Images shared online show the system with only two of the standard six launch missiles pictured on one side, suggesting there may be a shortage of interceptors.

This feels significant for something buried at the end of the article.

[–] manxu@piefed.social 60 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yeah. The Ukrainians are masterfully playing the economics of it. Shooting down drones that cost a tenth of an interceptor is ineffective. It's downright ruinous if Ukraine sends hundreds of drones a day. If the sky around Moscow is saturated with interceptions, there will be none left for the front lines, where they actually would make a military difference.

The Iranians have been playing a similar game with Trump. So much so that, to nobody's surprise, the leaders of the Gulf states invited Zelenskyy to offer drone interception tech instead of Hegseth.

[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Don't they have gun AA systems as well though? Wouldn't they be more effective against drones or are the radars unsuitable for the small targets.

Not sure if the Gepard required modifications or not to target drones, thought I had heard it could do a pretty good job at taking them out if it's at range. Probably not so much if there is uneven terrain for the drones to move through.

[–] Lemmyoutofhere@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Very little range though compared to a missile.

[–] jrs100000@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Also spraying thousands of large caliber bullets a minute into the air isn't a great idea in a populated area around the capital. They might hit somebody important.

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

Of course, based on the video, they aren't exactly doing much better in that regard with the missles..

[–] bluGill@fedia.io 16 points 1 week ago

I'm no military expert but my read on this is Russia has realized there's no point in air defense in the front line anymore because they can't possibly keep up anyway...

[–] rain_enjoyer@sopuli.xyz 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Pantsir has also guns tho. More importantly than that it has a radar that can guide missile, which means that radar range exceeds gun range, which means that if there's info sharing system in place, single pantsir can send message to a dude in dshk technical saying "drone incoming towards your position from xx direction". But, this requires such system to exist, and it has to be fast enough, reliable enough and not to target airliners too often. Missiles are for higher end targets like jet drones or actual cruise missiles

[–] The_v@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I wonder what the success rate of the Pantsir system is against drones. Moscow has a ton of them installed yet Ukraine has been successful in getting past them repeatedly with a relatively few reported drones.

I have also never seen an video with their auto-cannons active. I wonder how much time it takes from them to swap from missile to the auto-cannon.

[–] rain_enjoyer@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 week ago

i think it would be more proper to look at success rate of entire system as a whole, and also keep in mind that there might be 90% success rate and still some slip through just because how huge these waves are. next day after that there was another drone wave and no reported footage

[–] tal@lemmy.today 1 points 1 week ago

That's a fair point, but given that Moscow could presumably also be targeted by these higher end weapons, one would think that if the missiles were available, that the air defense systems would be fully loaded.

[–] Bluewing@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

And now you know why the west is frantically working on laser based systems for shooting down drones. They are claiming literally "pennies per shot."