drone guided missiles) operational in the 2010s and these have been widely deployed

... on 4th/5th gen fighters that cost tens of thousands per flight hour[0] based on current evidence of deployment. We're still killing mosquitoes with hand grenades.

Iron Beam/the US systems are certainly interesting, but haven't been scaled up to meaningful deployments yet.

Meanwhile, those "considerably less sophisticated" systems were fielded in exercises by the Ukranians against NATO doctrine and won handily[1].

[0] https://www.defenseone.com/defense-systems/2026/03/fighter-j...

[1] https://www.wsj.com/opinion/nato-has-seen-the-future-and-is-...

by owenmarshall

3/25/2026 at 5:50:57 AM

No one is using Patriots against Shaheds.

> fast pursuit systems to hit Russian drones on launch

They haven't done much of that at all...

> cheap FPV drones for last-mile intercept

Where do you think these particular drones are made? I'll give you a hint - it's pretty sunny here.

by dilyevsky

3/25/2026 at 12:38:17 AM

Isn't Ukraine helping now with the anti missile/drone defense?

by darepublic

3/24/2026 at 3:11:31 PM

What Iranian drone did a trillion dollars in damages?

I'm not saying the general thrust of your argument is wrong, quite the opposite. But that's a big number for one drone.

by pc86

3/24/2026 at 3:41:13 PM

A trillion seems large but it's not that absurd. The drone that shut down 17% of Qatar's LNG capacity is said to have caused 20 billion USD worth of annual lost revenue. They said it'll take up to 5 years to rebuild so that could be 100 billion USD in lost revenue, plus whatever it costs to do the rebuild.

A trillion dollars worth of damage seems possible if spread over some years for some countries in the Gulf where shutting down a desalination plant would cause depopulation.

by dlisboa

3/24/2026 at 4:36:33 PM

> that could be 100 billion USD in lost revenue

that could be 100 billion USD in deferred revenue, if we assume that LNG is not going anywhere from wherever it's sitting underground, and will be simply extracted and sold later

> plus whatever it costs to do the rebuild

That is the real cost, which I would assume is nowhere near billions

by maratc

3/24/2026 at 4:44:54 PM

> that could be 100 billion USD in deferred revenue, if we assume that LNG is not going anywhere from wherever it's sitting underground, and will be simply extracted and sold later

That's not how revenue works at all.

by dlisboa

3/24/2026 at 4:53:38 PM

I don't think anyone should have any concern whatsoever regarding Qatar revenues vs. Qatar budgets, as they are nowhere near bankruptcy, with this setback or without. Their position by projected GDP per capita may decrease from 6th (currently) to maybe 10th place in the world, which is still better than about 180 other countries.

by maratc

3/24/2026 at 6:00:55 PM

>The drone that shut down 17% of Qatar's LNG capacity is said to have caused 20 billion USD worth of annual lost revenue.

That was a missile not a drone.

by logicchains

3/24/2026 at 2:26:50 PM

The best missile defense is offsense: degrading the launchers, stockpiles and defense industrial base, with cheap stand-in munitions after SEAD, leveraging air and intelligence superiority. Expensive interceptors are only a stop-gap that buys you time for the offensive degradation. Expensive stand-off munitions, likewise, are a short-term stopgap until SEAD is complete.

by energy123

3/24/2026 at 2:55:51 PM

Offense doesn't work at scale.

As the cost of drones goes to zero, the expected damage you take is roughly proportional to how much you have to lose. This means larger / richer economies cannot win these sorts of wars. To see what I mean, check out this desalination plant map:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/23/iran-threat-to...

It doesn't help if your commander in chief is incompetent and your invasion strategy involves treating desalination plants as legitimate military targets.

Of course, blowing up desalination plants in the middle east don't hurt the US all that much, but blowing up industrial supply chains does. We're something like 4 days away from a global chip manufacturing industry shut down (barring some logistic miracle, since we recently sold off our strategic helium reserves).

by hedora

3/25/2026 at 9:10:31 AM

First, hat tip on that Guardian article that you shared. The map of desalination plants around the Persian Gulf is excellent.

My first thought looking at it: Why does Saudi Arabia have desal plants in Riyadh? It is 100s of km away from the Persian Gulf! Maybe they want some far away from the Gulf for security reasons? Else, it looks weird. I imagine that they need to pump sea (salty) water from the Gulf to Riyadh, desal it, then pump back the waste water. Quite a journey.

by throwaway2037

3/24/2026 at 3:02:39 PM

It's heavily dependent on geography. Iran is geographically "lucky" it's positioned near the Strait of Hormuz and near the oil facilities of multiple Gulf states, allowing it to exert extreme asymmetric pressure through a small amount of drones etc. Most states can't replicate that luck. Good luck to South Africa if they ever decide to wage a similar war. Strategic depth also largely nullifies the role of one-way attack drones in combat, but it doesn't nullify the role of fighters and bombers who can exploit that range. I'm not discounting drones, they're highly important in many geographies, as Ukraine is showing, but I don't buy into this conventional wisdom online that they're the pinnacle in every situation.

by energy123

3/24/2026 at 3:28:14 PM

Israel is similiarly lucky that it is surrounded by neighbors with US bases that can intercept missiles and drones before they get to it. All of its more competent enemies are very far away. In a different scenario there'd be no motivation for a country like Iraq or Jordan to help.

They can afford to try to destroy Iran's offensive capabilities because in-between countries allow their airspace to be used.

Wars are usually between neighbors. If a neighbor has a huge stockpile of drones they can launch a first salvo that'll overwhelm whatever defensive capabilities the other country has before they even get to the point of destroying launchers/manufacturing.

Threats of massive drones strikes are the closest deterrent a country can get to nuclear weapons without developing nuclear weapons. If Iran had 5 million drones instead of 50 thousand this war wouldn't even be happening.

by dlisboa

3/25/2026 at 9:12:22 AM 

    > In a different scenario there'd be no motivation for a country like Iraq or Jordan to help.
While unprovable, I think the sentiment is too strong for Jordan. They have pretty good relations with Israel, and have been using their own fighter jets to down some drones from Iran. If anything, it is good practice for their airforce.

by throwaway2037

3/24/2026 at 3:52:50 PM

Russia is already shipping containers full of Iranian drones to the Ukrainian front. It doesn't take much imagination to see how geographic location is going to matter less and less as technology improves.

by hedora

3/25/2026 at 8:18:29 AM

Russia haven't used iranian produces drone n two years now.

by konart

3/24/2026 at 3:09:31 PM

It's America that's waging this war, having attacked Iran for no reason the world can see

It's somewhat similar to Russia waging a war in Ukraine, although I can see some reasons for Russia to attack Ukraine (mainly territory)

by iso1631

3/24/2026 at 4:07:09 PM

If "I want this land" is a legitimate reason to initiate a war then basically anything is a legitimate reason.

by pc86

3/25/2026 at 6:45:01 AM

You are confusing reason as in "why they did it" vs "why they ought to do it".

by tliltocatl

3/24/2026 at 4:24:59 PM

Ah yes, Russia, the famously territory starved country.

by elfly

3/25/2026 at 8:04:01 AM

And that's why nuclear deterrence is so key: the enemy can never be sure to destroy everything before being hit once.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine really reminded everyone that nuclear deterrence is a nice thing to have for you security, and I suspect the Israelo-American attack on Iran is going to be the nail in the coffin of nonproliferation.

I expect countries like Brazil, Japan, South Korea or even Taiwan or Vietnam to have the bomb within ten years at this point.

And given the current war and the dramatic consequences ahead, I now think that the world would have in fact been safer had the Mullah's regime actually got the bomb instead of playing the “under the threshold deterrence” game.

by littlestymaar

3/25/2026 at 12:28:08 AM

So what Iran did in the Gulf

Cheap drones overwhelming defenses until the billion dollar radars and airfields got hit.

Then methodically hit everything according to a plan that forces allied forces to retreat to reliable water sources.

Whatever one thinks of Iran, the way they're waging this war is a masterclass in strategy.

by shdudns

3/24/2026 at 1:52:23 PM

That's a false comparison. You want to compare between the actual options you have, which are either (a) firing an interceptor (or several); or (b) repairing the damage caused by a non-intercepted missile.

by maratc

3/24/2026 at 2:29:01 PM

Your first option comes with the major caveat that each interceptor you fire comes from a limited stockpile whose replacement rate[0] today isn't sufficient for even going 1:1, let alone accepting that multiple interceptors are required.

I'd say the real options in the near term when faced with an inbound missile is a) deciding to deplete your stockpile of interceptors with an incredibly limited replenishment rate; or b) risking a hit to a lower-value target.

Could the US go to a war economy footing and scale production? _Maybe_? I'm not entirely convinced the US can stomach the costs.

[0]: again, numbers are hard to find, but https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/news/features/2026/Lock... gives a flavor of just what defenders are up against.

by owenmarshall

3/24/2026 at 3:23:40 PM

In theory; in practice however, there's been rocket fire from Gaza towards Israel where the offence was literally a metallic tube with a bit of TNT at a cost of about $800 per rocket [0] while the defence was $100,000+ per interceptor [1]. This has been going on for years, and as far as I'm aware there was no depletion observed.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qassam_rocket [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Dome

by maratc

3/24/2026 at 4:20:13 PM

I don't know the economic numbers off the top of my head but I have to imagine it's hard to find Israelis who think they're spending too much money on rocket interceptors.

by pc86

3/25/2026 at 6:05:41 AM

If Mexico as a nation state intentionally launched a single offensive rocket from Juarez to El Paso, we would just invade.

