Shooting down $40k drones with $4mil interceptors is a problem. Hoping at some point this wake up call is heard.
One recent update is that Apache Attack helicopters are being refitted to hunt/kill these types of drones, but the newest Iranian models are flying 300+ mph which is faster than a single rotor helicopter can fly (the leading blade of a helicopter starts to break the sound barrier).
Israel, United States, United Kingdom, China and Russia have HEL high-energy lasers that can shoot down fast drones. Several other countries are working on HEL development. The numbers of operational HEL systems are still very small but growing. I believe that Israel have the most of them in operation today developed primarily by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. 10kw to 50kw on trucks, 100kw ground based. Range: 7-10km, shorter in fog or rain. Dwell time: 4 to 5 seconds. Cost per shot: $2–$3.50.
Targets: UAVs/drones (including swarms), short-range rockets (Qassam-style), mortars, artillery shells, cruise missiles, and potentially other low/slow-flying threats. It excels against cheap, high-volume threats where kinetic interceptors are uneconomical.
The US is working on a megawatt version that will be mounted on ships to take down full sized aircraft, hyper-sonic weapons and ballistic missiles. Timeline: 2030. Even at 30-50 kW (e.g., the earlier AN/SEQ-3 LaWS on USS Ponce), lasers can target helicopters or manned aircraft to cause crashes by frying sensors or engines. Scaling to hundreds of kW extends range and lethality against faster, larger aircraft.
I'm pretty sure Israel has them active. In June there were many wooshes (i.e. interceptor fire) I heard from my home. Now I'm not hearing any, but am hearing what sounds like short high pitched whines (sort of like coil whine). I've been wondering if that is the HEL powering up for each shot.
Its not clear to me that this is generally worthwhile, even if it is very cheap per-shot; 6 targets at ~100m/s are already enough to overwhelm if the laser gets to engage those targets over 2km of their flight path (with a 4s dwell time).
If your laser emplacements are somewhat expensive and only lightly armored, you might end up in a situation where your opponent happily throws cheap drones, 10 at a time, straight at your defense and still comes out way ahead financially.
Israels situation is quite unique in that it is very small, but gets exposed to imprecise indirect fire a lot, so what works for them might be a really bad investment for the restt of the world.
What’s the cost of a single laser? Russia is launching hundreds of those per attack, over a large territory. With a range of 5-7km you’d need _a lot_ of lasers to effectively cover a reasonably large city.
It doesnt have to be perfect, just better than the next alternative.
If we take 4 million per interceptor at fact value, you can compare them on cost basis. More area coverage for less money would be a potential benefit. Alternatively, reusability could be a benefit if we expect prolonged conflicts or many more of these situations in the future.
Cost per shot including the development and unit costs amortized over the service life of the weapons system? Or is that just the cost of the energy that got pumped into the laser?
That cost per shot is just the energy utilized by the C2 targeting and laser system. I have no idea what the overall cost of the system is. I have not yet found it published. I would wager the overall system is rather expensive but worth it to the point of using expensive ballistics to neutralize a 40k drone which is at risk of being overwhelmed.
I also can't find the accurate time to target stats, just overall dwell time.
yes and no. Imagine they have 100 40k drones. Imagine, if a drone hits it will destroy $10mil in property. So your $100k or even $500k interceptor looks cheap.
However, they have 100 of them (so spend 4mil). so you might have to spend (if say 100k each). 10mil to protect your 10mil in property (and more if the interceptors cost more).
If on the other hand you can get the cost down to pennies (minus R&D costs), this is no longer part of the calculus.
I was thinking about this the other day when watching a video about Chernobyl.
They flew countless helicopters over the exposed reactor core and because this was 1986, helicopters didn't have a million sensors or electronics in it. It was entirely mechanical. Effectively all in-use aircraft nowadays could not complete such a mission as the electronics would be rendered null almost instantaneously, even with ECC, etc.
Do these high energy lasers fry the electronics, or are they able to simply ignite and burn holes through the aircraft?
I had to vouch your comment as it and most comments from your account are auto [dead].
