What Happened to Ukraine's Missile Defense

(missilematters.substack.com)

15 points | by bharbr 13 hours ago ago

7 comments

  • FridayoLeary 12 hours ago

    >Ukraine’s ballistic missile defense intercept rates had dropped from around 37 percent in August to just six percent in October

    Israel must by now have intercepted more missiles of all kinds then the rest of the world combined, and more ballistic missiles too. They managed to shrug off 4 to 5 rounds of saturation attacks from iran with almost no major hits. Something like a 95% successful intercept rate. That's not even discussing short range Iron Dome interceptions.

    I can only guess the difference is more sophisticated missiles, a larger area to defend and fewer resources to do so. I still feel i'm missing something here.

    • _djo_ 12 hours ago

      The major different factor is that Russia is sending these drone & missile strikes just about every single night, learning from the data they gather to use less predictable routes and more countermeasures.

      Ukraine does the same too, obviously, but missile/drone defence is harder than attack, and there’s a numbers disparity in terms of interceptors and being able to place them in the right places.

      Iran got just a couple of goes at Israel and didn’t get a similar chance to learn from and adapt to what it learned in the process.

    • acdha 11 hours ago

      Iran is a less sophisticated attacker and they attacked Israel on several days. Russia has been throwing everything they can make against the larger Ukrainian perimeter for multiple years. If Iran could keep pummeling Israel long enough for attrition to set in, or had the same caliber of missile and drone hardware, or artillery+aircraft strikes on the defense infrastructure you’d see Iron Dome dropping off, too.

    • TheAlchemist 12 hours ago

      While it's probably true, most drones and quite a lot of missiles too were intercepted not by Israel itself, but it's allies (mostly US, UK and EU countries).

      • FridayoLeary 11 hours ago

        That's only partially correct. The vast majority of missiles were intercepted by Israel. I was surprised at how little drones featured in the war. It seems that sophisticated defences can easily handle them. Ukraine and russia use them to devastating effect, but neither of those countries are on the cutting edge of warfare . Western armies have more in common with Israel so hopefully drone attacks are a solved thing for them.

        • TheAlchemist 10 hours ago

          Isn't it much more related to the distance between the countries ? When Iran sent hundreds (thousands?) of drones towards Israel they all take several hours to arrive - all were shot down outside of Israel (again by allies).

          Would you have some numbers on how much was shot down by Israel and how much by allies ? I didn't find anything

    • Mars008 10 hours ago

      > Israel must by now have intercepted more missiles of all kinds then the rest of the world combined

      Very unlikely more than Ukrane alone (unless you count fireworks from Hamas and alike). Iran just didn't launch this many. Besides they are less advanced.