Interceptors are an unnecessary expense in the ways that they have been used in the past 15 years.

by 15155

3/24/2026 at 2:35:49 PM

It’s far more complicated than that. The choice is often between firing an interceptor against this missile aimed at this target, or firing that interceptor against the next missile aimed at a target you can’t yet know. Because unless your production capacity far outstrips theirs, you’re going to run out first.

by wat10000

3/24/2026 at 2:59:13 PM

Not if you (a) destroy their production capacity while they don't destroy yours; (b) you destroy their stockpiles while they don't destroy yours; and (c) you've found a bottleneck on their side (launchers) and destroy it while they fail to inflict the same damage on you.

by maratc

3/24/2026 at 3:20:52 PM

That's true, but feels very much like "draw the rest of the owl." And even if you can do it, you'd have to do it against any country that starts to build this capacity that you think might somebody potentially use it against you, even if they aren't currently, unless you're confident that you can destroy their launchers and stockpiles so quickly that they can't be used in any significant number. (And if the USA couldn't manage to do that to Iran....)

by wat10000

3/24/2026 at 4:26:24 PM

Yes, it's complicated. There's almost 1,000 generals and officers spread across the US military. They (and the tens of thousands of people directly supporting them) spend a lot of time on these things.

Sometimes "draw the rest of the owl" makes sense when you've got 20,000 people actively drawing owls all day every day.

by pc86

3/24/2026 at 6:16:05 PM

I'm generally sympathetic to the argument that there are a lot of experts doing expert things who know better about these things than some idiot sitting at his computer i.e. me.

But in this particular case, we're in the middle of a war where the owl didn't get drawn and the enemy has successfully launched thousands of drones and missiles at our forces and our allies, causing enough damage to severely disrupt the world economy.

by wat10000

3/24/2026 at 1:50:25 PM

There are too many potential attackers though, and not everyone is sane. So you don't really get a choice about it. The cost of the interceptors needs to be considered in relation to the cost of what it protects. If the interceptor means an attacker doesn't kill my kids then it was worth the cost. If the interceptor keeps a multi-million dollar building around then interceptor at a million dollars is still cheap, even if the missile it takes out was only $100.

Yes you should use diplomacy to ensure war doesn't happen in the first place. However if it does: they will send cheap drones and missiles at you in large quantifies.

by bluGill

3/24/2026 at 1:59:00 PM

> If the interceptor keeps a multi-million dollar building around then interceptor at a million dollars is still cheap, even if the missile it takes out was only $100.

Not if it means you can't intercept the next one hitting much a more valuable/critical building.

by ceejayoz

3/24/2026 at 2:03:14 PM

That is a trade off that hopefully you never need to consider, but it is a valid concern that does come up in the real world.

by bluGill

3/24/2026 at 2:40:06 PM

It's not a hypothetical:

Trump started blaming Biden for the US's interceptor shortage two days into the war. Third-party military analysts say there's a high probability Iran's drone stockpile will outlast the US's first-tier interceptor stockpile.

The first-order math checks out: At the beginning of the war, we (and allies) were using 800 x $1M patriot missiles per day. The global production capacity for patriots is 600 per year, so there's no way we've have been able to maintain that cadence now that we're in week 4 of the war (the patriot program has not existed for enough decades). Now we see things like successful strikes on Israel's nuclear complex.

If the math isn't good enough, note that Trump backed down over the weekend, after Iran reiterated that they'd target civilian infrastructure if the US did so first. If we still had adequate interceptor capabilities, calling his bluff would not have worked.

by hedora

3/24/2026 at 2:33:27 PM

Unfortunately, necessity doesn’t imply possibility. It could simultaneously be true that you must build interceptors to protect yourself, and that you can’t build enough.

It only makes sense to consider the cost of what’s protected if it’s actually protected. If your million-dollar interceptor protects a multi-million-dollar building from a $100 missile, and then that building is hit by a second $100 missile, was it worth it?

That’s the math that has prevented missile defenses from being deployed on a large scale despite being technologically possible for well over half a century now, and despite the fact that a single interceptor might be saving an entire city from a nuclear warhead.

An interceptor costs at least as much as what it intercepts. Take into account miss rates and the cost of defense is a multiple of the cost of offense. Add in the fact that the attacker can concentrate an attack but the defender has to defend everywhere, and multiple warheads on a single missile, and the cost of defense multiplies further.

If defense costs 10x more than offense (a conservative estimate, I’d say) then that means you need to dedicate 10x of your economic capacity to it than your attacker does. If your attacker dedicates more than 10% of what you can put into defense, you lose. Defense can work, but it needs to be against a far weaker enemy. Thats why the most prominent example is Israel defending against neighboring non-state actors. Israel is wealthy enough, and the groups shooting at them are poor enough, that the math works out in the defender’s favor. Iran is a rather different story. And of course defending the US against the likes of Russia and China is a fever dream.

by wat10000

3/24/2026 at 4:15:43 PM

> If your million-dollar interceptor protects a multi-million-dollar building from a $100 missile, and then that building is hit by a second $100 missile, was it worth it?

I mean the assumption is that if the first missile hit the building, the second missile would have been fired at something else, right? Still seems worth it at face value especially if there's enough time between the two missiles that there aren't people in the building anymore.

by pc86

3/24/2026 at 6:12:44 PM

My assumption would be that the attacker builds missiles based on the defenses they want to defeat. If you have no defenses, maybe the defender builds 1,000 missiles. If you have 1,000 interceptors with 100% accuracy, then maybe the defender builds 2,000 missiles.

This is why the superpowers mostly scrapped their ICBM defenses in the 70s. The technology worked fine. It's totally doable with 1970s technology if you're willing to put nuclear warheads on the interceptors. But for every ICBM interceptor you built, the other side could build another ICBM for the same cost or less. And you need more than one interceptor per ICBM since they can fail and the each interceptor only covers a small area. Add in multiple warheads on a single missile and decoys and suddenly you might need 10x or more. So the USA gave up on the idea of covering the entire country with interceptors, deployed a few interceptors to protect some missile silos, then shut it down after less than a year. The USSR built out a system to protect Moscow and only Moscow, which is still operational today. However, the British were able to maintain the ability to defeat that system and destroy Moscow with a single submarine, all on their own, never mind what the USA would throw at it.

If you have a certain amount of stuff you can build and you're deciding what to do with that capacity, it's not at all clear that missile interceptors are a good use of that capacity even if you're protecting objects that cost orders of magnitude more than the interceptors cost. It works if you're defending against a far less capable adversary (Israel's Iron Dome against Hamas, USA's GBI system against North Korea) but not with an enemy that's even vaguely close to being a peer.

by wat10000

3/25/2026 at 12:39:21 AM

That worked in 1970 because there were exactly two players who had incentive to not spend all the money so they agreed to reduce the total ICBMs instead. In the current world there are too many actors - it won't work, they can make thousands of missles. Ukraine has already proven you don't get to control when you are attacked. Thus the only option today is cost reduce defense and produce enough to intercept several thousand per day.

by bluGill

3/25/2026 at 3:44:00 AM

It doesn't matter if it's the only option if it's not possible to do it.

Maybe it is possible. It does seem like it may be possible to defend against cheap drones with cheaper systems. Use lasers or good old-fashioned projectile guns instead of interceptor missiles.

For defending against proper missiles, I don't see how it's possible with any near-future tech. Guns and lasers don't work. You have to use a missile and it's going to have a cost similar to the cost of what you're shooting down. Peer enemies will be able to out-build you and many missiles will get through your defenses.

Shooting some down is better than shooting none down, but your enemy won't ignore your defensive systems. Shooting down 1,000 and having 1,000 get through is not better than shooting down 0 and having 1,000 get through. If building defenses just provokes the other side to build more offense, it's not worth it. If they're going to build the same amount of offense either way, then it might make sense to build up defenses.

Here's something to consider. The US has interceptors capable of shooting down ICBMs and with enough range to protect the whole continental US. There are currently 44 such interceptors. They cost about $75 million each. Standard procedure is to shoot four interceptors at an incoming missile to increase the likelihood of a kill, so that's about $300 million per incoming missile you want to counter. That's very much worth the cost if it prevents a nuclear warhead from reaching its target.

Russia and China together have maybe 700 ICBMs if we take a high estimate. For $210 billion, we could have enough interceptors to shoot down almost all of them. Round it up to $300 billion to account for all the infrastructure they'd need. That's a bargain compared to saving hundreds of American cities. So the question is: should we do it? So far, the American government has said "no." I agree with them, despite it being a bargain. Do you?

by wat10000

3/25/2026 at 5:23:31 AM

The US Navy is largely responsible for long-range ballistic missile defense, since you have to cross an ocean to hit the US. They also have among the most sophisticated missiles for that purpose, capable of killing an ICBM at apogee. The inventory of these missiles is much larger, every destroyer carries them, and recent variants are often considered the most competent of the various ABM platforms out there.

These cost ~$30M. They are in the process of scaling up production to a few hundred per year, with some help from the Japanese. Unit costs are coming down. These same missiles are also being deployed for land-based ballistic missile defense, despite their naval origin.

In the long-term you are seeing a convergence of the missile platforms as more capabilities are compressed into fewer missile designs. The US is pretty clearly evolving their systems to more of a “missile truck” architecture that is optimizing for the number of targets they can kill simultaneously at the maximum ranges that make engineering sense. Many aspects of new platforms like the B-21 all point in that direction.

A historical limitation is that the rocket motors used by most air defense missiles really weren’t adequate for ballistic missile intercept purposes. The US has invested a lot in closing that gap.

by jandrewrogers

3/25/2026 at 12:57:27 AM

>However, the British were able to maintain the ability to defeat that system and destroy Moscow with a single submarine, all on their own

What are you referring to here?

by david_pearce

3/25/2026 at 3:25:36 AM

The missiles on the UK's nuclear missile submarines were fitted with decoys. One of the three warheads carried by each missile was replaced with a dispenser that would deploy 27 decoys. A single submarine carried 16 missiles, so it could launch 32 warheads and 400+ decoys at Moscow. The Moscow defenses had 100 interceptors, so it was pretty much guaranteed that at least one warhead would make it through.