The lasers can fry sensors like I mentioned. They can also burn holes in the body of the aircraft and damage engines. I think you may be conflating the modern glass displays with the sensors themselves. In many cases the actual sensors have not changed that much in terms of being vulnerable to directed energy weapons. The energy being emitted from Chernobyl was gamma radiation which at high enough prolonged exposure can cause bit flips. The two TU-16 bombers that seeded rain clouds around Chernobyl were not affected at all by the gamma radiation and I doubt modern aircraft would be affected just flying over it.
Some time log out and view your comments [1] as almost all are auto [dead]. A new account could be a fresh start.
No. This person should not try to circumvent moderation by creating new accounts. They should ask the moderation team for reinstatement of normal posting privileges, but be willing to accept a refusal. They've behaved appallingly.
I havnt seen this before Does (dead) mean they got downvoted or that everything they write is voided? How do you know what they wrote is appallingly bad?
These weapons have been fitted to most US tactical fighters for the counter drone role as well. APKWS is also not a "new" weapon system - it started fielding back to 2012, and was adapted into the counter drone role.
There are other lower cost (compared to legacy systems designed to take on manned aircraft) solutions currently deployed. The US Army has the Coyote, which is in the ~100k range.
Beyond cost of munitions, you have to consider that cheaper systems are going to have less range, and therefore you'll need more launchers, and you can start running up costs that way.
The Ukrainians have a lot of experience taking these things down with interceptor drones and similar like he sting which is about $2100 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sting_(drone)
It's an arms race with each side constantly updating the tech.
The Ukrainians have offered to help out in the Gulf but for some reason Trump is kind of dismissive.
Surprising there are not more solutions here. We have seen these style of drones for a number of years. I guess it’s a hard problem in general but I also wonder if part of it is simply the historically entrenched defense industry.
Part of it has to be owed to how tactically potent drone swarms are, as a means of asymmetric conflict. Even the best layered defensed are limited by magazine depth, whereas attack drones can be sent in theoretically unlimited waves.
Ukraine has a pretty good track record of taking down drone waves. US had plenty of warning of this tactic and years of examples of successful defense. I’m surprised we’re not seeing footage of thousands of loitering drone killers waiting for a target. Maybe the us just can’t do low cost high volume anything in the military.
The solutions already exist and have been proven on the battlefield. Peacetime military forces are just slow to adapt, as there are no real incentives to adapt quickly.
Drones such as the Shahed are little more than cheap mediocre cruise missiles. Because they are cheap, the enemy can launch them in large numbers. You counter them by detecting them early and then using plenty of cheap mediocre anti-aircraft weapons. Mostly guns and interceptor drones (=cheap mediocre anti-aircraft missiles).
It's fascinating to me that Iran was able to develop this nascent drone industry on their own, while under a very aggressive sanctions/embargo system. It reminds me a bit of Soviet Union and how they were able to come up with, essentially, parallel industry with different flavors. How were they able to do this? Presumably PRC and Russia were supporting this industry either directly or indirectly with material and supply chain assistance, perhaps engineering expertise though I don't think Iran was in short supply of this. Interesting nonetheless, beyond the cost implications of defeating these cheap systems with very expensive missiles.
It's the Persian Empire, a titanic object, with an advanced civilization, quality scientific culture and a highly educated population (.... in the Persian-Azeri core, not the brutalized ethnic periphery). There are sanctions, but relations with Russia and China make up for the few inputs that the sheer extent of the Persian empire cannot yield. (Israel is a bit over 1% its size and mostly intractable desert but has more convenient external supply.)
The ingenuity is kind of astonishing, there is something of a mad febrile energy to it. Thus Houthi and Hamas mostly did not need external supply chains for rocketry etc.: a complete industrial chain could be devised in Iran and deployed on site. Part of it seems to be that a chief objective of design is minimizing what seems to us as inevitable external supply chain dependencies.
The product is indeed largely replication of external industry: as I understand, they seem to have done a lot of reverse engineering of enemy drones. But none of these can bee too much like the shahed, I think, as is evidenced by the fact that Uncle Sam has reverse engineered versions in production and appearing in the Gulf now.
