Discussion
US asked Ukraine for help fighting Iranian drones, Zelensky says
verdverm: One only needs to look to Ukraine for how this might play out in the long-run, remixed a bit.1. Neither side has been unable to stop the other from mass producing drones. Too easy to build in small facilities, whack-a-mole scenario.2. Interceptors will become depleted, more "squeakers" will get through as time goes on.Some graphs: https://bsky.app/search?q=ukraine+drone+graph
KK7NIL: It's important to separate the short range quadcopters that are easily built in small workshops from the long distance winged drones that can weigh several hundred pounds (like the Shahed drones).The latter, as they're built by Russia currently, require a decent size facility to build en mass. It's not the kind of thing Hamas could build in their tunnel system, for example.I agree with your second point that interceptors will become depleted though and this is a serious problem.
bdangubic: done… in exchange for 100 nukes
cdrnsf: Ukraine should refuse to help barring a commitment to continued support and support of their preferred peace plan.
idontwantthis: They should take payment up front.
choilive: Fight fire with fire. Anti-drone drones that are near cost parity. Or make some investments to develop, cheap, mobile, relatively short ranged point-defense systems. A middle ground between CWIS and CROWS or a CROWS-like system optimized for drone defense. The engagement distance will be close, but it turns the asymmetry back around.
verdverm: This is what Ukraine is doing, but it will always be imperfect. Shahed style drones don't fly a straight path.
chaostheory: [delayed]
mekdoonggi: While I love the idea of sticking it to Trump, this is the wrong approach. The right approach (which Zelensky is doing) is for Ukraine to sell defense drones to countries that now need them (US, Isreal, Gulf States).Ukraine gets money while scaling their manufacturing and everyone else gets drones that actually work and are continually being refined in the field.
mothballed: If Zelensky wants to turn it into a capitalist enterprise then he should be careful with that game, because US could easily ask to be given hard assets in return for the $100B+ in aid we give them, or just reduce aid by exactly the amount they are charging for their drone help.
verdverm: US direct aid is near zero at this point. The new deal is the EU paying for most of the military supplies.
Animats: Well, Ukraine is, by necessity, the leader in defending against drone attacks.Ukraine wants more Patriot air defense missiles in exchange. A reasonable deal.
yread: He also said that gulf states expended 800 patriot missiles (about 1 year of production) which is more than Ukraine got over the whole war
exceptione: Asymmetric warfare, a concept that costed the USA a few trillion before. A patient observer of the war in Ukraine could have updated some war doctrines. If you are an American tax payer, I would understand if you are banging your head on the table right now. These flying lawn mowers are perfect for a Denial of Dollar (DoD) attack.
coffinbirth: Reminder that the US is primarily responsible for the precision strike killing of at least 165 school children[1].[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Minab_school_airstrike
verdverm: I haven't seen an update to who fired the missiles (there were two that hit the schoole), US or IsraelGood thread with nuance: https://bsky.app/profile/mikeblack114.bsky.social/post/3mgbd...
shmerl: You mean Putin's preferred plan? Ukraine should not do such a thing.
themgt: The real story is that the Patriot and other interceptor stockpiles Zelensky's asking for are now critically low, and tens of thousands of soft targets are hard to defend against cheap drones. This war is on course to set off a truly unprecedented global energy crisis within days, and the USA/allies don't currently appear to have any plan to fix it.
dmix: > on course to set off a truly unprecedented global energy crisis within daysThat's not exactly how oil supply works. There's plenty of stockpiles which take months to burn through and only some places depend on Iranian oil. China is their biggest buyer and it's around 13.4% of China's oil imports.
braincat31415: If you look at the map, there is no place to stage it. The border with Turkey is very small. Staging in Iraq would mean troops under attack from both sides even before they cross the border.
ck2: Good thing this isn't actually a war according to everyone in the administrationand they just annouced it's likely going through September (which means until end of year)and they are now dropping 2000 pound bombs on targets next to civilianshttps://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/04/evacuation-middle-e...> "U.S. Central Command, meanwhile, is asking the Pentagon to send more military intelligence officers to its headquarters in Tampa, Florida, to support operations against Iran for at least 100 days but likely through September, according to a notification obtained by POLITICO"(billion dollars a day and that's before replacing all the weapons)
_alaya: Is special military operation.
EB-BarringtonII: US to Ukraine aid under Trump, for more than a year now, is exactly zero dollars.
mothballed: $400M is directly allocated for 2026.https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/analyses/2025-12-19/us-...
coryrc: Quoting your article:Congress has merely secured the financial pool; the decision on whether and how the money will be spent ultimately lies with the Secretary of War (Defense).
shmerl: Trump should stop bootlicking Putin then and give Ukraine serious long range ground to ground missiles. Time for Putin to pay higher price for being a fascist scum.
chinathrow: What are the self defence drones against Shaheds at this time? I thought Ukraine was shooting them down with F16s, Gepards and from helicopters.
dmix: Drone vs drone interceptors in the big deal in Ukraine right now.
mothballed: This is such a cunningly disingenuous portrayal though when you're just leaving it at that, the US has provided billions in aid already and allocated hundreds of million more for this year. Yet the counter argument here is to just ignore all of that and pretend like they've gotten zero through omission of all the times they haven't.
thewebguyd: > A patient observer of the war in Ukraine could have updated some war doctrines.A patient observer? Any random idiot of the street that cares to watch the news occasionally could've figured that out.> If you are an American tax payer, I would understand it if you were banging your head on the table right nowOh I am, and my representatives hear from me very, very often. Unfortunately, it falls on deaf ears. Seemingly no one around me cares, and our leaders certainly don't. I feel like I'm going insane and living in some kind of weird bizzaro world.