More recently, they upgraded to newer missiles which could carry 8 warheads each, allowing them to overwhelm Moscow's defenses without decoys.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevaline

by wat10000

3/24/2026 at 1:49:34 PM

Ah yes, but then you also have to add GDP + targetting/defense radii.

Great Britian alone has 10x the GDP of Iran. So an interceptor costing 10:1 is (at first approx) breakeven just for GB, who would have to intercept much less than the total manufacturing capability of Iran anyway.

Then you have every rich nation surrounding Iran as well. Let alone the USA who cannot be reached but throws their weight behind interceptions.

And finally "total manufacturing capability" is set to decline in any prolonged engagement with an Iran-like nation, but GB, western EU, USA, et al, are likely to only increase production if an engagement played out.

The math looks catastrophic on paper at 10:1, but I sincerely doubt that's the right analysis. An interceptor is worth what you're protecting, not what the attacking asset costs, so long as you can keep producing them.

by jvanderbot

3/24/2026 at 2:15:53 PM

> total manufacturing capability" is set to decline in any prolonged engagement with an Iran-like nation

That was what Russia thought about Ukraine. Effectively, they needed East European tanks and munitions for the first two years, but munitions production ramped up, and now they produce more per year that what they received over two years. A resource-rich country like the Iran that is effectively fight a death war (that's the controlling party belief) can keep up a very long time. The fact that the US tried to get the Kurds and the Baloch/Sistanni involved show that they are well aware that the way out is through a permanent civil war and the country fracturation. And imho, while Kurds accepting to be betrayed by the US for the third time in less than two decade won't have any real long term impact, an independent Baluchistan can easily destabilise Pakistan. Also, that would be a third country in the area in which the Hanafi jurisprudence is pushing hard towards Deobandi/Salafi, and personally I'd rather have any Shi'a school than that.

by orwin

3/24/2026 at 3:26:38 PM

> And imho, while Kurds accepting to be betrayed by the US for the third time in less than two decade won't have any real long term impact, an independent Baluchistan can easily destabilise Pakistan.

Not to confuse my prediction from prescription, but what prevents all the neighboring (direct or indirect over a sea) nation states from deciding to divide Iran like Germany was during the cold war? Thats not an independent Balochistan, at some point they will want reparations for all the damage, terrorism and intimidation they have incurred from Iran...

At some point the people in Iran will have to be forced to teach their innocent children the equivalent of the Nuremberg trials: there is no excuse in order to stop thinking, just following orders is not a valid legal defense.

Every population has the moral responsibility to keep the local aspiring autocrats in check, because if they don't and external power deconstructs the regime, the onus will be on the population!

by DoctorOetker

3/24/2026 at 5:54:56 PM

Saddam was paid (in chemical weapons, but not only) by the US to invade Iran, it didn't work well for them at the time, despite the MEK helping them with hidden routes and a lot of local support they don't have anymore. The current Iraki leadership isn't stable enough to do the same anyway.

Afghanistan and Pakistan are in a small war that will have some impact on Baluchistan, but official Pakistani ground troops are a no-no, because it will leave ground for the Taliban. Also India invested a lot in Baluchistan biggest port, and Pakistan threatening their investments will probably have them react (India love nothing more than helping Pakistan adversaries). Koweït is too small, Irak Kurds need to secure their autonomous region, and US promised are worth basically nothing. Azerbaijan used Iranian drones and artillery against Armenia like 2 years ago (maybe 3), and Iran apologised publicly after sending a missile to them.

All of this to say: only the US have the manpower and will for a ground invasion.

by orwin

3/24/2026 at 6:50:16 PM

Probably scale, a few million jews, arabs - qataris and emirates and saudi royalty is unlikely enough to deconstruct Iran, unlike Germany vs multiple comparably or larger sized regional peers.

Iran is 100m large country + 100s millions more shia core / axis of resistance supressed by small regional satraps empowered by outside forces. There are simply 10x more Muslims in region suppressed for decades under same framework where arc of history would would look kindly on Iran+co for destroying US influence and the greater Israeli project and look poorly upon satraps and compradors for failing their spiritual and moral duty of reclaiming the levant. The Nuremburg trials will be reserved for those who failed Islam for secular glitz and kindly on those who protected the faith. Iran simply has the size and spiritual/historic/civilization mandate to win the regional narrative and "moral" war versus gulf monarchs that choose to coexist with Israel. Gulf monarchs who are btw also definitionally autocrats whose contract to bribe populous with petro state proceeds goes away if this war drags on, of all autocrats they are the most likely to fall and least likely to normalize against autocrat regime change. This not to say Iran is "correct/moral" just they have scale and discourse legitimacy Germany didn't.

by maxglute

3/24/2026 at 2:00:09 PM

This is wrong, for example Iran have thousands of Shahed drones, they cost almost nothing to build, to intercept just one the ratio is way way higher that 1:10. A single patriot missile is in the multi millions $ range.

by Thaxll

3/24/2026 at 3:01:14 PM

They aren't using Patriots on Shahed drones. There are much cheaper purpose-built systems for that. While not practical everywhere, helicopter gun systems have proven effective in both the Middle East and Ukraine.

APKWS is quite popular and those cost less than the drones. A single fighter jet can carry 40. The Europeans are developing equivalent systems.

While not widely deployed yet, the US has operational laser-based anti-drone systems that have been shooting down Shahed class drone for a couple years now.

Ballistic missiles are more costly to deal with but ballistic missiles also cost much more.

by jandrewrogers

3/24/2026 at 2:04:32 PM

No, what I said is not wrong just because there exists other things to intercept, that just changes the ratio.

You still have to consider whether it's worth it to spend a patriot missile to intercept a drone, vs letting the drone hit, say, a billion dollar radar installation or a dozen troops.

On the manufacturing side, nobody said that all drones are intercepted with patriots. You have to look at the avg cost to intercept vs the average cost to attack, and if the ratio of those avg costs (across all attack/interceptions) is, say 100:1, and the combined GDP of the defending nations vs Iran is 1000:1, then what is the problem?

There are lower cost ways to intercept already on the market and being rolled out. See for example: https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2025/09/11/uk-to-p...

This whole "cost analysis of patriot vs drone" examines the worst case scenario at a fixed point in time and ignores layered defenses, the effect of combined GDP, learning, diminishing capabilities of attackers, and improvements by defenders.

by jvanderbot

3/24/2026 at 2:25:06 PM

But your analysis should also include what fraction of GDP diverted to arms (or what increase in gas price) is acceptable on either side.

by lejalv

3/24/2026 at 2:39:42 PM

For one thing, the entire world economy is not even close to 1000x Iran’s.

by wat10000

3/24/2026 at 2:49:03 PM

$1M / $30 (patriot cost / drone cost) is only 33x. The US economy is about 31x larger than Iran's. So, to first order approximation, we could build enough patriots to sustainably stop their drones.

However, we haven't converted our economy to just producing Patriots. We can only produce 600 / year. Drone production rates are orders of magnitude higher than that.

As for second order effects, the interception probabilities are less than one, so in this world where we're producing a million patriots per year, tens of thousands of drones (at minimum) are hitting their targets. On top of that, the offensive drones are more easily transported + retargeted, so the patriots would need to be stationed pretty much everywhere, and their adversary chooses where the attacks actually happen.

The only winning move is not to play.

by hedora

3/24/2026 at 1:53:29 PM

Sobering how asymmetric Iran’s attacks on Israel are after Israel attacked Iran.

by keybored

3/25/2026 at 9:42:42 AM

> developed [] algorithm that solves instances with 10,000 [] in under 7 minutes on a Macbook Pro [] The prior state-of-the-art timed out at 2 hours

Knowing how government IT procurement works, I'm afraid it's going to stay >2h for the foreseeable future even if the COTS solutions will bring this time down to a subsecond calculation.

by egorfine

3/24/2026 at 1:27:34 PM

Add multiple decoys and the missile math tends to become an argument for the importance of preemption. Han shot first for a good reason.

by delichon

3/24/2026 at 2:05:35 PM

The game theory of it is the prisoner's dilemma.

Preemtive betrayal is a terrible strategy if there are more than two parties in the game, and they are allowed to cooperate.

You have to be one heck of a smooth conversationalist to convince them to take a number and patiently wait in line to be the ones to be attacked next.

If you're the guy that the others in the room know shoots first, you're also the guy the others in the room will shoot when he's reaching for something in his jacket pocket.

by marginalia_nu

3/24/2026 at 6:08:20 PM

The prisoner's dilemma leads to mutual defection as the dominant equilibrium strategy in the one-shot version. Cooperation emerges as the equilibrium on repetition. The Han Solo gunfight is literally the one-shot version. When countries go to war that calculation is more complicated.

by delichon

3/24/2026 at 3:08:36 PM

Decoys are greatly over-rated in ballistic missile systems. Sensors are so good at discriminating decoys from warheads that decoys are largely ineffective and have been for decades. This has borne out in Ukraine.

A decoy sufficiently sophisticated to look real to good sensors will have weight and characteristics that approach that of a real warhead, at which point you might as well add another warhead. Decoys only make sense if the marginal cost of adding them is low.

by jandrewrogers

3/24/2026 at 2:36:37 PM

If you haven't, I'm going to recommend you to listen to an episode of Dan Carlin's Hardcore History, specifically The Destroyer of Worlds [1].

Why? Because it goes into the change in strategic thinking brought on by the atomic age (and, soon thereafter, the thermonuclear age). And there was an element of US strategic thinking that argued for a preemptive strike against the USSR.