Similarly, I suppose, the Chinese AIs that to some extent mirror US AIs, but on the cheap and with way less computing power, will be replicated in US.
> Presumably PRC and Russia were supporting this industry either directly
Not during development/early phases, they were created during time where sanctions were somewhat enforced. Debris analysis of earlier models show they were full of western COTs parts, including stripped components, i.e. think RU breaking washing machine for chips. Incidentally they were also fairly expensive, 4 digits, for otherwise a rudimentary - though elegantly simple form factor. At least given sanction constraints and relative to what Iran industrial base can muster at relative scale.
Realistically the BOM for one of these things should be low $1000s if value engineered by competent industrial power like PRC. Who has contract to acquire 1m loitering munitions/drones this/next year. There's have factories that can churn millions of of engines per year, i.e. 10s of 10000s of 1500-2500km fires per day.
Iran is a huge mountainous country, they have everything they need for industry right on their own land. In their case it's purely about competence whether they have a nuclear weapon or not. Whether they have rockets or not. Certainly ballistic rockets.
They also have 95 million people, which is certainly enough to do it. They have inherited/stolen somewhat functional infrastructure (ie. schools, universities, research labs, ...) from the Shah.
Additionally they absolutely do not care about the consequences for the Iranian people. By that I mean once a ballistic rocket's motor goes out, at the top of it's trajectory it is more or less unstoppable (it just falls down essentially). Which means fighting ballistic rockets can only happen above (at the very least close to) the launch site, which means in Iran, and that means above the heads of ordinary Iranians. And of course what works best is disabling them on the ground.
They're not competent enough to build things themselves ... yet. Neither Shaheds nor the ballistic rockets, and certainly not things like centrifuges. But China and Russia are helping them out with a bunch of components. So there you are. Again, China and Russia know perfectly well that this can only end in war against the Iranian people, and yet they still do this.
Btw: yes Hamas' and Hezbollah rockets are ballistic missiles too and suffer from this problem. But they're ... shall we say "tactically using" the problem, blaming the target for the inevitable deaths. The only way for Israel to defend itself against those rockets is to make them impact Gaza/Lebanon instead (if you hit them on the ascent you're essentially massively reducing the range of the rocket). But of course they're pretty small compared to what Iran is firing.
Now, of course Iran COULD build these rockets like the west does: so that when they're intercepted they don't kill. To have an active fuse system and you only activate the fuse near the target. Then, if anything happens you still have the rocket impact, but not the explosion, no or minimal shrapnel, etc. But no, they make their weapons like the Soviets did. These weapons are meant to kill in all cases. If they get intercepted, if they have an accident, if the maps aren't up to date, they just kill anyone they can where they fall and if they fail entirely they kill the launch crew. These weapons are designed for maximum killing, whether it's their target or someone else, and then they blame the resulting deaths on the target.
Of course in an honest/sane system such deaths would be blamed on the manufacturer of the weapons, but apparently we're not intelligent enough for that to happen.
It is worrying that Iran itself is now also using human shield tactics with their own people. That girls' school that was hit in Iran ... was an IRGC base until 3 years ago. The school is surrounded on 3 sides (about ~half) by the IRGC base, and the road into that school is the road into the base. The school is inside the outer wall of the base. In other words: this was specifically arranged by the Iranian government to try to get a foreign adversary to hit the school. Luckily they've also totally failed to show even a single corpse and the school was hit at a time the building should have been empty. So hopefully, this is just a lie.
But if true, this incident is 3 years of 100% intentional human rights violation by Iran's government, and one miscalculation on the US or Israeli side, or perhaps even a screwed up missile launch by the IRGC. And let's just not consider the possibility that they boobytrapped the school on purpose (it just happens to be an area where a minority lives ...)
I've heard analysis that a significant proportion of middle east water and food supply - in the form of desalination plants, and cargo through the Strait of Hormuz - is within reach of Iran's capabilities. The logic is that you use this to collapse middle eastern economies which blocks the flow of the investment from Arab states into AI infra that is propping up the US economy.