BJones12: Yeah because we haven't seen innumerable similar lies [0] in the past, with lies about deaths and lies about who fired the weapon.[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Ahli_Arab_Hospital_explosio...
coffinbirth: Convenient, right? That doesn't make the war crime(s) the US is responsible for simply disappear.
coffinbirth: It doesn't really matter, they are both responsible, because both attacked Iran illegaly. The major role of course has the US, Israel alone can't do much.
verdverm: Certainly, I agree, the discussion I linked is more about the double tap aspect that likely resulted in the majority of the murders
trhway: US just have too much money as moving to use interceptor drones is very simple when you have the need.Russia and Ukraine both ultimately scaled up volunteer started development and production of that "fastest drone on Youtube" for the interceptor role. Cheap, simple, and works against pretty much any prop-driven drone used there.https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/1rigqam/oper...Russia did start to use those hobby jet engines instead of props on the attack drones, and that made them go 600km/h instead of 200km/h. I'm yet to see the interceptor drone for that - it will also have to use, while smaller, such a hobby jet engine. Again laughably cheap - $3K Alibaba. (there are some other options too, i think we'll see them in time too (if anybody have few mils to burn - ping me :). Anyway, the guys are having wonderful time as their hobby became the eye of the global multibillion hurricane of hot military tech. Even the Blackwater guy - the one who was riding the money tsunami back in the Iraq time - got into it by just recently becoming some C-exec in a pre-IPO Ukranian drone developer)
phil21: AA artillery (radar guided, I'm sure even better improvements with modern tech could be made) seems like a pretty easy win here as well? Cheap bullets, downside being populated areas might impose a risk due to low-flying objects and the interception trajectories needed.Something like the Phalanx only not $50k/burst.
trhway: > low-flying objects and the interception trajectories neededthat is the key. It is much more easy from all the aspects - logistics, cost, agility, etc... - to patrol, discover and intercept from a higher flying drone.>radar guidedFPV, in visual and IR, cost pennies and available in millions of units from Alibaba, while those military radars cost a lot and not many of them are available.The radar guided AA is used and works where needed and there not much other options - like for cruise missiles, 850km/h. You can see videos - the window of opportunity is usually short as cruise missile is also relatively low flying.
EnPissant: He also went on to say that Lionel Messi asked him for tips on corner kicks.
nine_k: Shooting Patriots at flying lawn mowers (I suppose you mean Shaheds, Gerberas, and the like) is crazy. Patriots are key to shooting down ballistic missiles.To the best of my knowledge, the explosives-laden lawn mowers flying over Ukraine are mostly destroyed by cannon fire from the ground, cannon / machine-gun fire from aircraft (including converted GA aircraft), and interceptor drones.I expect the US armed forces to be testing oodles of various cheap drones by now. E.g. the US has used Shahed-lookalike drones while attacking Iran recently.
verdverm: I believe THAAD is for ballisticPatroits for cruise missiles and jetsOther for one way suicide dronesI'm unsure if Ukraine has used patroits against ballistics. My understanding is that is a low count in the Russian mix. Cruise missiles and jets are their primary targets in Ukraine (aiui)
carabiner: We'll soon have drones fighting drones, with few or no lives at risk. Like countries burning piles of money until one runs out.
juliusceasar: All this shit to distract from the Pedo files... USA has become Israel puppet state.
adampunk: Certainly one which could have occurred to America prior to a few thousand of them flying over Ukraine.
verdverm: Patroits are not for shahed interceptions, that's a losing financial equation. They are used for the iskanders and hypersonic like missiles
chasd00: > Something like the Phalanx only not $50k/burst.i was going to say, CRAM would be effective at a close, slow moving, predictable target. The rounds self-destruct based on a timer if they miss so you're not raining bullets all over the place. It's is also portable and can be parked almost anywhere. I'm not sure if the burst is configurable but slow moving drones are easier to hit than a missile so it seems like the burst duration could be turned down too. You'd have to figure out a way to keep them from shooting down _everything_ though.https://youtu.be/HbhOUUAPvM4?si=LCiZmTdCArD_ZN_q
sschueller: Useless if there isn't any amo left for them.
logicchains: >the USA/allies don't currently appear to have any plan to fix itTheir plan is to bomb Iran into the stone age so it can't produce any more drones or missile launchers. It's questionable whether they can succeed though.
Zigurd: In any relevant dimension Iran is about 4X or 5X Iraq. Even Dubya knew you couldn't win in Iraq from the air.
bdangubic: it is not questionable - they will no succeed. if this is how you "succeed" we would have already "succeeded" long time ago
Animats: You have to shoot back with what you've got that's in the right place.
TiredOfLife: That is already happening in Ukraine.
yread: it's not just about iranian oil. The strait is blockaded. Plus refineries in Kuwait, KSA and Bahrain were targeted. And LNG facilities in Qatar - which stopped and restarting will take ~1 month at least. Leading to thishttps://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/eu-natural-gasGas in EU is cca 100% more expensive than a week ago.