Edit - never mind, already discussed.
From the main invasion thread, where it was starting to be a hijack:
To be clear, I wasn’t saying that I thought that one shot, one kill was currently possible (though with fully computerized aiming, you might be able to get close to that). What I was saying was that, whether it’s possible or not, that’s the kind of economy you need to make an anti-drone defense practical. If shooting down a drone costs more than the drone itself does, then the side using the attack drones can just bankrupt you by throwing more and more drones at you. Or they throw so many that you can’t afford to shoot them all down, and some still get through. Or both.
This is especially true with the sort of drone warfare that Ukraine has been favoring. When you’re attacking fossil fuel facilities, all it takes is one incendiary getting through to the right spot to destroy the entire facility. One turret each on four flatbed trucks isn’t enough to stop every drone from getting through, and it only takes one. Net result, the refinery or whateveris still destroyed, except now Russia is also wasting money on the defense platforms, too.
The specific defense system in question fires normal bullets from dog-standard light machine guns. The same bullets Russia cranks out by the millions to provide ammo for squad-level infantry heavy weapons teams (and also snipers, who chamber the same round). Googling tells me that you can import the ammo in question into the US for 50 to 60 cents per round. If you need 100 shots to down a drone, you’ve spent $50 to take down a $500 or $1500 drone, not to mention saving millions in losses if the target had been hit.
This is an example of a surprisingly thrifty anti-drone system. Effectiveness is another matter, since it’s pretty much a last-ditch point defense because of its short range, but Close In Weapon Systems (CIWS) exists as a valid class of air defense systems for a very good reason.
Yes, it may be counterproductive in the long run to spend 10x to stop an inbound that only costs x, but I don’t think this is a valid example.
Data centers. Something more to harvest.
Novel defense.
“In Moscow, communal bucket lifts equipped with armed soldiers have begun to be deployed; these soldiers are to serve as mobile anti-aircraft defense points for shooting down Ukrainian drones. Armed military personnel in the baskets of ordinary lifts have been photographed and spotted directly near the modern skyscraper complex “Moscow-City” as well as in the vicinity of the Moscow Oil Refinery in the Kapotnya district. Independent media, including The Moscow Times, as well as experts, indicate that the drastic intensification of security measures in Moscow itself is linked to Vladimir Putin’s paranoid fears of a potential assassination attempt using kamikaze drones.”
I would not like to be the guy in a bucket with a machine gun if the drones become aimed at the bucket.
You are specifically criticizing this system as being expensive and ineffective. You must have a lot of expertise in order to make this kind of judgement. To educate the rest of us, could you tell us:
How much does the system cost? How much does damage to an oil refinery cost? What kind of drones are being targeted by this system? What is the cost of those drones? How many drones does Ukraine typically use in a single strike against oil refineries? How fast can the system track and destroy a drone? How many rounds are used per interception? How many systems are needed per refinery?
What alternatives do they have? How much do Israeli system cost?
There are scores of other questions I would want to know know before I could make a sweeping judgement.
Even narrowing the question, what are the calculations for this system?
I don’t think @Chronos was making a specific claim - just a general point that expensive countermeasures can kill you on expense, especially if it’s a defense in depth.
This would be an appropriate concern for the modern US tactics of using high tech to secure defense, especially given the recent reporting of the depletion of our anti-missile stores and the like.
The point he made here:
Address your points I believe. So, the goal is to have enough anti-drone systems, that are cheap enough to emplace in sufficient quantity, and with sufficient ammunition/support to stop the drones, but even the, if the the target is high enough value you may end up on the bad side of the equation.
No matter how good the system, if you don’t have enough of them to cover your important targets, from the practical angles, you’re SOL.
This is of course my read on both of your comments, fully acknowledging I could be totally wrong - but in short, I think you’re both right, just looking at the problem in different ways.
Actually, he did make a specific claim:
The claim is so wild that I’m asking for a cite.
The argument is absurd and perhaps there is confusion between machine guns and bullets (which are damn cheap as these things go) and things such as Patriot missiles, which are expensive as hell and can cost far more than a drone.
Presumably, the cost of the radar and targeting system cost far more than the machine guns.
@gnoitall gave a good overview. It’s worth reading again. As gnoitall says:
The only point I disagree with is:
It seems that the majority of attacks on oil facilities are being done by the An-196 Liutyi (Lyutyi) drone, and googling the costs show a wide range from $55,000 to $200,000 per unit. At any rate, it’s not the $500 to $1500 drones that are being targeted here.
I suspected the current wave of attacks was the more expensive long-range high-warload drones, but I intentionally picked the low extreme of the cost range to make the point that this class of weapon is significantly cheaper to operate than their intended target.
It seems to me that I’ve heard of anti-aircraft projectile weapons where the ammunition costs upwards of $1000 per round… Am I mistaken on that?
The machine guns used in the system are the same ones that are commonly used on the ground all over the war. See the link by @gnoitall
The machine guns bullets in the system likely cost 10 to 20 cents a round to Russia.
It just wouldn’t make sense for machine gun bullets to cost $1,000 a round. The machine guns themselves probably cost a couple of thousand dollars to manufacture by Russia, but there’s no way each bullet could cost that.
These are not fancy-schmancy high explosive proximity fuzed autocannon shells. These are just dumb lead .30 caliber light machinegun bullets.
As I said, 50 to 60 cents apiece imported into the US, so the domestic cost within the Russian armed forces procurement system is obviously going to be cheaper per unit.
The Russians probably have several thousand LMGs they took from the Germans in warehouses.
The German Gepard, a cold war relic that has been brought back to life for the Ukraine war, has a double barrel gun on both sides of the turret. It fires three shots from each gun in a round. Each shot costs 560 Euro, claims Rheinmetall, the manufacturer [cite in German]. That is equivalent to 620,000 Euro per minute [statistically challenged cite in German too. The Gepard does not have that many shots in the magazine].
Those are 2023 prices, btw.
In case you don’t know it, the Gepard looks like that. I remember building a 1:35 Tamiya model in the '70s.
Ah, I see the confusion at least as far as my communication vs. @Chronos, and it might be worthwhile for all of us to spell out what sort of anti-drone systems we’re assuming.
For me, I specifically mentioned the costs of modern US precision munitions, mostly used for close in defense, previously against larger, more expensive missiles:
There, cost per interceptor, especially if used against low cost drones is a huge thing.
If we’re talking about left over or repurposed light machine guns in a battery (as opposed to anything with a higher rate of fire, proximity fused, etc.) then absolutely, individual ammunition costs at scale are far cheaper than what Chronos mentioned later.
Though as pointed out, fire control, target acquisition and feeding systems do add a substantial initial cost on their own - unless your system is a bunch of guys in a cherry picker with handheld arms.
(A little off topic)
When discussing rate-of-fire for guns, thr standard unit of measurement is “bullets per minute”. This is always a theoretical measurement, not a realistic one, because no gun has a magazine large enough to fire for a full minute.
For example, the standard M16 rifle carried by American soldiers is rated at 700 bullets per minute, even though it only holds 30 bullets in the magazine.
[/ off topic]
I dunno, one of those muzzleloader muskets that takes two minutes to reload might qualify.