Iran is unlikely to target food and water without being further backed into a corner, since the escalation would mean reciprocal strikes (possibly independently by the KSA air force) on the Kharg and Bandar Abbas export terminals, which have so far avoided being targeted.
Israel will not tolerate an economically developed or at all democratic Iran. They want Iran to be where Gaza is and Libanon is heading. It's not just the leaders who have nothing to lose.
You would think the hebrew population is just exhausted and hardened and driven a little crazy by several generations of 'deathtoisrael' 'deathtoisrael' drilled into the brains of millions of schoolchildren every year - each /year/'s school intake of impressionable brains is larger than the total world Jewish population. In the end the hebrew-speakers' response will not be simply rational as they are as much mentally affected as the iran citizenry, which is orders of magnitude larger.
It's typical the world community has put up with the naked genocidal intent of the Iran government - which is by now in a sense woven into its constitution and mystical-apocalyptic self-conception - as if it were a musical curious style -- as they build militias saying the same on every border, financing the bizarre suicide campaigns of early 2000s etc. to stop a 2 state solution and keep the party going.
With 'deathtoamerica deathtoamerica' noblesse oblige requires us to pretend it is merely comical. But the 'uppity, arrogant' jewish state is microscopic by comparison with titanic Persian Empire. The disproportion (80x) is far more extreme than even USSR or USA v Afghanistan or USA v Vietnam (30x.
You're talking about Iran's genocidal intent as if Israel has not just finished actually committing one. And their supposed exhaustion from hate from their neighbors - The truth is they are gleefully hyper aggressive and hyper violent and ultra racist as well.
"Until these reasonable conditions are met, the war will go on." :) :)
You seem to have a much more imperative and concise view than either Trump or Hegseth, are you secretly the one in charge of everything?
I loathe Iran regime, but not much of that is going to happen.
The first response would be:
"We stop threatening Israel when they stop taking Palestinian lands and killing them"
"The US moves all troops out of the Middle East"
"Stops trying to overthrow our government"
"Stops sanctioning us"
"Stops and interfering in our domestic affairs"
"Returns $100B dollars stolen / frozen since 1979"
And that would literally put that truly bad regime on almost the moral high ground.
The impossible imperative that you've written I think helps us understand the 'Chock A Block' log-jam of the situation, and why this is so thorny.
The most plausible outcome is nothing.
The second most plausible outcome is descent into massive factional civil war.
Maybe somewhere down the line, there is a 'Shah Installed by the US' and then I'm afraid to tell you that we 'Already Did That' and look how it turned out.
There are no decisive answers and no decisive options on the table.
Idk why you’re getting downvoted, the U.S. is looking for a quick win if it can have it. One of the destructive streaks in the Iranian regime (and among its proxies) is their glorification of martyrdom over pragmatism. It’s cost them historically and it’s costing them now.
"the U.S. is looking for a quick win if it can have it."
?? What is a 'quick win' ??
Serious question.
- Ayatollah dead, next Ayatollah?
- 10 years of civil war?
- Installation of US-backed Shah, with no real power base, which will lead to ongoing insurrection, which is what led to ... Islamic Revolution ... because we already tried that?
- Faux acquiescence at the negotiating table ... while they dig their HQs further under ground?
What else?
A quick win is possible, but one of the most narrow scenarios.
It looks at the moment like everyone is losing, some worse than others.
An Iranian Delcy Rodriguez. Someone who waives a white flag, accepts Trump's terms and then gets left alone for the most part.
Even if it's a bluff to buy time to rebuild, I'm not seeing the strategic rationale for refusing to negotiate. (I do see Iran's leaders being internally constrained to keep fighting. We saw a similar dynamic in Japan during WWII.)
> My understanding is that they were actively negotiating
The only parties I’ve seen say this are Iran and Oman. Practically every other source, including non-English, concedes taking three weeks to come close to hashing out a framework isn’t serious.