The episode also goes into the arguments for and against the development of the hydrogen bomb, a weapon that could never really be used and arguably not even necessary when we already had the atomic bomb.

The outcome of those debates shaped American foreign policy from 1945 to the present day.

[1]:https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-59-the-destroyer-...

by jmyeet

3/25/2026 at 6:14:03 AM

> hydrogen bomb, a weapon that could never really be used and arguably not even necessary when we already had the atomic bomb.

Two-stage designs are far more cost-effective and compact.

by 15155

3/24/2026 at 5:58:53 PM 

  With the Russians it is not a question of whether but of when. If you say why not bomb them tomorrow, I say why not today? If you say today at 5 o'clock, I say why not one o'clock?  -- John von Neumann, ~1950
On the one hand he was one of the smartest people in history. On the other, his home country had recently been conquered by the Red Army so he may have been a little biased.

by delichon

3/24/2026 at 1:29:30 PM

Careful. Preemption takes many forms, some of them many would find unpalatable.

by busterarm

3/25/2026 at 8:18:34 AM

Those schoolgirls were obviously going to be a problem for the US in the next 20 years.

by blitzar

3/24/2026 at 1:45:49 PM

Unpalatable preemption is generally better than reentry vehicles coming down your chimney.

by gos9

3/24/2026 at 1:51:04 PM

The problem there is you can't prove anything would have come down the chimney if the preemption is successful, so people will still be unhappy.

by phkahler

3/24/2026 at 1:55:43 PM

I agree, but some of them are more obvious.

Like not giving 100 billion dollars to someone who actively wants to kill you.

by busterarm

3/24/2026 at 2:45:36 PM

A thought experiment: would the world be a better place if the US had preemptively attacked the USSR in the 50s or early 60s when it was possible to do without more than “get[ting] our hair mussed” as General Turgidson put it?

by wat10000

3/24/2026 at 1:55:18 PM

But it's also the basic l basis of deterrence and the destabilizing nature of ICBM defense: relying on interceptors presumes the war happens.

by XorNot

3/24/2026 at 1:35:34 PM

Preemption is a propaganda lie.

by heyitsmedotjayb

3/24/2026 at 3:00:56 PM

If you haven't, watch House of Dynamite.

Sadly, the Trump Administration concluded we should build exactly the defense capabilities described in the film.

They even cited it by name as a good roadmap for the Golden Dome, so I know they read the title. I guess their reading comprehension levels are extremely low.

by hedora

3/24/2026 at 8:44:12 PM

The math and economics on missile defense are broken.

If your adversary uses nuclear-tipped missiles: within hours if not days, you are virtually guaranteed to suffer impact. Congratulations, New York is under a mushroom cloud. Lose.

If your adversary doesn't use nuclear-tipped missiles, you have a war of attrition whereby the cost of interceptors is greatly more expensive than the cost of building the conventional missiles. Congratulations, you wrecked your economy, if you can even keep up production of interceptors for long enough. Lose.

The only winning moves are to either use ground troops to invade and dismantle your opponents' missiles to prevent that risk from being realized, or to play mutually-assured destruction games trying to convince the other side that you're just an insult away from doing it anyway. And a Western world that seems desperate to keep boots off the ground is not playing that winning move.

by solatic

3/24/2026 at 8:59:16 PM

Shot exchange is a huge problem, made even worse by the arrival of cheap drones. But you're implicitly assuming that the adversary is on roughly equal economic footing. If your defense budget is $800 billion and your adversary's defense budget is $8 billion, you can afford to spend 100x as much shooting down their missiles as they spend lofting them.

There's also a danger in projecting linearly from the beginning of a war, where invading forces both tend to use more expensive stand-off munitions and also have to deal with more aggressive missile launches. As the defender's own air defense system gets degraded, the invader can switch from expensive long range stand-off munitions to cheaper stand-in munitions (like glide bombs) launched from much shorter range. Additionally, the invader will be able to diminish the defender's ability to launch missile strikes in the first place, either by destroying the launchers, the missiles themselves, or their production, thus reducing the demand on expensive high-capability interceptors.

Drones and mines continue to offer asymmetric warfare options that are very hard to counter without a robust low side on the high-low mix. Ukraine are the world's leading experts in this currently, and hopefully are involved with US and Gulf forces to try to improve this shot exchange ratio.

I am assuming nobody is using nukes though. That completely changes the picture. One must always assume "(some of) the missiles will get through". Traditional MAD does not require boots on the ground - merely the assurance that if Iran gets one nuke through and hits New York, the USA will respond with 100+ nukes. The real question then is what the other "large" nuclear powers (Russia and China, primarily) will do in response to that.

by aftbit

3/25/2026 at 5:28:21 AM

Defense budget is an abstraction. At the end of the day, there are only so many factories with only so many raw inputs producing only so many interceptors per day. You cannot simply increase the defense budget in the event of a war of attrition and then attempt to outspend your enemy. And this is beside the political unpopularity of high defense budgets in peacetime, when they would need to be higher, to build the industrial capacity ahead of when it would be needed.

by solatic

3/24/2026 at 9:04:16 PM

i don't think complete invulnerability was ever the goal of missile defense. It was meant to be a countermeasure to something where before there was none. I'm actually surprised it works as well as it does. Back when these things were first being developed and tested the thought was intercepting nuclear armed ICBMs, they were supposed to be massively destabilizing with respect to MAD and could conceivably give a nation first strike advantage. First strike advantage means just bare minimum survival not that you never get hit at all. Fortunately, that never really materialized.

by chasd00

3/24/2026 at 9:14:38 PM

Ground troops that can't advance due to a cheap nonstop drone and missile barrage is also not a solution as you are going to run out of troops before ypur enemy runs out of drones.

by PowerElectronix

3/25/2026 at 5:34:09 AM

Ukraine is a poor example here because we've been poor allies to them. Drones are manufactured in factories that can be bombed, stockpiled in warehouses that can be bombed, transferred to the front lines in trucks that can be bombed. But Ukraine doesn't have the air force assets to achieve that. The Israelis do, and the amount of drones that have been launched at Israel has dropped considerably over the last three weeks.

by solatic

3/24/2026 at 8:57:21 PM

The "if only one nuke gets through, you lose and the whole thing is pointless" is completely wrong. Even if surrender were mandatory after one nuke, all the other intercepted nukes would be thousands if not millions of lives saved.

by mikkupikku

3/24/2026 at 9:21:40 PM

> the cost of interceptors is greatly more expensive than the cost of building the conventional missiles

And the same thing is true with this comparison. The cost comparison is not interceptor vs conventional missile.

It's interceptor vs conventional missile + the damage the missile would have done.

Yes, you don't want to use Patriots to intercept Shaheds but that's an argument for using the right tool for the job. It's not an argument that the economics of interception are completely broken.

Ukraine has interceptors that are cheaper than Shaheds.

by Brybry

3/24/2026 at 9:00:37 PM

The losing move is using missile interceptors.

Whether it's high altitude drone swarms, terminally guided artillery munitions, hypersonic rail guns, or high energy laser defense, all are orders of magnitude cheaper than the interceptors and could be less than the cost of the (nuclear?) missile. It's true that generically defending against nukes is basically a fools errand, but if they're (also stupidly) limited to putting them on ICBMs with non-detonating fail safes, then it's probably economically doable and cheaper than the $10T forever war.

I'm sorry, the whole framing of this (OP) question/answer seems artificial and fundamentally silly.

by kurthr

3/24/2026 at 1:30:27 PM

Would be interesting to know how the probabilities change once all your X band radars are destroyed. And then again how they change when all your L band radars are destroyed...

by heyitsmedotjayb

3/24/2026 at 1:39:29 PM

> And then again how they change when all your L band radars are destroyed...

Connection reset by Yugoslavs with microwave ovens

by ErroneousBosh

3/24/2026 at 2:34:57 PM

Not sure if it applies exactly but this discussion brings to mind this saying...

"The loser of a knife fight dies in the street. The winner dies in the hospital."

by vaporwario

3/24/2026 at 2:57:59 PM

>Hence, for one warhead, a defender can launch 4 interceptors and have a 96% chance of successfully intercepting the incoming warhead. >Unfortunately, those numbers are optimistic.

This part worth stressing, ceiling for more performant missiles, i.e. faster, terminal maneuvering, decoys are geometrically harder to intercept. Past mach ~10 terminal and functionally impossible because intercept kinematics will break interceptor airframes apart.

AFAIK there hasn't been tests (i.e. FTM series) done on anything but staged/choreographed "icbm representative" targets. Iran arsenal charitably pretty shit, including high end. Hypothetical high end missile with 10%-20% single shot probability of kill requires 20-40 interceptors for 98% confidence, before decoys, i.e. 40x6=240 interceptors for 1 missile with 5 credible decoys.

The math / economics breaks HARD with offensive missile improvements.

by maxglute

3/24/2026 at 3:04:02 PM

Lasers. No really, near-future laser systems with adaptive optics and good spotting - for example distributed SAR satellites - dramatically shift that balance [0].

[0] https://toughsf.blogspot.com/2025/05/the-laser-revolution-pa...

by Voultapher

3/24/2026 at 3:15:53 PM

I doubt a MW laser can reliably intercept a reentry vehicle. A lot of energy is lost through the atmosphere when intercepting a warhead in space, from a land based laser. Once it reenters the atmosphere there might not be enough time. You also need to burn through the heatshield that the warhead is equipped with for reentry.

Even if you can can deliver enough energy for long enough, there is no fuel to burn and it might not be easy to detonate or disable the warhead.

For ICBMs, one idea was to use orbital, nuclear powered lasers to hit the missile on the boost phase.

But that's very much not near-future.

Lasers might still be useful for rockets, drones and cruise missiles of course.

by gpderetta

3/24/2026 at 3:42:37 PM

> For ICBMs, one idea was to use orbital, nuclear powered lasers to hit the missile on the boost phase.

