Skip to main content

$5,000 killer drone & Russia buying North Korean missiles

This takes the cake, a $5,000 drone with a 5 kg carrying capacity made out of cardboard, invisible to radars is causing Russia real headaches, and military planners everywhere a rethink of their defence procedures.  These slow-moving cardboard Australian reconnaissance aircraft drones have been repurposed to become kamikaze attack platforms that can (and have probably) destroyed aircraft, radars and maybe even fuel depots.  

The key here is the cost.  If a Su27 aircraft can be disabled or destroyed (as seems to have been the case two weeks ago), for a cost of $5,000 (where the aircraft are worth $30 million each) the Russian Air Force has a real problem.  Moreover, these drones are easy to assemble, totally stealthy and have a range of nearly 70 miles.  The destroyed aircraft were nearly 400 miles from the front.  

Russia has been forced to position its aircraft even further away from the Ukraine front.

The way forward in the current war is hard to estimate.  There are many issues at hand.  Success for Ukraine is hard to quantify since this is not the first time Russian troops invaded the country (also in 2014).  Removing Putin is unlikely to change anything, considering that the Russian's position is one of protecting the homeland and re-establishing the old Soviet borders. 

The Ukrainians have learned valuable lessons over the past two years.  They have also been smart with their resources and deployed inventive solutions for dealing with the Russian army. 

The rumours are that the Russians have completed negotiations with North Korea and Iran to purchase missiles.  They are generally not very good, with a target error range of 200/500 meters, but the Russians can probably improve this performance.  The question is what did Russia offer in exchange, my educated guess would be satellite launch windows for both nations.  

The game is getting interesting, and the advantages won by Korea and Iran are potentially game changers.


BTW, and I am not a strategist.  I see no obvious win for the Ukrainian forces, the only thing I worry about is once the Russians win, what happens next, are they off to Poland next?


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

what people get wrong about tariffs

 The issue is simple. What percentage of the economy is dependent on tariff goods? The truth, is that the US economy is far more closed than people understand. People genuinely believe that all manufacturing has ceased to exist in the United States all given to China on the altar of woke policy the truth can be further from That statement. Only about 15% of US GDP is related to foreign trade. Of that amount, slightly more than half is from Canada in Mexico. And half of that is energy. What that means, is that about 7% of US GDP is tariff dependent. The proof in the pudding, is how little money tariff generates. People think that 30 or 50 billion is a lot it’s not in an economy that has $3 trillion. The impact on the US economy will be less visible but not absent. Inflation hasn’t occurred yet first because tests have hardly started to bite, but more importantly it’s such a small percent of the economy. Now certain things are critical. The rare earth metals from China were critical....
Post a Comment
Read more

The end of Tesla?

 it takes a special kind of idiot, to think that he can antagonize his entire customer base, and think that it will not impact his business. When Elon Musk went to work for Donald Trump, and created the doge department, he antagonized every liberal, and these people represent 90% of his client base.That’s not a brilliant move. Now Elon Musk is worth hundreds of billions of dollar, so he shouldn’t care a great deal, however, he needs to care because of several other issues. The cyber truck has been a disaster, most have had to be recalled because of defective glue, it’s not a truck, it’s not a car, it’s noisy, relatively uncomfortable, but great as a development platform. What Tesla has learned in making car manufacturing more seamless is truly amazing. The problem was that Elon Musk was so pissed with the Democrats, and with Joe Biden, in particular because of some slight, which were just plain stupid too. By the way, that he decided to support with hundreds of millions of dollar, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Demographics

 I am preparing a kind of family tree for our children so that they know where they came from.  In my family I am the only survivor, although my brother and sister died recently they were both in their seventies (a story I told already).    It was a fun process, but it provided more than that.  First, I married relatively young I was 26 when I married and nearly 30 when our first child was born.   I was looking at my ancestors.  On my mother's side, she had 6 siblings, Four died before the age of 30, two in war, and two from illnesses.  Only she and a single sister survived.   The two boys had a child each but they died in WWII, and the other sister died as an infant.   what is interesting is that every one of my mother's siblings had children in their early 20s.   I know that my mom was hardly 20 when my brother was born.    What is remarkable is that among our friends, we are the only ones to have fou...
Post a Comment
Read more