> Trump was not authorized by Netanyahu to win that negotiation
This is nonsense. Netanyahu was pushing Trump. But if the Tehran team had capitulated, Trump would have taken the win. Hell, the capitalization could have been bullshit.
> outcome was foreordained
Of course it wasn’t. Ford wasn’t scrambled until weeks ago.
If you can read translated European, Indian, Chinese and Arab reporting on this, I’d strongly suggest it. The English-language stuff has inherited America’s obsession with Israel. That’s obviously germane here. But it isn’t as controlling as we like to make it seem.
Honest question, posed with all possible respect to a longtime HN user whom I am certain isn't a bot, an idiot, or a shill. Does Trump sound, to you, like a guy with a plan of his own, who can be trusted to execute that plan? Like someone who deserves the benefit of the doubt?
We're told that "Biden gave everything to Ukraine and didn't bother to replace it," but "Fortunately, I rebuilt the military in my first term," and now we have a "virtually unlimited supply, stocked and ready to WIN BIG!!!"
Where do you, personally, draw the line? What could he say to convince you that he isn't acting in our country's interests, or even his own?
I’m doing nothing of the sort. I’m carrying water for the evidence.
Iran was not negotiating in good faith regarding giving up their nuclear program. Israel was encouraging but not boxing in American decision making. Witkoff and Kushner were (a) genuinely trying to strike a deal and (b) against kinetics when they started. These are each supported by the preponderance of evidence, far more than their inverses.
> Where do you, personally, draw the line?
Where the evidence does. If that winds up being pro- or anti- whatever party, I’ll look at that second. Facts aren’t partisan.
I’m doing nothing of the sort. I’m carrying water for the evidence.
Unfortunately I don't feel that I have access to the "evidence" you're referring to.
Everything I know about the attacks on Iran, I learned from people who lie a lot. That's pretty much all they do. They begin lying shortly after they wake up in the morning but before they get out of bed, and then they don't stop lying until they enter the alpha state that night. After that they probably lie in their dreams, but to be fair I guess I don't have evidence of that either.
Facts aren’t partisan.
Are your non-partisan facts more like Kellyanne Conway's "alternative facts," or the kind that are actually true?
Trump wants the things I listed -- he has expressed them time and again for anyone remotely willing to listen.
If one is trying to negotiate while maintaining a theocracy, then Trump won't listen, but ending the theocracy is one of the listed points, so it's logically consistent.
You're not making sense. There's no reason to strike a deal with the US as the US can't be trusted to uphold their deals as they have demonstrated directly to Iran previously and to their own "allies".
I mean, the Germans and Japanese and Iraqis probably couldn’t have trusted the U.S. either. They still surrendered because it was better than fighting a futile war.
Same here. Iran’s security chief (and, I’m assuming, de facto leader) messaging he’s ready to concede on those points certainly doesn’t put him in a worse position than he is now.
See the link I posted in the other reply. The people we've elected to lead the US are snakes. Even some of the more fanatical Iranians look sane, intelligent, rational, and trustworthy in comparison.
Hyperbole aside, that's irrelevant. Iran doesn't have the option of negotiating with someone else. Their options are to attempt diplomacy or face incremental anihilation as a modern state.
I don't consider it hyperbole. I grew up with those sorts of people. They are capable of beliefs you wouldn't believe.
As for Iran, about all they could have done, in retrospect, was to actually develop nuclear weapons rather than just hemming and hawing and bluffing and stalling for 40+ years. It's amazing that the country that invented chess could blunder that badly.
> about all they could have done, in retrospect, was to actually develop nuclear weapons
There were so many mis-steps.
Iran could have rejected autarky. Constrained the IRGC’s corruption. Not funded proxies that pissed off every one of their neighbors (except for, maybe, Turkmenistan).
Not supported Hamas when they decided to deputize a lobotomy ward. Not drip fed Hezbollah’s rockets into Israeli air defenses. Not fired at Israel in a symbolic move in 2024. Not half assed their retaliation in 2025. Not assumed, with full faith, Trump was bluffing and thus not (a) seriously negotiate in Geneva nor (b) bother scattering their navy and air force in anticipation of strikes.