Author here. Thank you for your insight.

I took some time to read about the recently proposed "Golden Dome" defense system, and what you laid out seems to be the end goal [0]. It's difficult to tell how realistic this actually is. The size of the constellation of satellites needed seems prohibitive, to say the least.

[0] https://armscontrolcenter.org/fact-sheet-golden-dome/

[1] https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2026/02/space-based-interce...

by O3marchnative

3/24/2026 at 6:46:39 PM

I get the impression you didn't read the linked post. It goes into the details, atmospheric absorption for different wavelength, weather conditions, tracking time, interception time based on warhead hardness ratings and many more details. It's paper based, so in practice it will be more complicated and there are things it will have missed, and things we don't even know yet as being operational challenges for such systems. At the same time, it does present a compelling narrative and I'd much rather discuss individual assumptions or sources than dismiss it entirely based on a gut feeling.

by Voultapher

3/24/2026 at 3:32:55 PM

Maybe for subsonic, high end missiles I'm extremely skeptical. Need 5-10MW to get useful dwell power on high end hypersonic inherently shielded against reentry thermals. Speculative laser defense are infra size defense, not mobile trailer size. Factor in duty cycles (i.e. shots per minute) and it seems dead end. Half of economics of missile defense is mobility - building density relative to threats by moving platforms. Last 2 parts real constraints, high-end adversaries coordinate salvos to arrive in time. Interceptor magazine depth limited = still throw 100s of interceptors to engage multiple targets if required. Lasers = serial visual range engagement. Figure out dwell time + duty cycle to saturate. Hypersonic can go from over horizonal to hit target in 10 seconds, a laser couldn't engage more than 1-2 missiles in that time. Technically 1, because by the time you fried 1st target the 2nd is so close the shrapnel will hit on momentum.

by maxglute

3/24/2026 at 3:39:15 PM

Lasers are not "all weather" weapons as far as I am aware. Clouds, snow, fog, rain, and just humidity all degrade their performance greatly.

by consumer451

3/24/2026 at 3:50:39 PM

The recently announced "Golden Dome" project intends to get around this issue by putting a vast constellation of satellites into orbit. Each satellite would likely need a serious source of power in order to use its laser. Assuming that's just an engineering problem, then the issue becomes coverage. That is, depending on the adversary's capabilities, you'd need an absolutely massive constellation in orbit [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_s...

by O3marchnative

3/24/2026 at 3:52:38 PM

This is such an insane plan, and I don't mean that in a good way.

For one thing, it can do little to nothing about low flying nuclear tipped cruise missiles, especially in less than ideal weather. These already exist, so the Golden Dome system is already inadequate on day one.

by consumer451

3/24/2026 at 6:43:56 PM

The linked article covers that in depth, it's not implausible to punch a hole through a storm with pulsed laser of that class. Honestly we don't know enough about these systems to know their operational limits but we know weather will play a role.

by Voultapher

3/24/2026 at 4:04:52 PM

Try that on my spinning, mirror-coated missile!

by apt-apt-apt-apt

3/24/2026 at 8:34:55 PM

And that is the answer to Fermi paradox "why we don't see any other civilizations in the galaxy".

by deepsun

3/24/2026 at 2:54:08 PM

> Note that a more complete model would multiply each term by P(track)_j — the common-mode detection-tracking-classification factor developed in the previous section — but the standard WTA formulation assumes perfect tracking.

I'm not sure that is a useful model, or more complete. I don't think you can assign interceptors to undetected missiles, so considering their effect on the value is rather pointless. It's effectively a sunk cost.

Multiplying with the probability also makes no sense from an optimisation point of view. Why would you assign lower value to a target about to be hit simply because you were unlikely to detect the missile?

The tracking probability only shows up in the meta game described at the end, where one side is trying to optimise their ability to hit valuable targets and the other is trying to optimise their ability to prevent that from happening.

by contravariant

3/24/2026 at 3:10:23 PM

As an alternative formulation of the same problem, maintaining peace has linear cost, completely solvable in linear time and rewards are unbounded for all parties.

by ozgung

3/24/2026 at 2:58:40 PM

Really interesting.

Forgive my ignorance, but I thought Israel's "iron dome" offered a very effective defense.

Is this just from short distance missiles from neighbouring countries?

This article seems to indicate it's very difficult to achieve a high success rate against multiple missiles.

Admittedly I probably need to read up on this more.

by jcul

3/24/2026 at 4:39:42 PM

There are multiple tiers of missile (and ballistic missile defense).

Especially with ballistic missiles, the longer the range, the faster the inbound warhead will be in the terminal phase (roughly). So longer range ~= faster meaning more difficult to intercept.

"Iron Dome" is the name generally used to describe Israel's lowest tier set of defenses. Very roughly Iron Dome is designed to defend against stuff that you could plausibly fire from the back of a truck, and have a max range of around ~50km.

Very roughly, these were intended to take on something like GMLRS (realistically, massed volleys of unguided rockets) - these are rockets that one or two people could conceivably manhandle, and are traveling in the neighborhood of Mach 2-3. One of the key innovations of Iron Dome is its ability to quickly ascertain and design on which rockets were unlikely to strike valuable areas, and only engage the actually threatening ones.

The next tier up is David's Sling, and then Israel's wider set of high performance anti-ballistic missile systems. Returning the the range <-> speed thing, we'd need something like a medium range ballistic missile to get from Iran to Israel. For something like the Shahab-3, that's like ~Mach 7 during re-entry.

If we step up to IRBMs (so something that China might use to strike at Guam), we're probably talking like Mach 10.

by icegreentea2

3/24/2026 at 8:05:18 PM

Interesting stuff, thanks for the long and detailed response.

by jcul

3/24/2026 at 10:01:19 PM

Yeah this is really bad news for Israel. America does not have the resolve for a major ground invasion, and Israel cannot intercept missiles indefinitely.

by enaaem

3/24/2026 at 4:54:25 PM

Gaming this out for peer adversaries is mostly moot, right? The post-Cold War strategic balance has mostly hung on MAD. And Russia, in particular, has responded to any attempt at building missile shields with more capable missiles.

It's likely more relevant for asymmetric conflicts that involve conventional weapons, and would enable an otherwise less resourced adversary to become a near peer.

Dennis Bushnell from NASA presented this deck in 2001, and is quite prescient about UAVs and distributed warfare.

https://alachuacounty.us/Depts/epd/EPAC/Future%20Strategic%2...

by blueblisters

3/24/2026 at 11:05:04 PM

Eh, he threw so much random stuff at the wall that some of it is bound to stick. An early slide in his presentation says there will be "no pixie dust," but that's 90% of what follows.

by CamperBob2

3/24/2026 at 9:30:12 PM

There is also a big real world experience element that is hard to account for mathematically.

There are stories of ukrainian operators expressing bewilderment and BCC countries sending 8x interceptors at millions a pop at a 20k shaheed. The world doesn't seem to have acclimatized to well...how the world works now.

There is a very fundamental disconnect at play here and I fear it'll get us all into trouble

by Havoc

3/25/2026 at 9:48:32 AM

> The world doesn't seem to have acclimatized to well...how the world works now

It has been observed that military bureaucracies will do everything in their power to ignore the fact that their experience is now obsolete and requires a complete refactoring.

This is why the countries were still not ready for Shaheds despite tens of thousands of them having been shot into Ukraine and despite enormous ukrainian experience and military know-how being readily available.

by egorfine

3/24/2026 at 9:34:32 PM

Well, it’s less about the value of the interceptor and more about the value of what the drones are heading for. If it’s a desalination plant that makes 20% of your freshwater, eight missiles are probably well worth it because a lot of people can die.

Middle Eastern countries have much more condensed critical infrastructure and economic targets than we do.

Iran has expected a war like this for decades and been continuously preparing, most of the other nations they have not.

by mattmaroon

3/25/2026 at 12:57:50 AM

That logic right there is why the US is going to lose. That math only works in isolation

The Ukrainians don’t think about today’s tradeoff but also about tomorrows. They learned that when when a three day special operation turned into four years.

You have to match your best defenses against the best expected incoming attack- across time- even if it means taking a hit. Yes desalination plant included

The us doctrine of defend all the things all the time against everything has failed in light of modern drone warefare

by Havoc

3/25/2026 at 6:20:07 AM

Ukraine has no feasible means to actually act offensively, meanwhile, the United States is a nuclear weapons state.

Pose a credible-enough threat and atomic deletion will ensue.

by 15155

3/25/2026 at 9:46:07 AM

> meanwhile, the United States is a nuclear weapons state

This logic is outdated because it is pretty obvious that no one is going to employ nuclear warheads in a typical conventional war and thus the nuclear factor suddenly doesn't matter for war economics.

by egorfine

3/25/2026 at 2:15:00 AM

The US already has “shoot the archer” doctrine which strategizes to target the site(s) launching cheap drones rather than the drones themselves. With US air superiority this seems feasible.

by angelgonzales

3/24/2026 at 1:32:18 PM

Great nerd title, the maths made me nostalgic as I haven't seen a Sigma/Pi in a few years

by u_sama

3/24/2026 at 2:30:11 PM

This is rocket defense, not missile defense.

Pretty much nothing can stop those ICBMs - those aren't rockets.

If you dig deeper than mainstream news - Iran is lighting Israel up with those ICBMs, but they don't use them too often.

by captainswirly

3/24/2026 at 2:34:19 PM

Technically Iran fires SRBMs and MRBMs not ICBMs. They intentionally gimp their missiles to avoid advertising ICBM range as a way of placating Europe.

by nerfbatplz

3/24/2026 at 2:38:47 PM

Cope harder. I saw the videos that Israel tried to ban.

