🇵🇱- Poland clearly had enough

Credit to Polandball

💬 @PoliticsGR Commentary:

🇺🇦🇷🇺 I personally don’t publish evolutions from the Russo-Ukrainian war anymore for a reason; the situation on the front is clearly a stalemate (clashes in Donetsk villages, siege of Pokrovsk, Russians are 4.5 kilometres from Dnipropetrovsk oblast and still don’t go in, Ukrainians conduct a counteroffensive in Kursk in an attempt to maintain their positions and fail). However, a topic I haven’t seen mentioned a lot in Telegram channels is drone warfare, and it’s where Ukrainians have a significant competitive edge, enabling them to deal constant damage to Russian energy and military facilities.

To conduct a thorough analysis, we need to compare the aerial weapons employed in long-range attacks. Moscow predominantly relies on the Shahed 136 drone (also referred to as Geran-2), a “kamikaze drone” that is utilised alongside ballistic and cruise missiles. Locally-produced variants usually range from below $20,000 to $50,000, while drones exported from Iran are estimated at about $190,000 after a negotiated settlement. Even though Geran-2 remains a lethal weapon and is used frequently, it alone is not sufficient to conduct a sophisticated strike. Coupled with the high cost of missiles, with Kinzhals ranging up to $13 million, the Kremlin needs to cover significant expenses to plan a attack. The only field in which Russia was able to develop cost-effective drones was in reconnaissance operations, which are capable of detecting enemy defences in order to destroy them.

On the other hand, Ukraine possesses a diversified drone stack, employing it in both direct combat and long-range attacks. Obviously the main milestone is the minimisation of costs in FPV drones, which accelerated production and usage in the battlefield. However, it has also improved its long-range arsenal, with notable examples being UJ-22, UJ-26 and An-196 Lyutyy and the second drone costing only about $100,000 per piece. Nevertheless, latest power struggles and corruption in government drone procurements could pose a threat to the buildup.

In modern wars, military supremacy alone cannot win wars; the battlefield requires a consistent flow of cutting-edge technology, which should gradually become cheaper by reducing marginal costs. I believe we could draw parallels to the strategies used by non-state actors, such as Ansarullah and HTS taking into account they both developed cheaper drone models to offset enemies relying on more expensive technology.

🇾🇪 Yemen's Houthi group said it will free dozens of prisoners on Saturday, calling the move a "unilateral humanitarian initiative," Abdul Qader al-Murtada, head of the Houthi-run prisoner affairs committee, said on Friday.

- Reuters

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