I’d actually argue an indigenous nuke was a strategic blunder for Iran. It cost them their economy and moral standing. Maybe pursuing Russia’s nuclear umbrella would have been a smarter move.
Since WW2 maybe, with a very, very small sample. But historically, if you have a minority religion/heresy, you better live under a Muslim caliphate than a Christian monarch not that it's great by any mean, but the moors are a great example, they got what, a generation after the reconquista? Two? Hussites and especially cathares are probably the first religious genocide, with public rape of one of their leader and her daughters, and the destruction of all Cathare littérature and religious text.
Analysts have been playing fast and loose with this phrase. Within reach assuming no air defenses and able to be struck are separate. I believe Iran could hit this infrastructure if it were undefended. It’s not practically able to due to air defenses. (Iran already targeted the small Gulf states’ airports. Given how much food they import by air, that’s an attempted blockade strike.)
Those nations do not have the ability to defend civilian infrastructure - it's the weak point we see in Ukraine.
Nobody does.
These are large regions, AA coverage is narrow, using F16s to shoot down Shaheds wears down fast.
If Iran has stockpiles, and the wherewithal for mission planning, they can steer them around AA and hit the 'back office' at will.
Those states also have no practice coordinating the in-between methods - they have only very expensive ways to stop Shaheds, and only jet fighters outside of AA coverage.
Now - hitting a lot of things like civic buildings etc. doesn't have much effect, but it depends how the civilians react and cope.
Some very specific things like energy desalinization are acute problems.
These are authoritarian states that can keep information dispersal minimal and the civilians will just have to 'eat it' - but only for so long.
The biggest damage will be to Straight of Hormuz - of those drones can be used to hit Oil Tankers ... if there are enough muntions, it will be bad
All of that said, China and India would be super duper upset about that, and Iran may depend on China for parts. They would have 'no friends' at that point.
So it's all plausible.
But it requires Iran to have capabilities.
The entire Middle East is lit up right now - and that puts US forces on a 'clock' - this is going to be an interesting form of attrition on all sides, not a good situation.
> of those drones can be used to hit Oil Tankers ... if there are enough muntions, it will be bad
Not really. During the Iran-Iraq war hundreds of tankers were sunk, including in the Strait [1]. Iran's supposed 'nuclear' option was mining the Strait. But for whatever reason, they weren't able to or chose not to do that.
> this is going to be an interesting form of attrition on all sides
I'm sceptical of this read. With missiles, the launchers are the weak link. With drones, the factories. In the meantime, the U.S. gets to refine the anti-drone kit it's been working on (based on lessons from Ukraine and the attacks on the Houthis).
The Iran-Iraq war was decades ago, every weapon system has changed.
Iran has anti-ship missiles they can fire with impunity at tankers - and - as I said Shaheds.
Shaheds are not yet used against moving targets, but it's plausible they are ready for that.
If they are, then they can close the straits.
The reason they would not likely close the straits is that China is the primary recipient of that Oil, and it's a bit of a client state. China paradoxically provides parts for those drones. And they are the 'last remaining frenemy ally of Iran'.
> Iran-Iraq war was decades ago, every weapon system has changed
Not the point. The point is when the world was even more dependent on oil, hundreds of tankers getting potted was no more than a major nuisance.
> Iran has anti-ship missiles they can fire with impunity at tankers
But limited launchers. And if by “with impunity” you mean losing launchers every time they fire, sure.
> Shaheds are not yet used against moving targets, but it's plausible they are ready for that
This would be an issue.
> then they can close the straits
As you say, this gives everyone in the Gulf, EU, China and India a motivated reason to ensure the war ends.
Also, Iran closing the Strait (note: singular) is self siege. A legitimate American strategy could be just waiting them out while potting shit from the air.
> the nuclear option is very nuclear
There are no nuclear tactics on the table at this time.
One recent update is that Apache Attack helicopters are being refitted to hunt/kill these types of drones, but the newest Iranian models are flying 300+ mph which is faster than a single rotor helicopter can fly (the leading blade of a helicopter starts to break the sound barrier).
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