Whatever you want to call them, they are "hypersonic" traveling over 15k mph.

They definitely look fast too in the videos where they smash into Israeli housing destroying everything in an instant.

by captainswirly

3/24/2026 at 3:39:30 PM

ICBM means the missile is able to be launched into other continent (more than 5K kilometers in range), not about its effective warhead. Iranian missiles are fast and efficient, but their effective range is essentially being able to target Israel and the Gulf States, which means they are not ICBMs. Also, the one country in the Middle East who does have ICBM missiles and can target Europe is Israel, not Iran.

by Maken

3/24/2026 at 5:37:11 PM

The IC in ICBM mean Intercontinental and specifies the range, not how impressive it looks in videos.

by echoangle

3/24/2026 at 2:06:26 PM

What is the steady state? Assume you have two competent superpowers, both researching missile offense and defense, over the next 1000 years. What are the asymptotics of the interception rate from 0 to 1000?

by energy123

3/24/2026 at 2:22:58 PM

The steady state would look like a sinusoidal signal. This is more of a cycle than a hill climbing thing.

by bob1029

3/24/2026 at 2:28:01 PM

Are you sure there isn't a structural advantage to either offense or defense that will reveal itself with more iterations, and we won't converge to either 0% or 100%?

by energy123

3/24/2026 at 2:44:58 PM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_bomber_will_always_get_thr...

That’s the steady state. Interceptors are expensive; missiles are (relatively) cheap. There’s no sine wave or cat and mouse game. If you’re trying to defend against a peer, missile defense loses.

by adampunk

3/24/2026 at 2:48:08 PM

I'm talking about interception probability, not the relative cost. I get that interceptors will probably be more expensive indefinitely (unless we start putting lasers into orbit to get around atmosphere, or something unexpected like that).

by energy123

3/24/2026 at 3:12:56 PM

OK, assume infinite resources, but the attacker only has one missile, and the defender only has one interceptor.

Optimal strategy for the attacker: Figure out how fast the interceptor can reach your missile, and have it split into a dozen warheads on different trajectories a mile before that. Include the blast radius of the interceptor in the calculation in case the defender decides to set of high-altitude nukes to defend itself against your missile.

The non-proliferation treaties we just pulled out of banned multi-warhead ICBMs decades ago because there's no feasible counter-move. That's bad for the missile business.

Back in reality, the attacker just builds 100,000 conventional drones, and 1 identical looking one with a nuke in it. Eventually, the defender runs out of interceptors, so the intercept probability trends to 0. At that point, the attacker sends the nuke without varying the behavior of the conventional drones.

by hedora

3/24/2026 at 2:53:29 PM

Well there the cost plays a part! It’s not independent. If I can build 1000 missiles for every 1 interceptor, the probability of interception hardly matters.

This actually was why we planned to put lasers in space: the economics of one nuclear-pumped laser reflected through Unobtanium were better than any other interceptor. And even that if the effect worked (it didn’t, they could not prove lasing and fired an engineer who blew the whistle on that), the system could be defeated by a staggered salvo.

by adampunk

3/25/2026 at 8:44:06 AM

What is that supposed to mean?

by VerifiedReports

3/24/2026 at 1:52:13 PM

could use some investigation of the ukranians techniques -- the number of interceptors the U.S. used within the first four days of the war eclipsed the total amount Ukranians have had for the war

by femiagbabiaka

3/24/2026 at 2:29:32 PM

"Lessons US and Gulf could learn from Ukraine’s air defence warriors"

https://www.thetimes.com/world/russia-ukraine-war/article/us...

"Ukraine’s low-cost Shahed killers draw US and Gulf interest, but a wartime ban blocks sales"

https://apnews.com/article/iran-ukraine-shahed-russia-drone-...

"Ukraine Helps U.S. Bases in the Mideast With Stopping Drones"

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/09/world/middleeast/ukraine-...

"Ukraine deploys units to five Middle East countries to intercept drones"

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-deploys-units-i...

by OrangePilled

3/24/2026 at 1:27:05 PM

Oh, I thought this was going to be about the old trackball arcade game. Or perhaps it is? Same sort of rules? The maths is going so far over my head I can't hear the whoosh.

by zabzonk

3/24/2026 at 6:21:42 PM

I expected that too, but it's about the inspiration for the game, I guess. I was trying to figure out how you encode computation in the game.

by gs17

3/25/2026 at 5:57:23 AM

So this is what RAND corporation spends all day doing.

by brcmthrowaway

3/24/2026 at 1:26:59 PM

It's been known since the 1960s that effective anti ballistic missile defense is impossible.

by dboreham

3/24/2026 at 1:48:13 PM

There are several different levels of ballistic missiles.

ICBMs, for which the GBI is intended, are the most challenging to defend against and show the least interceptor success.

In contrast, we do have some pretty definitive evidence that theater and "lower" MRBM/IRMB ballistic missiles can be intercepted successfully. If you define "effective defense" as "most missiles that would cause damage are intercepted", then it is clearly possible with current technology. If you define "effective defense" as "all missiles are intercepted", then it remains beyond the current technology.

by cpgxiii

3/24/2026 at 3:23:48 PM

If you define "effective" in terms of cost ratios: R = (cost of defense system + cost from failed intercepts) / (cost of attack system)

then N < 100 is well beyond current technology, regardless of whether the defense system is perfect or non-existent.

There's no magic Pareto-optimal point where investing the right amount in missile defense means that starting a war against a medium-sized country makes economic sense. Russia figured this out in Ukraine, and the US figured it out in Iran.

Israel's genocide worked pretty well tactically, but is a long-term strategic disaster. If the US continues to be a democracy, polls say that it will cause us to withdraw support sometime this decade. Also, it only works if you have an incredibly asymmetric fight.

by hedora

3/24/2026 at 1:31:05 PM

A lot of things involving rockets and putting things in space have changed since the 1960s.

by trollbridge

3/24/2026 at 1:38:38 PM

Observability has changed in most other ways we have regressed.

by BoredPositron

3/24/2026 at 2:01:43 PM

That's true. And while I disagree with the parent comment, ICBM interception remains enormously problematic and likely will remain so until directed energy weapons get really cheap.

Fundamentally the rocket equation and orbital dynamics really fight you on this.

It's a lot less "can't be done" versus "would be financially untenable to build and maintain even when the objective is nuclear defense".

by XorNot

3/24/2026 at 1:33:41 PM

Have they, really?

* Small rockets can now land themselves.

Anything else?

by skywhopper

3/25/2026 at 7:02:12 AM

Vastly cheaper and more powerful control and guidance systems (and cheaper, if only a bit cheaper, radars too).

by tliltocatl

3/24/2026 at 1:39:08 PM

Computer guidance? Better materials? Better telemetry?

by sumtechguy

3/24/2026 at 3:02:42 PM

Still short amount of time to make a decision based on very messy data

by pwndByDeath

3/24/2026 at 3:47:46 PM

If you're looking for a job and are still squeamish about working in the defense industry...I'm sorry to hear about that.

Because, boy, do I think you'll be missing out.

by OrangePilled

3/24/2026 at 2:44:06 PM

What are you gonna do when Iran destroys the missile defense system itself, oops already happened

by sgtsteaks

3/24/2026 at 2:06:53 PM

Pardon the pun but this is an arms race and the defenders are going to lose. There are broadly five classes of missiles (one isn't a missile per se):

1. Ballistic. These are traditional rockets, basically. While rockets are designed to reach orbit or leave the Earth, a ballistic missile basically goes straight up and comes down. The higher it goes, the further away it can get because of the ballistic trajectory and the rotation of the Earth.

Ballistic missiles are most vulnerable in the boost phase ie when they're just launched. Since you have little to no warning of that, that's not really helpful.

But one weakness of ballistic missiles is you pretty much know the target within a fairly narrow range as soon as they launch. That's the point of early-warning radar: to determine if a launch is a threat so defenses can be prepared.

Attackers can confuse or defeat defenses in multiple ways such as making small course corrections on approach, splitting into multiple warheads, using decoys for some of these warheads, deploying anti-radar or anti-heat seeking defenses at key points and breaking into many small munitions, sometimes called cluster munitions on the news but traditionally that's not what a cluster bomb is or was. In more sophisticated launch vehicles, the multiple warheads can be independently targeted. These are called MIRVs (multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles).

Economicallky, depending on range and capability, a ballistic missile might cost anywhere from $100k+ to $10M+.

2. Rockets. Militarily this is different to a rocket in a civilian context. It's not much different to a hobby rocket, actually. Often these are "dumb" but some have sensors and guidance capability or might be heat-seeking.

These tend to be incredibly cheap to produce and not terribly accurate but that's not really the point. The point is they're cheap and easy to produce and the interceptors are much more expensive.

3. Cruise missiles. Rather than a ballistic trajectory, these have more sophisticated guidance and travel much closer to the ground, usually to avoid radar. The Tomahawk missile is a prime example of this. These tend to be relatively expensive and much slower than ballistic missiles.

4. Hypersonic missiles. This is a relatively new invention that's kind of like a cruise-ballistic hybrid. It flies in the atmosphere for part or all of the time and, unlike cruise missiles, will fly faster than the speed of sound, usually significantly so (eg Mach 4-10). Such high speed makes interception near-impossible currently.

The big advantage of a hypersonic missile is that it has the speed of a ballistic missiles without the predictability of the target area. Plus it can be retargeted in-flight.

5. Drones (honorable mention). Not technically a missile but they fit in this space regardless. This is basically a scaled up commercial drone with an explosive payload. These are significantly slower than cruise missiles or rockets but can be live-targeted, re-targeted and have a variety of types ranging from dropping hand grenades from a height (eg as has happened in Ukraine) to suicide-type drones that explode on impact.

Drones are typically so slow that you could shoot them down with an shotgun in some cases. But they're incredibly cheap and easy to produce.

by jmyeet

3/24/2026 at 2:47:08 PM

You cannot shoot a drone down with a shotgun. The range on a shotgun is nothing.

Do you know that it actually fires bb's out in a cone shape? If you aim a shotgun up in the air, you are not taking out any drones.

Look up the video of the drone hitting the hotel in Bahrain to get an idea of the speed and altitude.

by sgtsteaks

3/24/2026 at 9:24:58 PM

I think you and the previous comment are talking about different types of drones- the smaller commercial quadcopters used in the Russia-Ukraine conflict can be shot down with shotguns fairly effectively.

Both sides have been seen with one member of a squad carrying around an issued shotgun in an anti-drone role- the fact that it shoots pellets in a cone is precisely why it's so effective. Skeet shooting is a great example of how relatively small fast moving targets can be hit consistently at range with a shotgun and they are usually using much smaller/lighter pellets with poorer velocity/range, I would assume the loads used in an anti-drone role are bigger.

by ultimafan

3/24/2026 at 9:54:44 PM

Maybe the winning strategy is always attack and never be the one defending. That’s unfortunate.

by chasd00

3/24/2026 at 2:30:59 PM

[flagged]

by Noumenon72

3/24/2026 at 2:59:17 PM

What happened to Iron Beam / lasers and those vaunted "space lasers" dubbed "star wars"?

by EGreg

3/24/2026 at 3:05:41 PM

Apparently, Iron Beam still exists (or at least was demoed in 2024).

Originally, the lasers were going to be mobile, but now they have to be stationary, so it will work like the game Missile Command, except you have unlimited ammo, but no concurrent shots, and the missiles can't be rotating (like a rifled bullet would).

That's much more feasible-sounding that I'd assumed (coming from low expectations).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Beam

by hedora

3/24/2026 at 3:57:46 PM

I seriously can't wait for this technology.

It can be purely defensive, and shoot down all aerial attacks - drones, etc. over your country's airspace.

So... no wild weasel, no successful air raids, etc. We're back to ground invasions, and frankly, a country can defend against those a lot easier.

And it also means countries not lobbing missiles at each other, and at oil fields and igniting them, or destroying shipping etc.

by EGreg

3/24/2026 at 3:13:04 PM

The US has deployed operational anti-drone lasers for a few years now, though not widely. They are still quite new but they have several kills. This is probably operational field testing for fine-tuning the design prior to producing them at scale though.

by jandrewrogers

3/24/2026 at 2:37:10 PM

Why does a ground based interceptor cost $75M? High idiot index?

by koakuma-chan

3/24/2026 at 3:15:41 PM

$1M, but we can only make 600 / year, globally.

by hedora

3/24/2026 at 3:24:36 PM

From the article,

"Each GBI costs approximately $75 million, and as of 2024, 44 are deployed across Alaska and California [3]."

by koakuma-chan

3/24/2026 at 3:47:55 PM

I'm quoting the missile cost. I think they're quoting the launchers + a few missiles.

(Also, lower bounding the cost improves the argument that they're too expensive to be practical.)

by hedora

3/24/2026 at 4:42:53 PM

Author here. The $75M is specifically for Ground Based Interceptors (GBIs). This is the U.S.'s ICBM mid-course interceptor. There are other interceptor types in the current U.S. arsenal:

Patriot PAC-3 (~$4M): Nations burnt through 600-800 in the first few days of Operation Epic Fury. There are reports that they're being used for drone defense.

SM-3 (~$10-30M): Ship-launched

SM-6 (~$4-5M): Ship-launched

THAAD (~$12-15M): Terminal phase, high altitude

GBI (~$75M): intended for interception of ICBMs (reported as the hardest type of missile to intercept)

Each type of interceptor is optimal for certain type of threats, which is yet another constraint on the optimization problem.

by O3marchnative

3/24/2026 at 5:29:23 PM

In what world would a specialized, niche, high precision, high readiness rocket meant to loft a very advanced interceptor munition into an extremely high velocity interception ever be cheap?

These things are closing at like mach 20. Physics says that's hard to do. That means it's expensive.

For reference, $75 million is in the realm of a Falcon 9 launch, which is a very cost optimized platform that doesn't have to place a very very precision instrument payload in a very very specific point in space to prepare it for a high energy, extremely difficult interception.

by mrguyorama

3/24/2026 at 5:36:21 PM

Does it being very high precision or whatever mean that it must cost $75M per unit? Is it made of gold?

by koakuma-chan

3/24/2026 at 5:39:38 PM

The cost primarily comes from the work needed to be done to make sure it works, not the raw materials. But there probably are some pretty expensive materials in it too.

by echoangle

3/24/2026 at 7:17:38 PM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Inertial_Reference_Sp...

This is what we had to build in the 60s to allow a missile to know where it physically existed precisely enough to allow it to 50% of the time hit within a circle of ~50 meters.

When you get to certain points in physics, certain energy regimes, you no longer are building machines or tools or something mass market. You are building artisan scientific instruments, and then sometimes gluing explosives to them.

Even modern laser ring gyros do not even share a dinner table with the precision and accuracy of the above singular component of the Peacekeeper ICBMs, and that was a long time ago.

"Tech" and some of the developments of the past few decades have really confused people. The miniaturization of the transistor, and building billions of transistors on a small slice of silicon is an aberration, an anomaly. Most things don't get "Better and better and cheaper and cheaper" like that because shit just doesn't scale infinitely and in general materials science isn't that precise.

For these ground based midcourse interceptors, they have to precisely loft the interceptor package at an incoming projectile. They have to shoot a bullet with a bullet, except the target bullet might even be moving around a bit, and your ability to precisely quantify the exact parameters of it's position and velocity is already limited. Is your position and velocity measurement an inch off? Two inches? Is that too much?

How well have you quantified the thrust of your rocket engine? THIS specific rocket engine, not a random one from the batch. Will you be off in a direction by a few meters per second? That might be enough to scuttle your interception.

IIRC this is the interception payload, a kinetic kill vehicle:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBMU6l6GsdM

Then, are any of those nozzles slightly less smooth than they should be? That's a miss. Did propellant slosh in an unexpected way? That's a miss, Chicago is now a smoldering crater. Incoming round bounce your rader signal in just a slightly different way than you had the data to know about? Miss, San Fransisco now has significantly cheaper real estate. Chaotic properties of hot expanding gas slightly different than your simulation in the unluckiest way? Miss.

You have to exhaustively inspect, reinspect, quality control, test, simulate, retest, catalogue, document, every single component. You have to be able to predict, almost perfectly, how every single component will act and perform in a situation you will never get a test for.

High energy physics is always going to be hard, never cheap, because high concentrations of energy are literally what the universe itself is trying to reduce. The rules of reality itself are against you.

A creator on youtube named Alexander the Ok has done wonderful videos on a lot of the technology that goes into these systems, especially older, less classified systems.

by mrguyorama

3/25/2026 at 3:19:28 AM

> This is what we had to build in the 60s...

>> drift less than 1.5×10−5 °/h

Wow...just wow. Not a GNC engineer, but that drift spec strikes me as exceptionally good today, let alone the 60s.

EDIT:

> Even modern laser ring gyros do not even share a dinner table with the precision and accuracy of the above singular component of the Peacekeeper ICBMs, and that was a long time ago.

No kidding; full transparency, that was my basis of comparison.

by metaphor

3/24/2026 at 3:52:08 PM

I spent some time reconstructing the current US missile defense interceptor numbers. This was done from open source DoD data, CSIS P-21 procurement exhibits, and CRS reports, that are are in depth, non partisan, objective policy analyses written by experts at the Congressional Research Service (CRS) specifically for U.S. Congress members. Also used Lockheed/RTX financial disclosures.

The numbers are pretty bad… Way worse than the headlines suggest. But anyway nowadays, investigative journalism has been decimated....For example experts like Kelly Grieco at Stimson estimated that at 12 day war consumption rates, the entire US interceptor stockpile depletes in 4 to 5 weeks. We are now in week 4...

As of December 2025, CSIS documented delivery of 534 THAAD interceptors and 414 SM-3. The 12 day War burned through around 150 THAADs (that is 28% of inventory) and about 80 SM-3s. The current war has been drawing down from that already depleted starting point for 25 days straight...

Gulf states reportedly expended around 600 to 800 PAC-3 MSE interceptors in the first 72 hours of Epic Fury alone, and that is more than the entire global 2025 production ( about 620 units).

Meanwhile THAAD production is 96 per year….with a recent Lockheed commitment to quadruple to 400 per year, but that will only deliver these additional missiles after 2027 or later. For example the sole ammonium perchlorate supplier for every US solid rocket motor runs one plant in Utah, and the sole HMX/RDX source is a WWII facility in Tennessee…

The US has procured roughly 270 PAC-3 MSE ( the Patriots ) per year since 2015, but has diverted around 600 to Ukraine over four years. The exact remaining US stockpile is not known with the same precision as THAAD/SM-3, so they could not have more than 3000 before Epic Fury...

But it is known as I said above, Gulf allies burned through 600 to 800 or more PAC-3 MSE in the first 72 hours of Epic Fury alone from their own stocks. Since they have zero domestic production capacity, and will be competing with the US for the same Lockheed production line that only makes about 600 per year, Iran really has them by the balls.

By the way, the cost so far in munitions is 20 billion ( check references…).

Then on Intelligence...

Iran has 13 satellites of their own, and it is known to be receiving intelligence from the Russians. This data allows them to know exactly how many Patriots or THAAD were fired so far. They are also probably customers of MizarVision, a Chinese AI startup, that has been cataloguing every significant American military asset in the Middle East. Every base, every carrier strike group, every F-22 deployment, every THAAD battery, every Patriot missile position, tracked, labeled, analyzed, and posted publicly.

So...

Unless the US escalates to a Ground Invasion (most likely scenario…), or negotiates a deal with Iran, if Iran can keep their industrial production of missiles, or maybe move them far up and inside tunnels in its Northern Mountains, and...if the USA does not escalate to a ground invasion due to the political risks, they can actually win this war both from the political and strategic aspects, as incredible as that might seem.

Who is truly screwed are the Gulf countries, as their stocks of US missiles get progressively depleted… And they wont get a refill soon.

Russia strategic interests are in helping Iran, since it weakens the US and strengthens their hand in Ukraine.

What might make it worst for the Iranians is the Chinese view of this. I speculate they will prefer to help the US and its economy, by forcing the US to do a great commercial interesting deal for them, then using their strong leverage on Iran to come to an agreement.

Strategically, over the next four to six months: Russian wins, Iran wins (despite all the destruction), China wins, Israel loses, the US loses. Trump truly is the biggest loser...

"Are We Running Out of Missile Defense Interceptors?" - https://www.csis.org/events/are-we-running-out-missile-defen...

"‘Race of attrition’: US military’s finite interceptor stockpile is being tested" - https://www.defensenews.com/news/your-military/2026/03/06/ra...

"The Depleting Missile Defense Interceptor Inventory" - https://www.csis.org/analysis/depleting-missile-defense-inte...

"Over 5,000 Munitions Shot in the First 96 Hours" - https://www.fpri.org/article/2026/03/over-5000-munitions-sho...

"A Chinese AI Startup With 200 Employees Is Mapping Every US Military Asset in the Middle East — In Real Time" - https://breached.company/mizarvision-chinese-ai-satellite-us...

https://www.mizarvision.com/

by inaros

3/24/2026 at 8:53:23 PM

How does this guarantee a political and strategic win for Iran?

Iran was already teetering on the edge of being a failed state: socially, economically, environmentally, and agriculturally. Iran is expending expensive ballistic missiles to force those THAAD and Arrow shoot-downs. Yes, they're winning the shot exchange ratio, but their economy is orders of magnitude smaller than the US. Besides, unlike the Gulf states, the US and Israel are not just sitting around playing defense. They are systematically destroying substantial fractions of the Iranian war machine and have both threatened and attacked domestic and international energy production, the lifeblood of the Iranian economy.

The only true winner of this war, however it shakes out in the end, is Russia. All of the Middle Eastern powers aligned with the US are going to be desperate to rebuild their interceptor stockpiles and will surely get priority over Ukraine, likely for a very long time as the production rates are very low as you've pointed out. Plus, Russian gas and oil are worth a lot more than they were prior to this war, and are being allowed to trade more openly as well.

by aftbit

3/25/2026 at 3:59:15 AM

Iran already bled enough high end regional interceptors, the strategic balance is if they can build enough moped shaheeds that can be assembled in garages to overwhelm whatever comes in theatre. And we know upper limit of US+co interceptor production for next 3-4 years. Economic size =/= productive capability. Ultimately Iran with survivable regional strike complex can existentially threaten gulf state adversaries who are all dependent on desalination while Iran, as shit as their water crisis is, is not. UAE, Qatar Saudi and Israel are like 70-90% desalination. They can threaten Iran economic lifeblood, Iran can literally end their lifeblood. Iran simply has massively more lethal/credible escalation dominance vs GCC. Iran already being failed state ironically allows them to escalate harder - they have much less economy to lose, vs GCC losing economy and biology.

Ultimately if Iran locks down Hormuz long term they can transit tax their way to prosperity, and if they can convince PRC to be enforcer of petro-yuan (big if), they'll basically get unlimited hardware to do so. Not that burning bridges with GCC is PRC first choice, but if Iran can lock down Hormuz, they have leverage to compel PRC to accept arrangement because it's worse than no Hormuz energy. The spoiler obviously is US who would rather toast GCC oil than lose petro dollar. Or Israel being nuke happy.

by maxglute

3/24/2026 at 10:18:12 PM

Not necessarily disagreeing with your conclusions, but you aren’t factoring in other European or Korean interceptors the GC have been using. Israeli production. Fighters and other systems can be used for drone defense - lasers, AA guns, Manpads, EW, microwaves - Ukraine’s drone on drone defense and other solutions will be implemented asap.

The math is still brutal

by granoIacowboy

3/24/2026 at 8:57:53 PM

The democratisation (if that's the right word) of high quality satellite imagery is really something.

Of course top military powers will have even better images, but there are random Twitter users and YouTubers commissioning imagery of Russian tank bases and as long as there's no clouds on the day in question the quality is pretty good.

Things that move (ships) are still very hard to find and that's where the top powers still have a real advantage, but military bases, storage depots etc. are all impossible to hide in 2026. Even your local ragtag jihadist group can get coordinates for all your bases with a small amount of money and effort if they need them.

Making missiles that are accurate enough to take advantage of all the targeting data is still quite hard though

by ifwinterco

3/24/2026 at 5:22:51 PM

[flagged]

by keybored

3/24/2026 at 5:41:29 PM

A wonderfully ambiguous and diplomatic statement...

by inaros

3/24/2026 at 9:56:46 PM

[flagged]

by keybored

3/24/2026 at 1:49:58 PM

The sole mention of directed energy:

> Directed energy has been proposed as a cost-effective alternative, but introduces its own scheduling constraints — dwell time, platform coverage, atmospheric degradation — with similar scaling issues

The author is doing the thing where a writer tries to bamboozle the reader into a conclusion without having to prove it by overwhelming the reader with nouns. Life is too short for shitty gosh gallops.

by quotemstr

3/24/2026 at 2:12:57 PM

You are basically complaining that the article is not about a your preferred, different topic.

Directed energy defense does not really compete with a system like GMD at all, because the range is extremely limited by comparison.

The US might be able to justify throwing a few billion at a few dozens of ICBM interceptors stationed in a handful of sites, but protecting every potential target (city, military base) with some kind of laser array is obviously unrealistic.

by myrmidon

3/24/2026 at 2:27:28 PM

Gotta say, did not know direct energy weapons were actually leaving science fiction and entering the real world yet, but it seems they're. It's obviously not star trek level, but it's way more advanced than I expected

by tonnydourado

3/24/2026 at 3:38:29 PM

They are, but only have a range of 1.2 miles in earth's atmosphere. Since they're on the ground, and presumably near the target (not the launcher), that means they're aimed at the warhead just before it hits the ground.

I looked up the numbers, and, interestingly, ICBMs have to slow down before they hit their target. In the midrange flight, they travel at 15,000 mph, but at re-entry the warheads are only traveling at 1900 mph, or 0.58 miles per second.

So, in the best case (the warhead is headed to the laser), the laser only gets 2.5 seconds of dwell time to intercept it. This rapidly decreases as the distance from the laser to the target increases (to 0 seconds of dwell time at 1.2 miles). Also, if the ICBM fires multiple warheads, or chaff, then you'd need to scale up the number of lasers or scale down the dwell time linearly, assuming they're all conveniently aimed within a small fraction of a mile of the laser (again, I'm assuming best-case).

Current direct energy weapons have only been demoed against UAVs, probably for this reason.

edit: my math is completely wrong: Modern nukes are optimally detonated at about 5000 ft above ground level. So, you get about 0.33 seconds of dwell time, assuming the attacker doesn't just set the warhead to detonate at a non-optimal (but still devastating) 1.2 mile altitude.

https://remm.hhs.gov/zones_nucleardetonation.htm

by hedora

3/24/2026 at 3:10:03 PM

Bearing in mind the three constraints quoted, which of these do you think a country's deployed directed-energy weapons (e.g., US, Israel, Russia) would be useful against:

https://missilethreat.csis.org/country/iran/

by OrangePilled

3/24/2026 at 3:45:39 PM

You don't really have to guess. None of those countries are using directed energy weapons, and they're all repeatedly getting hit by Iranian technology (so they have an incentive to test whatever they have).

by hedora

3/24/2026 at 4:26:46 PM

> None of those countries are using directed energy weapons

The USS Preble is equipped with HELIOS and is in Iran. [0] The US has also used "dazzlers" there too (as mentioned in the linked X thread). [1]

Israel's Iron Beam was used against Hezbollah's drones (Iranian tech), with apparently limited return for it, this could explain why it won't be seeing action in Iran. [3][4]

The only alleged case of Russia using DEWs was in August 2025. [5] Admittedly, it was a reach for me to even name them.

As cost-effective (and cool-sounding) as DEWs are meant to be, there's a reason the US and Gulf states are beckoning Ukraine for help. At the same time, the Pentagon want's to ramp up development with 3 years and the US military at large seems to be bullish on lasers...[6]

[0]: https://xcancel.com/sebastienroblin/status/20361510681621877...

[1]: https://www.armyrecognition.com/news/navy-news/2026/u-s-navy...

[3]: https://www.jpost.com/defense-and-tech/article-889677

[4]: https://www.jpost.com/defense-and-tech/article-889701

[5]: https://t.me/milinfolive/154597?single/

[6]: https://www.defensenews.com/industry/techwatch/2026/03/18/th...

by OrangePilled

3/24/2026 at 10:25:43 PM

Whatever that means.

by MoonWalk

3/24/2026 at 6:31:31 PM

[dead]

by tug2024

3/25/2026 at 9:36:41 AM

[dead]

by egorfine

3/24/2026 at 1:34:17 PM

[dead]

by OhNoNotAgain_99

3/24/2026 at 2:37:13 PM

Those rockets are lobbed in high arcs and glow in the sky then slowly fall down - they are so slow they almost look like flares.

Your so-called missile defense does nothing at all against a real missile like Iran's supersonic ICBMs which can exceed 24,000+ km/h.

by fisherwoman